Beebe’s Bathysphere

This is from the introduction to Kraken, by Wendy Williams.

In the 1930s popular author and naturalist William Beebe cobbled together the world’s first real-life deep-sea expedition with the help of fellow explorer Otis Barton. The team’s exploration vehicle looked nothing like Jules Verne’s sleek Nautilus. Small and round and crudely engineered by modern standards, the vessel was in diameter less than the height of a man, with three-inch-thick observation portholes and a bolted-shut door that imprisoned the men inside. The steel globe leaked, and to circulate oxygen internally, the men waved palm-leaf hand fans. Without an engine, Beebe’s bathysphere dangled helplessly from the topside support ship like a ball of yarn suspended from knitting needles.

…

On one dive Beebe narrated his descent to an ardent North American and European radio audience. Listeners hung on every word, as avidly as they would decades later when American astronauts walked on the moon.

I’m sure when Beebe did this, everyone told him he was crazy. Everyone questioned the value of plumbing the depths of the ocean. There was probably not a lot of money for that sort of thing. But he did it anyway, “crudely” engineering his own success and exposing the wonders around us to the doubting world.

I wonder if there are recording of that radio broadcast.