This has nothing to do with anything but thought I'd share it.
When I was about 5, to raise money for further explorations, the Trieste toured the country after it had successfully reached the depths of the Mariana Trench. Because I loved the sea and wanted to be an oceanographer (and movie star, of course), my mother took me to see the Trieste at whatever school it was appearing here in Phoenix. I actually remember it and the fact that you could actually go in it (which I had to do). The clipping about the Trieste is still in the back of a copy of "The Sea Around Us" by Rachel Carson. My mother gave the book to all three of us kids (at the time only three). My siblings never touched the book, but I learned about ecology, the Titanic, icebergs, waves, Mont St. Michel, Barnum and Bailey's whale (a "Matchmaker" and "Hello Dolly" reference) and so much more. The book still sits on my shelf. I, however, did not get the heebee jeebees for Beebe's bathsphere (a "Follies" reference)>
Auguste Piccard, inventor of the first bathyscaphe, composed the name bathyscaphe using the Greek words bathys ("deep") and skaphos ("ship").
Internal arrangement of Trieste. Click to enlarge.
The first bathyscape was dubbed FNRS-2, named after the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique, and built in Belgium between 1946-48 by Piccard. Propulsion was provided by battery-driven electric motors.
Piccard's second bathyscaphe was Trieste, which was purchased by the U.S. Navy in 1957. It had two water ballast tanks and eleven bouyancy tanks holding 120,000 litres of petrol [1]. In 1960 Trieste, carrying Piccard's son Jacques Piccard and Lt. Don Walsh, reached the deepest point on the earth's surface, the Challenger Deep, in the Mariana Trench. As of 2006 the two remain the only people to reach this extreme depth. The onboard systems indicated a depth of 37,800 ft (11,521 m) but this was later corrected to 35,813 ft (10,916 m) by taking into account variations arising from salinity and temperature. Later and more accurate measurements made in 1995 have found the Challenger Deep to be shallower at 35,798 ft (10,911 m).
