2023
I think there's some value in allowing your friends' interests to influence you. At one time, my sister was very interested in oceanography, so I still like to read about it from time to time. The Bathysphere Book is a history of the first really successful deep-sea diving vehicle, the bathysphere, and a biography of the explorer who rode in it, William Beebe.
The bathysphere was built by Otis Barton. When the door was screwed on, it was a hermetically sealed metal sphere, with only three quartz windows to see out. It was raised and lowed by a metal cable, and this was paired with a phone line so Beebe could report what he saw up to his research partner (and girlfriend) Gloria Hollister for transcription. The bathysphere carried its own compressed oxygen, had internal air conditioning, and used a chemical reactant to neutralize the carbon dioxide its occupants exhaled. It was only used a few times, mainly in 1933 and 1934, and Hollister never got to go on a real dive. Bebee and seasick Barton dove together each time, with Barton not even looking out, just monitoring the machines.
The purpose of the dives was to find out what the ocean was actually like, below the depths you could reach in diving helmet. As you descend, more and more light is absorbed by the water above you, first reds and oranges, then yellows and greens. Before it becomes black, the ocean glows blue-violet. Many of the deep sea creatures are also partially bioluminescent. There is more life down there than scientists had believed possible before Beebe's dives.
The other famous collaborator on this project was artist Else Bostelmann. She also never dove in the bathysphere, and based all her paintings on Hollister's transcripts and direct conversation with Beebe. I actually got this book because I'd seen some of Bostelmann's fantastically dark, haunting watercolors before. My favorite anecdote is that on a few occasions, she donned a diving helmet, dropped a canvas and a metal music stand, and was actually able to oil paint fish and coral, from life, at a depth of 20 or 30 feet.
I think there's some value in allowing your friends' interests to influence you. At one time, my sister was very interested in oceanography, so I still like to read about it from time to time. The Bathysphere Book is a history of the first really successful deep-sea diving vehicle, the bathysphere, and a biography of the explorer who rode in it, William Beebe.
The bathysphere was built by Otis Barton. When the door was screwed on, it was a hermetically sealed metal sphere, with only three quartz windows to see out. It was raised and lowed by a metal cable, and this was paired with a phone line so Beebe could report what he saw up to his research partner (and girlfriend) Gloria Hollister for transcription. The bathysphere carried its own compressed oxygen, had internal air conditioning, and used a chemical reactant to neutralize the carbon dioxide its occupants exhaled. It was only used a few times, mainly in 1933 and 1934, and Hollister never got to go on a real dive. Bebee and seasick Barton dove together each time, with Barton not even looking out, just monitoring the machines.
The purpose of the dives was to find out what the ocean was actually like, below the depths you could reach in diving helmet. As you descend, more and more light is absorbed by the water above you, first reds and oranges, then yellows and greens. Before it becomes black, the ocean glows blue-violet. Many of the deep sea creatures are also partially bioluminescent. There is more life down there than scientists had believed possible before Beebe's dives.
The other famous collaborator on this project was artist Else Bostelmann. She also never dove in the bathysphere, and based all her paintings on Hollister's transcripts and direct conversation with Beebe. I actually got this book because I'd seen some of Bostelmann's fantastically dark, haunting watercolors before. My favorite anecdote is that on a few occasions, she donned a diving helmet, dropped a canvas and a metal music stand, and was actually able to oil paint fish and coral, from life, at a depth of 20 or 30 feet.
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| Previously Unknown Dragonfish Circling the Bathysphere - Else Bostlemann, 1934 |
There are some things from the past that I guess I assumed were more widespread than they actually were. When I watched the film The Automat, I was genuinely surprised to learn there were really only ever in New York and Philadelphia. The bathysphere was unique, not the name for a general type of craft, and outside of Beebe's handful of deep dives in the early 30s, was really only used for test dives and exhibitions.
Fox writes in very short chapters that each relay a single thought or incident. His narratives of Beebe's life and the story of the bathysphere dives are interwoven with Bostelmann's sketches and paintings, photos of the expeditions, excerpts from Beebe's and Hollister's diaries, excerpts from the transcripts of the dives and descriptions of the undersea sightings, accounts of what else was going on historically at the same time, and then lots and lots of short biographical sketches of other people tangentially (often very tenuously) connected to Beebe and the dives. So we learn about the famous racist Beebe dedicated one of his books to, but also about Beebe's neighbor's doctor. Who indeed sounds like a fascinating fellow! The proliferation of chapters about people with only the thinnest of connections to the dives is probably meant to help provide context, but also kind of made it feel like Fox didn't really have enough material to fill a book and was padding it out.
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