William Beebe

William Beebe (1877-1962) was a naturalist, ocean ographer, ornithologist, and an executive of the New York Zoological Society. With Otis Barton, he was the first to use the bathysphere, a deep-sea diving device, and set a dive record in 1934 that was not broken until 1949. Beebe wrote over 800 articles and 24 books on natural history.

Beebe was the son of Charles Beebe, a paper company executive, and Henrietta Marie Younglove. He was born in Brooklyn, New York on July 29, 1877. When Beebe was a small child, his family moved to East Orange, New Jersey, where he experienced a happy childhood and was able to expand his innate interest in the outdoors. He was deeply interested in birds, and his first publication was a letter to the editor of Harper's Young People in 1895. His parents, particularly his mother, encouraged his interest in natural history.

New York Zoological Society

Beebe took extra science classes at East Orange High School and entered Columbia University as a special student in zoology in 1896. He was not a degree candidate, although later in life he would claim that he earned a B.S. Beebe was deeply influenced by Henry Fairfield Osborn, a professor at Columbia. In 1899, when the New York Zoological Society began looking for an assistant curator of birds, Osborn suggested that they appoint Beebe. Osborn was vice-president of the Society, and three years later, Beebe was given the post. According to David Goddard in Saving Wildlife: A Century of Conservation, this began "an epochal association for the New York Zoological Society, which was to find in William Beebe a defining genius, and an epochal tie for William Beebe, who was to find in the Society a lifelong champion and home." On August 2, 1902, Beebe married Mary Blair Rice. They did not have children, and were divorced in 1913.

Although Beebe seemed perfectly suited to his new job, he was not happy with it. He was interested in field research, and the job was a largely indoor one, dealing with caged birds. In 1900 he began taking field trips throughout the eastern United States and Canada. Osborn supported these trips, but William Temple Hornaday, the zoo director, objected to them because Beebe was absent so much. They found a replacement, Lee Crandall, who could do Beebe's work while he was gone, and he was allowed to continue his travels. His first book, which he wrote with his wife, was titled Two Bird Lovers in Mexico and was published in 1905. His first scientific work was The Bird, Its Form and Function, published in 1906. By 1955, Beebe had written 22 more books, some for the general public, others aimed at scientists. Many were so popular that they were translated into several languages. Goddard noted, "His elegant prose is everywhere infused with an empathy for animals and a cosmic sense of the interconnectedness of life. … With a naked curiosity and never-failing reverence he probed the bodies and pondered the minds and souls of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates, looking for connections."

In 1909, Anthony R. Kuser, a wealthy New Jersey businessman, commissioned Beebe to write a monograph on the pheasants of the world. Beebe spent several years doing research on pheasants, mainly in Southeast Asia. World War I caused publication of the work to be delayed. It was finally published in four volumes between 1918 and 1922, According to Keir B. Sterling in the Dictionary of American Biography, one authority of the time described A Monograph of the Pheasants as "perhaps the greatest ornithological monograph of the present century."

Began Tropical Research

Beebe traveled to Trinidad, Venezuela, Brazil and British Guiana. In 1916, he established the New York Zoological Society's Department of Tropical Research in Bartica, British Guiana. He was director of the department, as well as honorary curator of birds at the New York Zoo. The tropical research program, which was later moved to Kartabo, operated until 1922.

In 1917 and 1918, while World War I raged, Beebe enlisted in the French Aviation Service. His service was ended by a wrist injury sustained in a fall, so he went back to British Guiana to collect small mammals for the New York Zoo. Later, he visited the Galapagos Islands. On this trip, he went helmet diving to study marine species in their own habitat. In 1927 he studied fish and coral near Haiti. In September of that year, he married Elswyth Thane Ricker, a writer. They did not have children.

In 1928, Beebe founded a tropical research station in Nonsuch, Bermuda, in buildings that had previously been used as quarantine huts for yellow fever patients. At Nonsuch, he set out on his tugboat, collecting sea creatures with nets, or descending below the surface with a copper diving helmet, breathing air through an ordinary hose. However, these expeditions were unsatisfying, because deep-sea creatures are often mutilated by changes in pressure when they are brought up from the depths, and he wanted to watch them living their lives in their own habitat. The problem with doing this is that as one descends deeper into the ocean, the pressure of the water becomes too great for a human being to withstand. For example, at only a half a mile down, the ocean pressure is over half a ton for every square inch of a person's body. Because of this, the deepest anyone had ever gone in the ocean at that time was 525 feet.

Beebe had previously discussed this problem with Theodore Roosevelt, who suggested diving while inside the protection of a rigid metal sphere. In 1929, American inventor Otis Barton had designed and created a diving device that was a round metal sphere with two inset portholes. This device, which Beebe eventually called a "bathysphere," weighed 5,000 pounds, was four feet nine inches in diameter, and had walls that were an inch and a half thick. Inside, there was just enough room for two men to crouch tightly together. The two portholes were made of three-inch-thick fused quartz, a clear mineral that is stronger than glass. The bathysphere had an air supply, electric lights, and a telephone line for communications with the surface.

Descended into Ocean Depths

Beebe teamed up with Barton to make over 30 descents into the ocean. Their first dive was to 800 feet, a record. On June 11, 1930, they dropped to 1,426 feet. During the dive, they were connected to the surface by a cable and a telephone hookup, and millions of listeners eagerly awaited the news from a place so deep that no human being had ever been there before. As they dropped, Beebe took a position at the window, and Barton watched over the instruments and put on the earphones that allowed them to communicate with people on the surface. Beebe commented on each depth; for example, he noted at 383 feet, "We are passing the deepest submarine record," and at 600 feet, "Only dead men have sunk below this." Beebe was thrilled to write at a depth of a quarter of a mile, in the pitch-black ocean, "A luminous fish is outside the window." He later wrote, "I knew that I should never again look upon the stars without remembering their active, living counterparts swimming about in that terrific pressure." He frequently compared the exploration of the ocean deeps to that of space, and never lost his sense of wonder about being involved in such exploration.

In 1934 Beebe and Barton descended to a record depth of 3,028 feet in 1934; this record was not beaten until 1949. This dive generated a great deal of interest and publicity, but Beebe was more interested in its scientific value. Using the bathysphere, he discovered and described species of sea life that were previously unknown. Beebe also studied changes in water color resulting from the loss of surface light at greater depths. He was fascinated with the use of such technology to allow humans to penetrate places that were unreachable without it. According to Jean Ann Pollard, Beebe wrote in 1934 that one day, "a human face will peer out through a tiny window and signals will be passed back to companions, or to breathlessly waiting hosts on earth, with such sentences as: 'We are above the level of Everest,' 'Can now see the whole Atlantic coastline,' 'Clouds blot out the earth."'

However, Beebe ultimately discovered that he could learn more by wearing a diving helmet and exploring shallower water, where he would observe sea creatures in great detail. He continued his oceanographic research in Baja California and along the Pacific Coast of Central America. He was the first well-known and well-trained scientist to use helmet-diving as a part of his field research.

In 1942 the New York Zoological Society reestablished its tropical research unit in Venezuela. In 1948, Beebe bought 228 acres of land in Simla, in the Arima Valley of Trinidad, and founded a research station there. Although he officially retired from his post as director of tropical research in 1952, he worked at Simla for part of each year until his death on June 4, 1962. The property was deeded to the New York Zoological Society.

Beebe's Legacy

Beebe was given honorary Sc.D. degrees from Colgate and Tufts. He discovered hundreds of animals, many of which were named for him, and one bird, but much of his scientific work has since become obsolete. However, Goddard noted, he was the world's first "neotropical ecologist." According to Sterling, Beebe was a demanding boss to subordinates, but balanced his high standards with a good sense of humor. His major contributions were "the breadth and detail of his field observations, his emphasis upon the interrelationships of living forms, his abiding concern with conservation, and the felicity with which he expressed himself in his writings." Another great gift was his ability to make natural history accessible and interesting to the general public. Perhaps because of this, Sterling noted, he was not recognized as a major figure in science despite his wide-ranging knowledge and publications. Sterling wrote, "Doubtless many [other scientists] were reluctant to accord serious standing to a successful populizer." Sterling also noted that Theodore Roosevelt wrote of Beebe's book Jungle Peace, "It will stand on the shelves of cultivated people, of people whose taste in reading is both wide and good, as long as both men and women appreciate charm of form in the writing of men."

Beebe summed up the value of nature and the necessity for conservation in The Bird (1906), when he wrote, "The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last individual of a race of living beings breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again."

Books

Biographical Dictionary of American and Canadian Naturalists and Environmentalists, edited by Keir Sterling, Richard P. Hurmond, George A. Cevasco, and Lorne P. Hammond, Greenwood Press, 1997.

Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 7, 1961-1965, edited by John A. Garrity, Charles Scribners Sons, 1981.

National Cyclopedia of American Biography, James T. White and Co., 1927.

Saving Wildlife: A Century of Conservation, edited by Donald Goddard, Wildlife Conservation Society and Harry N. Abrams, 1995.

Periodicals

Sea Frontiers, August, 1994. □

Beebe, Charles William (1887-1962)

American explorer

Charles William Beebe (1877–1962), explorer, writer, ornithologist, and deep-sea pioneer, was born in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in East Orange, New Jersey. He is remembered today primarily for his record-breaking 1934 descent off the coast of Bermuda with American engineer Otis Barton. Barton and Beebe dove in a diving machine of their own invention, the bathysphere, to a depth of 3,028 feet (923 m).

Beebe's parents were fascinated by natural history, and so in childhood he was a frequent visitor to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. As a teenager, Beebe taught himself taxidermy and became friends with the president of the museum, Henry Osborn. Osborn helped him gain admittance to Columbia University in 1896. In 1899, Beebe left college (without receiving a degree) to work as an assistant curator of ornithology (the study of birds) at the zoo then being opened by the New York Zoological Society. He was soon promoted to full curator.

In 1902, Beebe married Mary Rice, whom he was to divorce in 1913. The Beebes made ornithological expeditions to Mexico, Trinidad, and Venezuela and published popular accounts of their experiences. In 1909–1911 they traveled to the Far East on a 17-month expedition sponsored by the New York Zoological Society having the sole purpose of studying pheasants. After years of further labor Beebe published the results of this expedition in a magisterial four-volume work entitled A Monograph of the Pheasants, (1918), still in print. While preparing his monograph Beebe also made expeditions to Asia , Central and South America , the Galapagos Islands, and other regions. In 1916 he established a research station on the coast of British Guiana (today Guyana) on behalf of the New York Zoological Society, and in 1919 was made director of the Society's Department of Tropical Research.

In the mid 1920s Beebe's main interest turned from birds to deep-sea life, which he studied by trawling for specimens and by diving in pressure suits. However, the suits were limited in depth range and the creatures brought to the surface by Beebe's nets were invariably dead. Wishing to observe undamaged specimens alive in their natural habitat, Beebe publicized his need for a practical deep-sea vessel design.

In 1928, Beebe was approached by Otis Barton with his design for the bathysphere (derived from the Greek word for deep, báthys ), a steel ball filled with breathable air that would be lowered on a cable from a barge. The bathysphere was equipped with two quartz portholes 8 inches (0.2 m) wide and with an umbilical hose providing telephone and power. Oxygen was supplied from on-board tanks and carbon dioxide was removed from the air by trays of soda lime. The bathy-sphere was a tiny craft—only four feet, nine inches (1.5 m) across (outside diameter), with walls several inches thick. Its interior would have been a tight squeeze for a single person, but Barton and Beebe occupied it along with the oxygen tanks, soda lime trays, and other gear.

Barton and Beebe made a number of bathysphere descents starting in 1930. The pre-bathysphere dive record was 525 feet (160 m); on August 15, 1934, Barton and Beebe dove to 3,028 feet (923 m)—over half a mile. Beebe described the descent in a book published later that year, Half Mile Down. Barton and Beebe's bathyspheric dives were the first diving expeditions to penetrate to depths beyond the effective reach of sunlight; below 2,000 feet (610 m), they observed, the ocean was lightless even with a brilliant tropical sun shining on calm seas above. The dives were widely popularized by the National Geographic magazine, in Beebe's own colorful writings, and for one dive in 1932 by live radio broadcast in the United States and United Kingdom. Even before their record dive in 1934, Barton and Beebe were international celebrities.

Despite its successes, the bathysphere was inherently dangerous. Surface waves could easily subject the suspension cable to breaking strain. Later generations of deep-sea vessels have therefore been built as self-propelled submarines.

Barton and Beebe's 1934 diving record remained unbroken until 1949, when Barton descended to 4,500 feet (1,370 m) in another vessel of his own design, the Benthoscope. Beebe retired from the directorship of the New York Zoological Society's Department of Tropical Research in 1952 and died of natural causes in Bermuda in 1962.

The original bathysphere resides in the New York Aquarium in New York City.

See also Deep sea exploration; History of exploration III (Modern era); Oceanography

Bathysphere

A bathysphere refers to a vehicle that is lowered into the ocean at the end of a cable. Because it is tethered to a cable, a bathysphere is not fully independent. Finally, a bathysphere is designed to transport one or several humans into the ocean, in contrast to other unmanned tethered vehicles.

In 1716, the English astronomer Edmund Halley (1656–1742), whose interests in the universe included Earth, invented a wooden diving bell which was open at the bottom. The significance of Halley’s bell was the system developed with it to provide its occupants with air. The trapped air in the bell was re-supplied by sending down weighted barrels of fresh air. Divers could also venture from the bell with the aid of leather helmets and leather air hoses.

A bathysphere also enables people to get to depths that would otherwise be impossible because of the increasing water pressure with depth. While some sea creatures have adapted to this environment, an unprotected human can only dive to about 330 ft (100 m) even with an air supply. The diving suits, bells, and submarines invented in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were not constructed well enough to protect divers very far below the surface.

The collaboration in the late 1920s of two scientists, William Beebe (1877–1962), a naturalist from Columbia University in New York, and Otis Barton (1899–1992), an engineer at Harvard University in Boston, led to the invention of the bathysphere.

This original sphere was nearly 5 ft (1.5 m) in diameter, had steel walls and weighed 5,400 lb (2,451 kg). It had a circular manhole at the top and three windows made of thick fused quartz. Air was released from two tanks and chemicals were used to absorb moisture and carbon dioxide. It was equipped with a telephone and searchlight. The sphere was tethered to the surface vessel by a steel cable.

After two unmanned test dives, Beebe and Barton made the first manned descent on June 6, 1930, to a world-record depth of 800 ft (244 m). Continued dives led to a record of 3,028 ft (923 m) in the Atlantic Ocean off Bermuda.

Then as now, the primary purpose of the bathysphere has been to explore rather than to set records. The explorations led to discovery of deep-sea plant and animal species and observation of already known species. It also gave scientists new knowledge of submarine topography, geology, and geomorphology.

After some improvements to his diving vessel, Barton set a final diving record of 4,501 ft (1,372 m) in the Pacific Ocean off of Southern California in 1949. But by this time efforts led by Swiss physicist Auguste Piccard (1884–1962) were being made to develop the successor to the bathysphere, the self-propelled bathyscaphe.

Bathysphere were limited to vertical travel. It was constantly dependent on its umbilical connection to its mothership. Besides visual observation, other exploration activities, such as specimen collection, were difficult with the sphere. Increased water pressures and potential problems with the support line, including the shear weight of the steel cable, made the deeper dives ever more risky.

However, bathyspheres are now more capable of a roaming movement underwater. The next generation bathyspheres, which are under development at institutions such as the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, will be tethered to the surface ship by only a thin fiber, which will enable even greater mobility. This generation of bathysphere is intended for deployment in 2009.

Bathysphere

Throughout human history, the sea has yielded an abundance of resources for man's existence and provided efficient routes for exploration and transportation. In return, it has exacted a toll in terms of human life and property. The fear and respect that it earned from those who ventured out upon its surface was itself a deterrent to learning more about its mysteries. The physical restrictions of penetrating the sea made sub-surface exploration nearly impossible.

The most immediate restriction was air supply. Only the most disciplined divers could stay under for more than a few minutes. As scientists began to recognize the sea as a realm to be explored, this was their first hurdle.

In 1716, the English astronomer, Edmund Halley, whose interests in the universe included the earth , invented a wooden diving bell which was open at the bottom. The significance of Halley's bell was the system developed with it to provide its occupants air. The trapped air in the bell was resupplied by sending down weighted barrels of fresh air. Divers could also venture from the bell with the aid of leather helmets and leather air hoses.

The next major restriction to be surmounted was the tremendous water pressure which increases with depth. While some sea creatures have adapted to this environment, an unprotected human can only dive to about 330 ft (100 m) even with an air supply. The diving suits, bells, and submarines invented in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were not constructed well enough to protect divers very far below the surface.

The collaboration in the late 1920s of two scientists, William Beebe, a naturalist from Columbia University in New York, and Otis Barton, an engineer at Harvard University in Boston, led to the invention of the bathysphere, the first ever deep sea exploration vessel.

The sphere was nearly 5 ft (1.5 m) in diameter, had steel walls and weighed 5,400 lb (2,451 kg). It had a circular manhole at the top and three windows made of thick fused quartz. Air was released from two tanks and chemicals were used to absorb moisture and carbon dioxide . It was equipped with a telephone and searchlight. The sphere was tethered to the surface vessel by a steel cable.

After two unmanned test dives, Beebe and Barton made the first manned descent on June 6, 1930, to a world-record depth of 800 ft (244 m). Continued dives led to a record of 3,028 ft (923 m) in the Atlantic Ocean off Bermuda.

The primary purpose of the bathysphere was to explore rather than to set records. The explorations led to discovery of deep sea plant and animal species and observation of already known species. It also gave scientists new knowledge of submarine topography, geology , and geomorphology.

After some improvements to his diving vessel, Barton set a final diving record of 4,501 ft (1,372 m) in the Pacific Ocean off of Southern California in 1949. But by this time efforts led by Swiss physicist Auguste Piccard were being made to develop the successor to the bathysphere, the self-propelled bathyscaphe.

The bathysphere was limited to vertical travel. It was constantly dependent on its umbilical connection to its mothership. Besides visual observation, other exploration activities, such as specimen collection, were difficult with the sphere. Increased water pressures and potential problems with the support line, including the shear weight of the steel cable, made the deeper dives ever more risky.

The development of the bathyscaphe in the early 1950s would allow scientists to overcome the third, and perhaps final, obstacle to deep sea exploration, the need for freedom and independence for meaningful research.

bath·y·sphere / ˈba[unvoicedth]əˌsfir/ • n. a manned spherical chamber for deep-sea observation, lowered by cable from a ship.