Frederick Otis Barton Jr. (June 5, 1899 – April 15, 1992) was an American

deep-sea diver Underwater diving, as a human activity, is the practice of descending below the water's surface to interact with the environment. It is also often referred to as diving, an ambiguous term with several possible meanings, depending on context ...

, inventor and actor.

Early life and career

Born in New York, the independently wealthy Barton designed the first

bathysphere The ''Bathysphere'' () was a unique spherical deep sea, deep-sea submersible which was unpowered and lowered into the ocean on a cable, and was used to conduct a series of dives off the coast of Bermuda from 1930 to 1934. The ''Bathysphere'' wa ...

and made a dive with

William Beebe Charles William Beebe ( ; July 29, 1877 – June 4, 1962) was an American natural history, naturalist, ornithologist, marine biologist, entomologist, explorer, and author. He is remembered for the numerous expeditions he conducted for the New Y ...

off

Bermuda Bermuda is a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean. The closest land outside the territory is in the American state of North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. Bermuda is an ...

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 The Benthoscope was a deep sea submersible designed by Otis Barton after the Second World War. He hired the Watson-Stillman Company, who had earlier constructed his and William Beebe's bathysphere, to produce the new design of deep diving vessel, ...

(from the Greek ''benthos'', meaning 'sea bottom', and ''scopein'', 'to view'), which was designed by Barton and

Maurice Nelles Maurice Nelles (October 19, 1906 - August 30, 1998) was an engineer, business executive and professor. Early life and education Nelles was born in Madison, South Dakota. Nelles earned a bachelor's degree in 1927 and a master's degree in 1928, bot ...

. 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 forests characterized by a closed and continuous tree Canopy (biology), canopy, moisture-dependent vegetation, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. Rainforests can be generally classified as tropi ...

s, and spent considerable time in places like

Gabon Gabon ( ; ), officially the Gabonese Republic (), is a country on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, on the equator, bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north, the Republic of the Congo to the east and south, and ...

. In 1978, Barton successfully tested a "jungle spaceship" (actually an

airship An airship, dirigible balloon or dirigible is a type of aerostat (lighter-than-air) aircraft that can navigate through the air flying powered aircraft, under its own power. Aerostats use buoyancy from a lifting gas that is less dense than the ...

) that was intended to film wildlife.

Taxon described by him

*See :Taxa named by Frederick Otis Barton Jr.

References

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

Early life and career

Later career

Taxon described by him

References

Further reading

External links