22. SUMMARY OF OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTRUMENTATION 



REQUIREMENTS 



James M. Snodgrass 



Scripps Institution of Oceanography 

 La JoUa, California 



Since the hour is late and since you have been most kind and 

 patient, this will not be a long summary. 



Before I get into other comments, I would like to say some- 

 thing about the talk by Dr. Richardson which you heard this 

 morning. Many of you have not had, I am sure, extensive ex- 

 perience in the ocean. The prograiD which he has undertaken, 

 which is installing a string of buoys from Cape Cod to Bermuda, 

 ranks as a first-class project and one that will be an outstanding 

 prototype for future research. This is a substantial accomplish- 

 ment. It is difficult to do justice to what has really been done. 

 Great credit is due to the insight which went into the program, 

 and I am sure that it will get us the kind of information we need. 



With regard to ocean sampling, as recently as about 1956, 

 by using our most intense techniques on a cubic mile of sea water, 

 we could sample one part in lO'^'* at best. With such a miserable 

 sampling, you might ask quite properly: "Do we really, after all, 

 know very much about it?" 



I would like to suggest a reference for you to peruse. It 

 has food for thought on the basic problems of instrumental de- 

 sign and the kind of things that we need to keep in mind. It is, 

 "The Crisis We Face; Automation and the Cold War. " The 

 authors are George Steele and Paul Kircher. It was published 

 by McGraw-Hill in I960. I strongly recommend the sections 

 on reliability and on long-range technical problems. This bood 

 is basically written for space problems, but it can be easily 

 translated into the field which we have been discussing. 



Next, I would like to point out that the ocean we have been 

 talking about is not, by and large, properly appreciated for 

 what it is. We often ignore its relationship to the atmosphere. 



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