THE BIRTH OF THE BATHYSPHERE 93 



a searchlight out into the water, far below the surface. 

 The third window aperture was filled with a steel plug. All 

 the windows had to be scrapped before Dive 30. 



Opposite the windows was the entrance, politely termed 

 the "door." This round, four-hundred-pound lid had to 

 be lifted on and off by a block and tackle, and fitted snugly 

 over ten large bolts around the man-hole — the latter just 

 big enough to permit the passage of a slender human 

 body. Several years later, when the sphere was on exhibi- 

 tion at the American Museum of Natural History, a lady 

 of very ample proportions walked slowly all around the 

 apparatus and was looking in through the fourteen-inch 

 door when she asked the attendant, "Is that the thing in 

 which they went down in the ocean?" "That's it, ma'am." 

 "Well — where in the world is the door?" Any intending 

 diver in the sphere, in addition to having sufficient inter- 

 est to risk possible dangers, must also be provided with a 

 physique whose greatest diameter is less than fourteen 

 inches! 



The sphere was to be lowered by a single, non-twisting 

 cable of steel, seven-eighths of an inch in diameter, with 

 a breaking strain of twenty-nine tons, or almost a dozen 

 spheres like this. It was formed of a steel core and about 

 a hundred strands, the alternate ones laid in opposite direc- 

 tions to correct the propensity to spin when in the water. 

 The thirty-five hundred feet of its length weighed about 

 two tons when submerged. The actual attachment of the 

 cable to the swivel at the top of the globe was made by 



