“We had tried to think of almost every conceivable situation that might imperil human life, and devised ways to avoid such crises,” Vine later wrote in Oceanus magazine. Hahn & Clay in Houston, Texas, welded them together to make three spherical pressure hulls-for Alvin and for the Navy’s deep-submergence vehicles Sea Cliff and Turtle, both now retired from service. in Coatesville, Penn., made 6-foot-diameter steel plates and shaped them into hemispheres. With a $498,500 bid, General Mills won the contract to build a submersible capable of carrying three people to a depth of 6,000 feet. Despite its lack of gravitas (and a cartoon chipmunk popular at the time), the name stuck and became official. But the WHOI group had already started calling the proposed sub Alvin to honor Allyn Vine. In 1962, with Navy backing, the newly formed Deep Submergence Group at WHOI requested bids for a submersible based on Seapup. (whose products once ranged way beyond cereals). He had seen plans for a small submersible vehicle called Seapup developed by Harold “Bud” Froelich, an engineer at General Mills Corp. Symposium participants enthusiastically passed a resolution to develop a national program to develop vehicles capable of transporting men and their instruments “to the great depths of the ocean.” From the makers of CheeriosĬharles “Swede” Momsen Jr., chief of undersea warfare at the Office of Naval Research, was a proponent of a deep research sub. I find it difficult to imagine what kind of instrument should have been put on the Beagle instead of Charles Darwin.” … But people are so versatile, they can sense things to be done and can investigate problems. Among the 103 oceanographers present was WHOI scientist Allyn Vine, who later wrote: “A small group of oceanographers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and elsewhere felt that it was preferable to look at this exciting ‘last frontier’ directly from small deep-diving manned submersibles rather than with remote viewing systems.”Īt the symposium, Vine made this famous statement, which seemed to stir the participants: “I believe firmly that a good instrument can measure almost anything better than a person can if you know what you want to measure.
#TRIESTE SUBMARINE GAL OF GASOLINE HOW TO#
In 1956, the National Academy of Sciences and National Research Council convened a symposium in Washington, D.C., to discuss how to study the deep ocean. But it was unwieldy and had no sampling capabilities. Auguste Piccard had built the bathyscaphe Trieste, a windowed sphere suspended under a blimplike structure filled with thousands of gallons of gasoline. Submarines existed, but they did not go so deep and lacked windows.
Scientists had little idea what was down there and little access to find out. In the mid-1950s, the deep seafloor was literally a black hole.
Much has already been written about Alvin, but a brief retelling of its story seems appropriate to celebrate the sub’s 50th birthday.
It inspired the development of new generations of deep-submergence technology and vehicles, as well as generations of future scientists, engineers, and explorers. It discovered unexpected deep-sea life thriving without sunlight, revolutionizing our understanding of where and how life could exist on Earth and other planetary bodies. It revealed seafloor terrain that scientists never imagined. It helped document the world’s most famous shipwreck. Over its first half century, it responded to national crises, recovered a lost hydrogen bomb and investigated the impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Owned by the Navy and operated by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Alvin was officially commissioned June 5, 1964, in a ceremony attended by hundreds at the WHOI dock. Kennedy committed the nation to the goal of “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth”-and five years before we did so-a small stubby white submersible was constructed with the goal of bringing people to the bottom of the ocean and returning them safely to the surface: Alvin. This year marks the 50th anniversary of two of America’s most iconic, cutting-edge vehicles: the Ford Mustang, and another vehicle that was hardly sleek or stylish and didn’t have a bold, jazzy name.
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