1 86 A DESCENT INTO PERPETUAL NIGHT 



save the steel skeleton sphere itself. All else had been re- 

 placed with more modern, more efficient apparatus. 



An entire month was consumed in assembling, refitting 

 and testing all the intricate machinery, from the great 

 seven-ton winch which was as perfect as when I first used 

 it on the Arcturus almost ten years ago, to the delicate 

 Friez temperature and humidity recorder. 



Most of the instruments in the bathysphere were in- 

 tended to increase ease and clarity of vision through the 

 quartz windows, but I was extremely anxious to utilize 

 the facilities of these deep-sea dives in every possible di- 

 rection, from the point of view of physics as well as 

 zoology. Two difficulties presented themselves, first, the 

 relatively small space at our disposal after the disposition 

 of our instruments and ourselves, and, second, the com- 

 paratively short time we would be able to spend at the 

 greatest depths. Dr. George L. Clarke found that the only 

 satisfactory spectrograph available was too large to go 

 in through the fourteen-inch door. Concerning the re- 

 cording of cosmic rays Dr. Millikan wrote: "The rate of 

 discharge is so exceedingly slow at great depths that we 

 shall not be able to get any readings at all in the time dur- 

 ing which you can stay down. I regret very much that 

 this is so, because I wish very much that we could make 

 use of this opportunity to get results of common interest." 



Throughout this month we shuttled back and forth be- 

 tween our three focal points — ^living quarters at the Ber- 

 muda Biological Station; the complete laboratory of the 



