1 78 THE BATHYSPHERE BROADCAST 



tion. Static, which is often prevalent in the vicinity of 

 Bermuda, had to be combated. 



Day after day we put to sea to be defeated by unex- 

 pected leaks, which could be repaired; or a defective 

 quartz window, which could be replaced by a safe steel 

 plate; or a dangerous swell and cross tide-rip, which we 

 could not ignore, unless we wished to gamble our lives 

 against rather bad odds. 



We, in our human conceit, set one Sunday after an- 

 other as the appointed time for the dive and broadcast, and 

 hundreds of thousands of human beings listened in, only 

 to be told of the breaking waves and hopeless conditions. 



Then on September twenty-second, with a sea still too 

 rough for comfort, after a test dive when everything 

 seemed perfect, in spite of the bad conditions, I agreed to 

 have a try. With only two hours' notice, messages went 

 out to New York and were relayed to scores of American 

 and foreign stations. Singers and entertainers of all kinds 

 were switched oflf, and the wires cleared for this new ex- 

 periment. 



As it turned out, the broadcast was divided into two 

 thirty minute periods. The first half hour, from 1:30 to 

 2:00 P.M., described the scene of tense activity on deck pre- 

 paring and sealing the bathysphere with its human cargo. 

 Two sound microphones, mounted near the bathysphere 

 and the big winch, caught the clanging of the sledge ham- 

 mers tightening the nuts of the door, and the grinding of 

 the winch as it released more and more cable to lower the 



