Thread by @expeditionlog

Deepest dives & years:
🌊surface
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435m Beebe & Barton 1930
671m " 1932
923m " 1934
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1372m Barton 1949
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3167m Piccard & Piccard 1953
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4050m Houot & Willm 1954
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10916m Piccard & Walsh 1960

11 June 1930: 435 metres

William Beebe & Otis Barton start to set new depth records, diving off Bermuda in the "bathysphere" that Barton designed ()

22 September 1932: 671 metres

Beebe & Barton return to Bermuda and set a new depth record - while broadcasting live on the radio from the bathysphere to listeners on NBC across the US and BBC in the UK.

blogs.loc.gov/now-see-hear/2…

15 August 1934: 923 metres

Beebe & Barton set their final depth record in the bathysphere, later described vividly in Beebe's wonderful book "Half Mile Down".

…tunesneedle.wikischolars.columbia.edu/file/view/Half…

19 August 1949: 1372 metres

Barton sets a new depth record off California alone in his "Benthoscope" (an updated bathysphere-type craft, still dangled from the surface by a cable, but designed to observe the seabed, trundling over it on wheels).

September 1953: 3167 metres

Auguste Piccard & his son Jacques plunge to a new record depth in the Mediterranean off Naples, in the bathyscaphe Trieste.

Designed by Piccard senior, the bathyscaphe is not connected to the surface like a bathysphere.

(With his dive at age 68, Auguste Piccard became the first person set records for going both up and down: previously, in 1932, he ascended to altitude 16,936 metres in a balloon with a pressurised gondola that he also designed)

15 February 1954: 4050 metres

Georges Houot & Pierre Willm of the French Navy set a new depth record off Dakar, in the bathyscaphe FNRS-3 (which was also designed by Auguste Piccard).

waymarking.com/waymarks/WMTJF…

23 January 1960: 10916 metres

Jacques Piccard & Lt Don Walsh of the US Navy reach the deepest point in the oceans, the Challenger Deep of the Marianas Trench, in the bathyscaphe Trieste.

Don Walsh describes the Challenger Deep dive, and the build-up dives preparing for it, in his own words in this Scientific American article:
scientificamerican.com/article/diving…

Jacques Piccard went on to design the "mesoscaphe" Ben Franklin (aka Grumman/Piccard PX-15), which he & five others lived inside from 14 July to 14 August 1969, diving as deep as 549 metres & drifting more than 2300 kilometres from Florida to Nova Scotia.

tested.com/tech/596166-de…