Otis Barton

Frederick Otis Barton Jr. (June 5, 1899 – April 15, 1992) was an American deep-sea diver, inventor and actor.

Otis Barton
Born
Frederick Otis Barton Jr.

(1899-06-05)June 5, 1899
New York, U.S.
DiedApril 15, 1992(1992-04-15) (aged 92)
Alma materHarvard College[1]
OccupationDeep-sea diver, inventor, actor

Early life and career

Born in New York, the independently wealthy Barton designed the first bathysphere and made a dive with William Beebe off Bermuda in June 1930. They set the first record for deep-sea diving by descending 600 ft (180 m). In 1934, they set another record at 3,028 ft (923 m). Barton acted in the 1938 Hollywood movie, Titans of the Deep.

Later career

In 1949, Barton set a new world record with a 4,500 foot (1,372 m) dive in the Pacific Ocean, using his benthoscope (from the Greek benthos, meaning 'sea bottom', and scopein, 'to view'), which was designed by Barton and Maurice Nelles.[2][3]

Barton wrote the book The World Beneath the Sea, published in 1953. Like Beebe, Barton was also interested in exploring tropical rain forests, and spent considerable time in places like Gabon. In 1978, Barton successfully tested a "jungle spaceship" (actually an airship) that was intended to film wildlife.[4]

gollark: A sterile lizard, probably.
gollark: Although in our English lessons I generally ended up having time to reread the book a fwe times while we were doing it. So boring.
gollark: I never actually did do that. It probably would have saved time, in retrospect.
gollark: Unrelatedly, writing long things is hard and school has prepared me terribly for this.
gollark: Sounds fun *and* totally safe!

References
  1. http://www.clarabush.com/2016/02/24/bathysphere-pioneers-deep/
  2. "Deep Dip". Time. 1949-08-29. Retrieved 2011-12-27.
  3. "Harvard University Obituary and Death Notice Collection - 104". 2011-01-18. Retrieved 2011-12-27.
  4. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2007-01-27. Retrieved 2006-06-14.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)

Further reading
  • Matsen, Bradford. Descent - The Heroic Discovery of the Abyss, Pantheon Books, 2005. ISBN 0375422587
  • Matsen, Bradford. The Incredible Record-Setting Deep-Sea Dive of the Bathysphere. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers, 2003. ISBN 0766021882
  • Otis Barton, "Adventure on land and under the sea", Longmans, London, 1954.
  • Biography of Otis Barton on the website of the MIT School of Engineering
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.