4,000 Meters under the Sea

"All right, darling. I shall never travel in the stratosphere again." Bird-necked Professor Auguste Piccard made that solemn promise to his wife in 1932, just after he had ballooned to the stratosphere from Switzerland and landed with a wallop across the Alps. Last week, still stuck with his pledge, the Swiss scientist announced that he would try exploring in the opposite direction: next February he will head for the bottom of the ocean.

The present depth record is held by William Beebe, who dangled on a cable 3,028 feet below the ocean's surface in a hollow steel "bathysphere." Professor Piccard plans a bolder approach. His bathyvessel, which he began designing before the war, will be a true submarine, as free-swimming as a mackerel. His goal, he told newsmen last week, is 4,000 meters, nearly 2 1/2 miles below the surface. The Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research will sponsor the big dive.

Sphere & Float. The pressure-resisting part of the submarine will be a 15-ton steel sphere nearly 7 feet in diameter, with walls 3 1/2 inches thick. By itself, packed with apparatus and Professor Piccard, it would sink like a stone forever. But immediately above the sphere will be a submerged, boat-shaped float filled with light buoyant oil, which cannot be squashed. Below it, held tight by powerful electromagnets, will be enough iron ballast to make the submarine sink. When the Professor shuts off the current from a one-ton battery, the electromagnets will drop the ballast and the submarine will rise, he hopes.

Explorer Beebe saw notably little from the windows of his dangling bathysphere. Professor Piccard hopes to see more. As two small electric propellers maneuver his submarine through the calm black depths at three miles an hour, two powerful arc lamps will light up the water around it. Automatic cameras will take ten pictures a second through conical quartz portholes.

The first descent is planned for next February in the Gulf of Guinea off the west coast of Africa. The submarine will stay down for twelve hours, but will carry enough oxygen for 24. A mother ship will watch it worriedly with submarine-detecting devices.

Popeyed Belgian reporters last week asked the Professor what he would do about sea monsters. He laughed and shook his long, bushy hair: "They do not exist, messieurs." His chief worry is the horde of hardy scientific adventurers who want to voyage to the depths; he has a printed form letter, expressing polite regret, ready & waiting for all comers.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.