with


Would Oceanic Exploration Reach New Depths?


without c


IN A WORLD


t castings


When naturalist William Beebe and engineer Otis Barton began a collabora- tion to explore the ocean in the 1920s, humans had ventured only 500 ft. below the surface. By 1930, the two settled on a spherical design for a vessel called the bathysphere (from the Greek words for “deep” and “sphere”) that would be raised and lowered by a cable. T e Watson Stillman Hydraulic


Machinery Co., Roselle, New Jersey, ini- tially cast 3-in. thick steel walls for the sphere in June 1929. T e fi rst iteration was too heavy to lift and place in the ocean, so a modifi ed design with 1-in. walls was cast. T e initial craft measured approximately 4.75 ft. (1.5m) in diam- eter and weighed 2.25 tons. T e pair conducted a number of


dives in the summer of 1930, reaching a depth of 803 ft. Over the next four years, Beebe and Barton continued to descend deeper into the ocean and eventually reached a depth of 3,028 ft. (928m) in 1934, a world record that stood for 15 years. ■


Jan/Feb 2016 | METAL CASTING DESIGN & PURCHASING | 13


Photos courtesy the Wildlife Conservation Society (www.wcs.org).


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