THE IMPENETRABLE SEA 



progress made in a few decades with all kinds of devices 

 for illuminating the underwater world, and for photo- 

 graphing it in connection with such appliances. 



Underwater cameras have been steadily and rapidly 

 improved in the last decade. In France an underwater 

 camera that requires no housing has passed the proto- 

 type stage and is going into production. Underwater 

 television is developing its own techniques, and progress 

 is rapid in the perfection of devices of all kinds to meet 

 the needs of what is virtually a new science. 



Underwater television technicians have faced and 

 overcome problems which at one time seemed insur- 

 mountable. Making pictures under water, especially at 

 considerable depths, requires something more than ex- 

 pensive apparatus: it requires nerve, endurance, and 

 creative imagination to a degree not demanded in the 

 setting up of land surface studios. Pioneers in underwater 

 photography have dived to the limit of endurance to take 

 photographs with ordinary cameras: ordinary only in 

 comparison with motion-picture ones. Using diving-suits 

 and Aqualungs such divers have often had their own 

 ideas about underwater photography — ideas which have 

 contributed much to the latest developments in under- 

 water motion-picture equipment. Solitary cameras have 

 been lowered to a depth of 20,400 feet, and observers 

 using cameras have descended to 13,287 feet in what is 

 called "the dirigible of the sea" — the new bathyscaphe. 



One of the earliest uses of the television camera under 

 the waves was in the atoll of Bikini in 1947, where it was 

 successfully employed to register the effects of the atomic 

 explosion. Four years later, in 1951, the underwater 

 electronic eye justified itself triumphantly when it dis- 

 covered the British submarine Affray, after a flotilla of 

 ships had searched for her in vain. 



Yet another advance has been made in undersea 

 photographic equipment recently, in the perfection, by 

 Canadian technicians, of a television camera enclosed in 



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