EXPLORING THE FLOOR 33 



After the "Meteor" cruise the Dutch cruise with the 

 "WiUibrord SneUius" (1929-30) to the Sunda Archi- 

 pelago and adjacent waters marked an extended use of 

 the same technique, which in one case resulted in a core 

 nearly six feet long. An explosive core-sampler invented 

 by C. Piggot of the Carnegie Institute of Washington 

 and used in the middle and late thirties made possible a 

 penetration to somewhat greater depths, with a maxi- 

 mum in one core from the northwest Atlantic of 10 feet. 

 Although the increase in obtainable core length was 

 moderate, it proved to be most fruitful for deep-sea 

 stratigraphy. 



The idea of improving the coring technique so as to 

 penetrate further back into the records of the deep has 

 been one of the guiding motives of Swedish oceanog- 

 raphers. The second World War, which made investi- 

 gations impossible in the open sea around our coasts, 

 created an opportunity to concentrate on these prob- 

 lems. The new Oceanographic Institute in Goteborg, 

 inaugurated in 1939 as a gift to our Royal Society from 

 the late banker K. A. Wallenberg, facilitated construc- 

 tion. The chief obstacle to increasing the core length 

 was the friction between the wall of the coring tube and 

 the sediment column rising inside it. This friction not 

 only limited the length of the core obtained to a fraction 

 of the depth of penetration but distorted the stratifica- 

 tion in situ, so that the core was not truly representative 

 of the undisturbed layers. 



In order to counteract this friction Borje Kullenberg 



