Word: piccard
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Dates: during 1995-1995
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...bathysphere came along that scientists could descend to any respectable depth. The Bathysphere eventually took Barton and zoologist William Beebe to a record 3,028 ft., off Bermuda. But it wasn't at all maneuverable: it could only go straight down and straight back up again. Swiss engineer Auguste Piccard solved the mobility problem with the first true submersible, a dirigible-like vessel called a bathyscaphe, which consisted of a spherical watertight cabin suspended below a buoyant gasoline-filled pontoon. (A submersible is simply a small, mobile undersea vessel used for science...
...Trieste, which took U.S. Navy Lieut. Don Walsh and Piccard's son Jacques into the Challenger Deep, was only the third bathyscaphe ever built, and unlike modern submersibles--which bristle with advanced underwater cameras, grabbers, collection baskets and manipulator arms--it carried nothing but its passengers. Its mission was to test whether humans could reach the abyss, the first step toward developing a fleet of manned submersibles. "At the time, people were still flying across the Atlantic in prop planes," recalls Walsh, now a consultant on underwater technology. "Criticizing the Trieste mission for not carrying cameras and other instruments...