44 PROTO-BATHYSPHERES 



to the surface of the water, and thus carried with it to 

 the bottom of the sea the whole of the air which it con- 

 tained. It stood upon three feet — hke a tripod — which 

 were in length something less than the height of a man, 

 so that the diver, when he was no longer able to contain 

 his breath, could put his head in the vessel and, having 

 filled his lungs again, return to his work." 



However backward in many ways the seventeenth cen- 

 tury may have been, there were a few active minds busy 

 with submarine ideas and out of them all several suits, bells 

 and boats emerge, worthy of mention. 



The "aquatic corselet" of which Father Schott has 

 given us a figure and description represents the first real 

 diving helmet of medieval Europe, and it seems actually 

 to have worked (Fig. ii). Its great size puts it almost in 

 the class of diving bells. It was composed of leather, in 

 appearance like a huge, inverted, four-sided pail. It had 

 tiny panes of glass, which, in the illustration, look like 

 mosaic cathedral windows. The prospective diver ducked 

 into this, fastened it by straps to his shoulders, stood up- 

 right, and, if we are to believe the illustration, walked 

 from shore out into deep water as if he were in the open 

 air. A system of additional weights gave this aquatic corse- 

 let the means of descending and ascending at will by rais- 

 ing or lowering these extra weights held at the end of a 

 small cord. The inventor designates only about twenty- 

 five pounds for this purpose, which would be hopeless 

 for submerging a leather bell with its contained air. Father 



