Zoo History: Beebe, Barton, and the Bathysphere

"Don't die without having borrowed, stolen, purchased, or made a helmet of sorts, to glimpse for yourself this new world.  Books, aquaria and glass-bottomed boats are, to such as experience, only what a timetable is to an actual tour."

- William Beebe, Beneath Tropical Seas

It could be said that William Beebe, in some ways, had trouble focusing. 

Beebe was hired as the assistant curator of birds at the brand-new New York Zoological Park (WCS Bronx Zoo) in 1899; before the year was out, he'd been promoted to curator.  His meteoric rise was fueled by this imagination, hard work, and intuitive nature.  Still, the bird curator was a restless fellow, and even the bustle of the day to day management of the enormous zoo seemed not enough to fill his mind.  To the exasperation of his Director, the admittedly-easily-exasperated William T. Hornaday, Beebe began to spend more and more time afield.  One year might have seen him trekking the globe as he penned his four-volume Monograph of the Pheasants, describing all living species.  Another might find him setting up a field station for research in the tropics.

Eventually, though, Beebe developed a singular fascination with the last place you'd expect a bird-man to find himself - the ocean depths.

A burgeoning interest in marine biology, perhaps inevitable in a man who spent so much time in ships crossing the globe, eventually led Beebe to an interest in what lay beneath the surface.  In 1928 and 1929, Beebe partnered with American engineer Otis Barton to develop what they called the bathysphere.  This device - essentially a claustrophobic metal ball, about a meter in diameter with a tiny viewing window - would allow humans for the first time to travel deep into the ocean; previous depths were limited to what a human wearing an armored diving suit could stand.  On May 27, 1930, Beebe and Barton climbed inside for their maiden voyage to the depth.

For their first dive, they took it to the modest depth of 45 feet, a simple trial run.  The second time, they sent it down - unmanned - to test the cables that connected it to the surface.  For their next manned dive, they went to a depth of over 800 feet below the surface - a new record.

Over the next several years, Beebe and Barton set several world records for deepest dives recorded (as well as a record for the deepest dive by a woman, Beebe's assistant Gloria Hollister).  These dives greatly expanded our knowledge of marine life and oceanic geography.   Their deepest dive, over 3000 feet, was broken by Barton himself when he developed his newer model, the benthoscope.  The bathysphere provided new insights into how the world's largest ecosystem functions, captured the public imagination, and paved the way for future explorers and marine biologists, such as Jacques Cousteau.  

Today, the bathysphere stands outside the entrance of the New York Aquarium.