Otis Barton

Frederick Otis Barton, Jr. (born June 5, 1899 in New York - † April 15, 1992 ) was an American deep-sea diver and inventor .

Deep sea research

Barton was born in New York. A grandfather's inheritance gave him financial independence, which enabled him to devote himself to his technical inventions. While studying engineering at Columbia University in 1926, he heard about Charles William Beebe's plans to develop a deep-sea diving device. Barton himself was a diver (since 1917), was interested in zoology and biology and also carried such ideas. The two got together after Beebe was ready to do so after initial reservations. In 1928 both made the first attempts with the bathysphere , a steel deep-sea diving sphere , which was essentially invented by Barton. Beebe had initially thought of a drum-shaped hollow body, but Barton, who is clearly more competent in this regard as an engineer, was able to convince him that a sphere would withstand the deep pressure better. In 1930 the bathysphere was used for the first time off the Bermuda Islands and ultimately reached a record depth of more than 400 meters. On August 15, 1934, they reached a new depth record there of 923 meters, which was only set by Barton himself during a dive in the Pacific in 1948 with a depth of around 1,370 meters .

Exploring the tropical rainforest

In addition to the deep sea, Barton also explored the tropical rainforest . In the 1950s he developed a cable car-like system to take pictures in the forest canopy. Still in 1978, he worked almost eighty years old, in the testing of "Jungle spaceship" ( jungle spaceship ) with, an airship lightweight, low in flight were possible with the above the trees filming.

Filmography, bibliography

The diving trips with Beebe off Bermudas were filmed and shown in cinemas in 1938 in the documentary "Titans of the Deep". In this 47-minute black and white film, Barton, Beebe and some of their crew can be seen; Barton himself also directed, was a cameraman (including in the diving ball) and appeared as a producer.

In literary terms, Barton has emerged as the author of the books The World Beneath the Sea (1953) and Adventure on Land and Under the Sea (1954).

Web links

• Otis Barton in the Internet Movie Database (English)