Frederick Otis Barton Jr. (June 5, 1899 – April 15, 1992) was an American
deep-sea diver, inventor and actor.
Early life and career
Born in New York, the independently wealthy Barton designed the first
bathysphere and made a dive with
William Beebe
Charles William Beebe ( ; July 29, 1877 – June 4, 1962) was an American naturalist, ornithologist, marine biologist, entomologist, explorer, and author. He is remembered for the numerous expeditions he conducted for the New York Zoological ...
off
Bermuda
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in June 1930. They set the first record for deep-sea diving by descending . In 1934, they set another record at . Barton acted in the 1938 Hollywood movie, ''
Titans of the Deep''.
Later career
In 1949, Barton set a new world record with a 4,500 foot (1,372 m) dive in the Pacific Ocean, using his
benthoscope (from the Greek ''benthos'', meaning 'sea bottom', and ''scopein'', 'to view'), which was designed by Barton and
Maurice Nelles.
Barton wrote the book ''The World Beneath the Sea'', published in 1953. Like Beebe, Barton was also interested in exploring tropical
rain forest
Rainforests are characterized by a closed and continuous tree canopy, moisture-dependent vegetation, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. Rainforest can be classified as tropical rainforest or temperate rainforest ...
s, and spent considerable time in places like
Gabon
Gabon (; ; snq, Ngabu), officially the Gabonese Republic (french: République gabonaise), is a country on the west coast of Central Africa. Located on the equator, it is bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the nort ...
. In 1978, Barton successfully tested a "jungle spaceship" (actually an
airship
An airship or dirigible balloon is a type of aerostat or lighter-than-air aircraft that can navigate through the air under its own power. Aerostats gain their lift from a lifting gas that is less dense than the surrounding air.
In early ...
) that was intended to film wildlife.
References
Further reading
* Matsen, Bradford. ''Descent - The Heroic Discovery of the Abyss'', Pantheon Books, 2005.
* Matsen, Bradford. ''The Incredible Record-Setting Deep-Sea Dive of the Bathysphere''. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers, 2003.
* Otis Barton, "Adventure on land and under the sea", Longmans, London, 1954.
Biography of Otis Barton on the website of the MIT School of Engineering
External links
"Three Hundred Fathoms Beneath The Sea", October 1930, Popular Mechanics*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Barton, Otis
1899 births
1992 deaths
American male film actors
American underwater divers
20th-century American male actors
Harvard College alumni
20th-century American inventors