1960's Science and Technology | "Man's Deepest Dive"

Magazine article

By: Jacques Piccard

Date: August 1960

Source: Piccard, Jacques. "Man's Deepest Dive." National Geographic 118, August 1960, 224–239.

About the Author: Jacques Piccard (1922–) was born in Brussels, Belgium, and graduated from the Ecole Nouvelle de Suisse Romande in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1943. He helped his father, Auguste Piccard, design the bathyscaphe Trieste and made his first dive in 1953. Other dives followed, and in 1960 he and U.S. Navy Lieutenant Donald Walsh descended nearly 37,000 feet, deeper than any human had gone to that date.

Introduction

Like space, the depths of the ocean emerged as a new frontier during the 1960s. As astronauts grappled their way toward the moon, specially designed submarines plumbed the ocean to unprecedented depths. During the decade, the U.S. Navy tested how well Americans lived and...