Milestone-Proposal:ALVIN: Deep-Sea Research Submersible, 1964-1965: Difference between revisions

From IEEE Milestones Wiki
No edit summary
No edit summary
Line 13: Line 13:
|plaque citation=Alvin has permitted a crew of three to explore the seafloor as deep as 6500m. Launched in 1964, Alvin relocated a lost H bomb off Spain in 1966. Hyperbaric microbiology was stimulated by observation of inhibition of bacterial decomposition of a deeply deployed crew lunch in 1969. Hydrothermal vents were discovered in 1976 leading to more than 5000 dives through 2019 to study the seafloor.
|plaque citation=Alvin has permitted a crew of three to explore the seafloor as deep as 6500m. Launched in 1964, Alvin relocated a lost H bomb off Spain in 1966. Hyperbaric microbiology was stimulated by observation of inhibition of bacterial decomposition of a deeply deployed crew lunch in 1969. Hydrothermal vents were discovered in 1976 leading to more than 5000 dives through 2019 to study the seafloor.
|a2b=Providence Section
|a2b=Providence Section
|IEEE units paying={{IEEE Organizational Unit Paying
|Unit=Providence Section
|Senior officer name=Jason Gaudette
|Senior officer email=jason.e.gaudette@ieee.org
}}
|IEEE units arranging={{IEEE Organizational Unit Arranging
|Unit=Providence Section
|Senior officer name=Jason Gaudette
|Senior officer email=jason.e.gaudette@ieee.org
}}
|IEEE sections monitoring={{IEEE Section Monitoring
|Section=Providence Section
|Section chair name=Jason Gaudette
|Section chair email=jason.e.gaudette@ieee.org
}}
|Milestone proposers={{Milestone proposer
|Proposer name=Albert J. Williams 3rd
|Proposer email=awilliams@whoi.edu
}}
|a2a=Street address(es) and GPS coordinates of the intended milestone plaque site(s):  86 Water St., Woods Hole, MA 02543; 41-31.5N, 70-40.3W
|a7=Smith Laboratory of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where Alvin was designed, taken to sea and deployed. It is operated by WHOI but owned by US Navy. The proposed mounting site is in sight of the WHOI Guards.
|a8=Yes but the office where most of the early designers had desks is upstairs from a coffee shop and not suitable for a plaque.
|mounting details=The mounting will be where a former fire call box was mounted outside on a brick wall at eye level.  It is near the wooden welcome sign to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution with a map and other information.
|a9=The plaque can be approached freely and touched but the night watchman and weekend guards can see and protect the plaque as they can do for the Smith Building plaque on the opposite wall that has stood for 50 years.
|a10=Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
|a4=Alvin was the first mobile deep diving research vehicle.  The bathyscaph Trieste was earlier, 1960, (and deeper) but was practically more of an elevator.  It was only when scientists discovered things not seen from cores and trawls that the science of seafloor discovery began and even then it was slow to start.  But the discovery of hyperbaric microbiology lead to a new field and, though accidental, was an Alvin accident.  Hydrothermal vents were the biggest discovery attributed to Alvin and led to a great deal of biological and geological scientific study which is ongoing more than 40 years later.  Technical developments were required by observational needs such as high resolution color digital cameras (1976), trim and ballast tanks, and manipulators, subsequently copied on other submersibles.  One of the developments leading to more general underwater navigation was the acoustic ALNAV array of transponders that permitted a surface ship to know Alvin's location.  Lighting and pressure resisting Plexiglas windows were needed for observers to see and photograph what was on the seafloor.  Samplers used with manipulators allowed sample collection into thermally insulated and even pressure sealed containers for recovery to the surface for cold, hyperbaric studies of the unusual life forms found at hydrothermal vents.
|a6=Initially, few scientists felt it necessary for anyone to go to the seafloor to see what was there, so reluctance at the start meant there had to be push from a few scientists, Allyn Vine for one, rather than pull by biologists or geologists.  But when discoveries began to be made, the scientists' attitude changed.  Eyeballs inside Alvin for seafloor observations remained unchallenged until Remote Operated Vehicles and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles came along in 1976 and later.
|a5=Alvin has an operational capability that exceeds other, contemporary submersibles, with close coupling between the engineers and scientists to maximize the discoveries possible.  The discovery of living communities of animals at deep, dark, cold hydrothermal vents followed by the discovery of very hot hydrothermal smokers with their own communities revealed a life system powered by chemical systems rather than photosynthesis.  This last realization, based upon Alvin observations, has led to a belief among many that life on earth may have started at hydrothermal vents and perhaps may have done so on other planets or moons of the solar system.  Availability of Alvin to scientists from other research institutions through UNOLS (University and National Oceanographic Laboratory Systems) scheduling has permitted observational and experimental work to be done by the best in the world.  Maturity of the operations of Alvin means that the number of dive days per year exceeds other deep diving research submersibles.
|references=1) "Six minutes after one o'clock on the afternoon of January 23, 1960, the refurbished Trieste [August Piccard's Bathyscaph] descended to the deepest known spot on earth, a mammoth gash in the floor of the Pacific about 200 miles southwest of Guam.  Piccard and U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh dropped 35,800 feet, nearly seven miles, to the floor of the Mariana Trench", p15, Water baby: the story of Alvin, Victoria A. Kaharl, Oxford University Press, 1990.
2) "On June 5, 1964, several hundred people sat on the Laboratory of Oceanography [Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution] rooftop, hung out windows, and crammed into the WHOI parking lot before the world's first deep-diving submarine.  On its glistening white fiberglass skins was written: 'BUILT BY LITTON' and 'RESEARCH SUBMARINE' and 'ALVIN.'" p46, ibid.
3) "It was March 24 [1966].  'Tonight,' a New York Times reporter wrote, 'shrouded in the grayish parachute that clings to it tightly as a wet dress clings to a women, the bomb [unarmed H-bomb dropped during a midair collision over Spain] still lay on the side of a steep slope...as submariners gently tried once more to clamp a line around it.'" p78.  "At 7 A.M. April 7, Alvin hovered at a safe depth of 1925 feet and the topside winches started to turn.  In an hour the whole sassy package was at the surface - CURV [Cable Controlled Underwater Research Vehicle], the parachute and Nuke 4, only slightly dented from its 30,000-foot plummet through the sky.  It was over." p79, ibid.
4) "At 9 o'clock in the morning on October 16 [1968], RV Gosnold escorted RV Lulu to the bright red Buoy Alpha.  The weather was fair for Alvin's 307th dive." ... "[Paul] Stimson and Roger Weaver, a pilot in training, climbed into the sub.  Pilot Ed Bland took his place in the sail and watched the line handlers pay out rope as he backed out Alvin from between the pontoons [of Lulu].  Bland ducked inside, shut the hatch, and the sub dropped through the frothing bubbles at the surface." ... "They were down only about 15 minutes when they discovered a short circuit in an outside camera, and surfaced.  The repairs didn't take long." ... "'Prepare to launch,' Rainnie repeated from the bridge." ... "Broderson placed a ladder back into the passenger sphere for Stimpson and Weaver.  The ladder came out and Bland got back into the sail.  As Lulu's master held the catamaran in position against a 15-knot wind, the cradle rose and the chocks Alvin perched on were removed.  Broderson looked to the line handlers for a nod.  From the sail, Bland did the same and then signaled to start lowering the cradle." ... "The cradle dropped a foot, seven more feet to go, and suddenly Alvin's nose pitched down and Rainnie saw the wispy tuft of Bland's white hair disappear into the sea." p 114. ... "Bland, still straddling the open hatch, gulped for air as the buoyant submarine bobbed back to the surface." ... "Water poured into the submarine, taking away all that buoyancy.  Got to get out." p115. ... "It took about 60 seconds from the time of the first cable parting to the sinking of the submarine.  The three men escaped with only bruises and scrapes." ... "In 5000 feet of water, the sonar at the surface probably would not see the articles [thrown over as targets].  Even Alvin might be missed." ... "Luckily Buoy Alpha was there to mark the spot." p116. ... "On August 27 [1969], they went out again. ... <McCamis said he grabbed the controls and drove Aluminaut [the rescue submersible that WHOI had chartered] up onto Alvin so Canary [the Aluminaut regular pilot] could insert the toggle bar [at the end of the 7000 foot line lowered by Mizar into Alvin's open hatch]. ... Mizar's winch turned and Alvin rose. ... Slowly Mizar towed the submerged Alvin to Menemsha Bight off Martha's Vineyard. ... Alvin broke the surface on September 1, 1969.  Bobby Weeks jumped in with the end of a hose to pump the water from the passenger sphere.  Something was in the way.  A jacket floated out of the sail.  Weeks tossed it onto the barge.  The lunch bag floated out.  He threw that too and pushed in the hose.  With the water out, Alvin was lifted onto the barge and doused with fresh water. ... [At the WHOI dock] the biologist Howard Sanders walked among the scattered debris shaking his head.  What a sorry sight.  'Hey, Howard, look at this'.  Winget held up a baloney sandwich which he had taken from the bag Weeks had tossed onto the barge.  'Looks good enough to eat, doesn't it?' said Winget.  'How's it taste?'.  'Salty but still tastes like baloney'.  Surely, Sanders thought, Winget was joking.  The engineer swore he wasn't; he showed Sanders the other sandwiches and the three apples; all looked fresh.  But how could that be after being at the bottom of the ocean for ten months?  Sanders took the lunches back to his laboratory and called WHOI's senior microbiologist,[Holger Jannasch]. p 123, 124, ibid.
5) “The incredibly fresh-looking sandwiches and apples that Howard Sanders carried to his laboratory attracted much attention.  The microbiologists could not explain how after ten months at the bottom of the sea the lunches could still look fresh and, in fact, be fresh, untouched by decay.  Could it be?  No.  Perhaps, someone suggested, the food had sat in a pool of battery acid.  ¶The scientists photographed, poked and prodded the three waterlogged apples and three baloney and mayonnaise sandwiches.  The apples tasted like apple, even smelled like apple.  The concentration of enzymes in the fruit was equivalent to that of fresh apples.  The baloney was still pink.  Seawater had seeped into the crushed thermos bottle of bouillon but still tasted like perfectly good broth.  The usual amount of bacteria was present in all the food.  ¶Another puzzle was the healthy state of the bacteria.  Like most life, bacteria brought up from the deep ocean were usually dead at the surface from the drastic pressure and temperature changes.  In the zippered lunch bag, the food had been protected from scavengers, preserved by a combination of high pressure and cold temperature.  In the biologists’ refrigerator, all the food spoiled in a few days.  ¶Alvin’s misfortune immediately sparked a new field of study. … WHOI’s microbiologists tried to duplicate the unintentional experiment.  They packed the essence of the same lunch … fastened the abbreviated lunch packs onto the lines of moorings used by the physical oceanographers for other experiments.  When the organic material was retrieved with the buoys several months later, it was in excellent condition, proving that the preserved state of the Alvin lunches was no fluke.  The metabolism of the bacteria was as much as a hundred times slower in the deep sea.  ¶’The implications of the Alvin lunch experiment are obvious,’ microbiologists Holger Jannasch and Carl Wirsen wrote.  ‘The deep sea is not a suitable environment for dumping organic wastes.’” p 135, 136, ibid.
6) “[Bob] Ballard made his first Alvin dive in July 1971 and by the end of the 1972 season, he had made twenty-three more, holding the record for the scientist with the most Alvin dives.  ¶The Gulf of Maine dives were part of Ballard’s [PhD] thesis research on plate tectonics, the theory that the continents ride on slow-moving blocks of the earth’s crust. … ¶If the two plates in the North Atlantic separated, Ballard reasoned, there should be evidence of it in the continental shelves.  At about the time the continents were thought to have pulled apart in the North Atlantic, a structural rock formation unique to the separated plates developed.  The formation called the Newark System, had formed in the Appalachian Mountains.  ¶Ballard did find pieces of the Newark System, rocks that could not have been found blindly with a dredge from a ship, because these were lying beneath other kinds of rocks.” p140, 141, ibid.
7) “On June 6, [1974], WHOI’s new ship RV Knorr, which carried Alvin and towed Lulu, headed for the Azores [to join the FAMOUS expedition at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge]. … ¶Knorr carried a full twenty-four-person complement of scientists, graduate students, technicians, and two members of the press … to document the first human probe to an underwater seam of the planet.” p 156, ibid.
8) In February 1977, some fifty scientists and technicians from Oregon, Massachusetts, California and Texas boarded Lulu and her escort Knorr and headed to the [Galapagos hydrothermal vent site]. … ¶Also on the Galapagos expedition were three National Geographic photographers. … ¶What interested the geologists [viewing the towed ANGUS recordings from the site] was the tiny temperature spike, so van Andel and Corliss headed for the Clambake on the first [Alvin] dive. …¶Within about fifteen minutes of touchdown at about 8000 feet, the sensor beeped and flashing red numbers indicated a hundredth of a degree rise in temperature.  Suddenly Alvin was surrounded by life.  ¶There were huge clamshells, stark white against the black elephant-skin basalt; brown mussels; a big bright red shrimp; a couple of white crabs scampering over the basalt; white squat lobsters; a brittlestar; a large pale anemone.” p 171-173, ibid.
9) “The morning of July 9, 1986, sailing day they tried once more [to operate JJ (Jason Junior, a remote operated vehicle) attached to Alvin] off the dock.  The engineers stared hopefully into the water as Alvin carrying JJ and Von Alt [JJ’s designer], disappeared.  Nearby, Ballard told reporters about his plans for going down the grand staircase [of Titanic].  Finally Alvin’s sail broke the surface. … ¶’Can we go?’  Ballard asked.  ¶’Yes,’ Von Alt said. … ¶In three and a half days the AII [Atlantis II, now Alvin’s tender] reached the Titanic site. … ¶Ballard descended with the most experienced pilots, Dudley Foster and Ralph Hollis, to get the lay of the land and assess the dangers. … ¶The first direct glimpse of the Titanic was brief, perhaps two minutes’ worth.  Hollis quickly backed Alvin away from the swirling sediment, and reasoning it was unwise to wait for the water to clear, headed for the surface.” p 287, 289, ibid.
10) “This year marks the 50th anniversary of two of America’s most iconic, cutting edge vehicles: the Ford Mustang and another vehicle that was hardly sleek or stylish and didn’t have a bold, jazzy name.  Three years after President John F. Kennedy committed the nation to the goal of ‘landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth’ – and five years before we did so – a stubby white submersible was built with the goal of taking people to the bottom of the ocean and returning them safely to the surface: Alvin.” K. Madin and L. Lippsett, Oceanus Vol 51 Summer 2014 “The Once and Future Alvin, at 50 years old, the sub is reborn,” p 2 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA
11) “One unforeseen outcome of Alvin’s ten-month immersion sent ripples through the ocean science community.  Lunchbags abandoned at the sinking were still in the sphere.  After nearly a year in seawater 5,000 feet deep, the bologna sandwiches were sodden and the apples wet.  But they were not decayed.  ¶WHOI microbiologist Holger Jannasch wasn’t too surprised; he had expected decomposition to be slow at cold temperatures in the deep sea.  ‘It was not the well-preserved quality of the foodstuffs that startled us,’ he wrote, ‘but the utterly simple means of overcoming the decompression problem, used in this involuntary experiment.’  The decomposition problem was this: When scientists brought bacteria adapted to the high pressure of the deep ocean back to the surface, the rapid decompression killed the very microbes the scientists wanted to study.  ¶Suddenly, Jannasch saw that instead of bringing the microbes up, they could do experiments in situ in the deep sea-by putting culture media in sample containers on the seafloor and allowing in seawater with ambient bacteria that would grow there.  This insight ‘broke a roadblock,’ he said, and led to new experiments, new sampling and culturing instruments, and a blossoming of deep-sea microbiology that has yielded unfathomed biochemical discoveries, some with commercial and pharmaceutical applications.” p5,ibid.
12) “Since its birth in 1964, the deep-sea research submersible Alvin has been brought in every few years for overhauls.  Most were routine maintenance – the submarine equivalent of a 30,000-mile service on your car.  ¶’You have to take the vehicle completely apart to check the structural integrity of the sphere, frame, and other components,’ said Anthony Tarantino, a former Alvin pilot.  ‘But you only make minor changes and usually put it back together, configured in very much the same way.’  ¶Some overhauls were more substantial, incorporating new technology and improvements.  Alvin evolved.  The original steel personnel sphere was replaced in 1973 with a titanium one that allowed Alvin to reach depths of 4,500 meters (2.8 miles).  Along the way, a second manipulator arm and video cameras were added.  Thrusters replaced a stern propeller to increase speed and maneuverability.  Alvin’s white sail became red-orange to make it easier to spot when it surfaced.  ¶As a result, the original sub that was christened a half-century ago looked very different from the one that investigated impacts from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in December 2010.  After that mission, Alvin was brought to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) for a scheduled overhaul.  ¶But this overhaul was nothing like all the rest.  ¶The sub that engineers at WHOI began to disassemble in 2010 bore the same name as the one that was loaded on board the research vessel Atlantis in May 2013.  But so does a 2014 Cadillac and the one your grandfather owned.  ¶’This new Alvin has about 70 percent new components,’ said Pat Hickey, who headed the Alvin Operations Group during the overhaul project.  ‘We basically redesigned and rebuilt the entire vehicle.’  ¶How that happened is a tale that began in the mid-1990s, when the community of ocean scientists first began contemplating what the future of deep-sea research would look like in the new millennium.” p10, L. Lippsett, ibid.
|supporting materials=Alvin Milestone attachment to bibliography
1) Bathyscaphs have been lowered to great depths and the Trieste designed by Piccard and taken to the deepest part of the ocean is a bathyscaph without a tether.  It had a propeller and some ability to move forward but otherwise limited mobility except the ability to descend to the greatest depth in the ocean and return to the surface.  Its exploit is cited since it might be thought to diminish the unique capability of Alvin having preceded the launch of Alvin and exceeded the depth of Alvin but in fact wasn’t able to conduct the kind of research or operation on the seafloor that Alvin was able to do because of its limited maneuverability.
2) June 5, 1964 is a date in a published account of Alvin’s history and establishes a milestone in its design, construction, and eventual deployment.  In fact the event described in the bibliography was not a true launch since there was no propeller or rudder yet, however it was otherwise complete and able to be put in the water.
3) The location and assist in the recovery of the H-bomb lost off the coast of Spain due to a midair collision of two US aircraft put Alvin on the map for the US Navy.  First located March 24, 1966, the cascade down slope and eventual relocation and assist in recovery took place April 7, 1966.  This was a practical and extremely valuable service this deep diving submersible provided.
4) The accidental loss of Alvin on October 16, 1968 in 5000 feet depth started a serendipitous field of hyperbaric microbiology.  Eventually recovered ten months later the flooded sphere contained the bag lunches for the three men planning to have dived when Alvin sank.  Oddly the lunches were soaked but still edible, a surprise to all but microbiologist Holger Jannasch, who suspected the cold and pressure would retard bacterial decomposition.
5) The discovery that high pressure inhibited microbial decomposition, at least by surface water microbes, resulted in deeply deployed experimental chambers to study these effects in situ.  Since this discovery, though serendipitous, is so important that it is expanded upon with event 4 and event 5 in the bibliography.
6) Bob Ballard played an important role in Alvin during the early 1970s and took his studies using Alvin to the continental shelf off New England where he found evidence of sea floor spreading, the opening of the Atlantic Ocean, through a unique geologic formation that was unlikely to be found without a human occupied submersible with a manipulator.  Ballard went on to explore the Mid-Atlantic Ridge with a French team in project FAMOUS.  These two projects by Ballard represent the geologic commencement of Alvin use.
7) Ballard, in project FAMOUS, took news people along with the Alvin crew to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and brought Alvin to the attention of a wider audience.
8) In 1977 Alvin took part in what was probably the biggest discovery of the decade, possibly the century, when in February 1977 it found and sampled unique marine organisms in great abundance and often large sizes at a hydrothermal vent.  While this vent was on a section of ridge near the Galapagos Islands, similar and not so similar vents have subsequently been found in about 40 other places and studied continuously up thru the present (2019).  It had been assumed until this discovery by most biologists that life on the deep seafloor depended upon falling phytoplankton and other marine organism detritus from the surface where photosynthesis captured sunlight to create nutrients that could support sea floor life.  But here the source was chemical from sulfur dissolved from rock and subsequently metabolized by bacteria and made available for consumption by these unique organisms.  There are some who say that this source of energy might have permitted life to form away from the harsh early conditions at the surface and indeed might be the source of life on other planets and moons of our solar system.  Thus this discovery, due to a great degree from Alvin’s exploration of what was originally a geological study of deep ocean ridges, has led to a new model of how life on earth began and then how it continues today.
9) Ballard used the shipwreck, Titanic, to further develop deep-sea submersible exploration.  Jointly with a French team, with whom he had worked during FAMOUS, he obtained support from the US Navy to test an ROV that was of interest to the Navy.  But it was the discovery of Titanic from a towed camera sled that pinpointed the wreck location and, with Alvin, he subsequently photographed Titanic and even deployed a small ROV to go inside the shipwreck.  This caught the public’s attention as few other Alvin exploits did.
10) For the 50th birthday of Alvin, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution produced a special issue of their biannual magazine, OCEANUS.  This 51st volume, No. 1, Summer 2014 contains interviews with people associated with the rebuild and operation of Alvin. 
11) A personal explanation by Holger Jannasch about his epiphany concerning the preserved bag lunches is recited.  Instead of trying unsuccessfully to bring microbes up from the seafloor to study, take the experiments to them with Alvin.  This is the mode that microbiologists now employ.  The deep sea microbes are adapted to the pressure and cannot be cultivated at normal atmospheric pressure.
12) Alvin was rebuilt between 2010 and 2013 and now contains its third personnel sphere, the 2nd and 3rd in titanium.  Other changes permitted the present depth rating to 6,500 m.
|submitted=No
|submitted=No
}}
}}

Revision as of 18:59, 19 December 2019


To see comments, or add a comment to this discussion, click here.

Docket #:

This Proposal has been approved, and is now a Milestone


To the proposer’s knowledge, is this achievement subject to litigation? No

Is the achievement you are proposing more than 25 years old? Yes

Is the achievement you are proposing within IEEE’s designated fields as defined by IEEE Bylaw I-104.11, namely: Engineering, Computer Sciences and Information Technology, Physical Sciences, Biological and Medical Sciences, Mathematics, Technical Communications, Education, Management, and Law and Policy. Yes

Did the achievement provide a meaningful benefit for humanity? Yes

Was it of at least regional importance? Yes

Has an IEEE Organizational Unit agreed to pay for the milestone plaque(s)? Yes

Has an IEEE Organizational Unit agreed to arrange the dedication ceremony? Yes

Has the IEEE Section in which the milestone is located agreed to take responsibility for the plaque after it is dedicated? Yes

Has the owner of the site agreed to have it designated as an IEEE Milestone? Yes


Year or range of years in which the achievement occurred:

1964 to present (2019)

Title of the proposed milestone:

Alvin: Deep Human Occupied Research Submersible, 1964 to 2019

Plaque citation summarizing the achievement and its significance:

Alvin has permitted a crew of three to explore the seafloor as deep as 6500m. Launched in 1964, Alvin relocated a lost H bomb off Spain in 1966. Hyperbaric microbiology was stimulated by observation of inhibition of bacterial decomposition of a deeply deployed crew lunch in 1969. Hydrothermal vents were discovered in 1976 leading to more than 5000 dives through 2019 to study the seafloor.

200-250 word abstract describing the significance of the technical achievement being proposed, the person(s) involved, historical context, humanitarian and social impact, as well as any possible controversies the advocate might need to review.


IEEE technical societies and technical councils within whose fields of interest the Milestone proposal resides.


In what IEEE section(s) does it reside?

Providence Section

IEEE Organizational Unit(s) which have agreed to sponsor the Milestone:

IEEE Organizational Unit(s) paying for milestone plaque(s):

Unit: Providence Section
Senior Officer Name: Jason Gaudette

IEEE Organizational Unit(s) arranging the dedication ceremony:

Unit: Providence Section
Senior Officer Name: Jason Gaudette

IEEE section(s) monitoring the plaque(s):

IEEE Section: Providence Section
IEEE Section Chair name: Jason Gaudette

Milestone proposer(s):

Proposer name: Albert J. Williams 3rd
Proposer email: Proposer's email masked to public

Please note: your email address and contact information will be masked on the website for privacy reasons. Only IEEE History Center Staff will be able to view the email address.

Street address(es) and GPS coordinates in decimal form of the intended milestone plaque site(s):

Street address(es) and GPS coordinates of the intended milestone plaque site(s): 86 Water St., Woods Hole, MA 02543; 41-31.5N, 70-40.3W

Describe briefly the intended site(s) of the milestone plaque(s). The intended site(s) must have a direct connection with the achievement (e.g. where developed, invented, tested, demonstrated, installed, or operated, etc.). A museum where a device or example of the technology is displayed, or the university where the inventor studied, are not, in themselves, sufficient connection for a milestone plaque.

Please give the address(es) of the plaque site(s) (GPS coordinates if you have them). Also please give the details of the mounting, i.e. on the outside of the building, in the ground floor entrance hall, on a plinth on the grounds, etc. If visitors to the plaque site will need to go through security, or make an appointment, please give the contact information visitors will need. Smith Laboratory of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where Alvin was designed, taken to sea and deployed. It is operated by WHOI but owned by US Navy. The proposed mounting site is in sight of the WHOI Guards.

Are the original buildings extant?

Yes but the office where most of the early designers had desks is upstairs from a coffee shop and not suitable for a plaque.

Details of the plaque mounting:

The mounting will be where a former fire call box was mounted outside on a brick wall at eye level. It is near the wooden welcome sign to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution with a map and other information.

How is the site protected/secured, and in what ways is it accessible to the public?

The plaque can be approached freely and touched but the night watchman and weekend guards can see and protect the plaque as they can do for the Smith Building plaque on the opposite wall that has stood for 50 years.

Who is the present owner of the site(s)?

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

What is the historical significance of the work (its technological, scientific, or social importance)? If personal names are included in citation, include justification here. (see section 6 of Milestone Guidelines)

Alvin was the first mobile deep diving research vehicle. The bathyscaph Trieste was earlier, 1960, (and deeper) but was practically more of an elevator. It was only when scientists discovered things not seen from cores and trawls that the science of seafloor discovery began and even then it was slow to start. But the discovery of hyperbaric microbiology lead to a new field and, though accidental, was an Alvin accident. Hydrothermal vents were the biggest discovery attributed to Alvin and led to a great deal of biological and geological scientific study which is ongoing more than 40 years later. Technical developments were required by observational needs such as high resolution color digital cameras (1976), trim and ballast tanks, and manipulators, subsequently copied on other submersibles. One of the developments leading to more general underwater navigation was the acoustic ALNAV array of transponders that permitted a surface ship to know Alvin's location. Lighting and pressure resisting Plexiglas windows were needed for observers to see and photograph what was on the seafloor. Samplers used with manipulators allowed sample collection into thermally insulated and even pressure sealed containers for recovery to the surface for cold, hyperbaric studies of the unusual life forms found at hydrothermal vents.

What obstacles (technical, political, geographic) needed to be overcome?

Initially, few scientists felt it necessary for anyone to go to the seafloor to see what was there, so reluctance at the start meant there had to be push from a few scientists, Allyn Vine for one, rather than pull by biologists or geologists. But when discoveries began to be made, the scientists' attitude changed. Eyeballs inside Alvin for seafloor observations remained unchallenged until Remote Operated Vehicles and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles came along in 1976 and later.

What features set this work apart from similar achievements?

Alvin has an operational capability that exceeds other, contemporary submersibles, with close coupling between the engineers and scientists to maximize the discoveries possible. The discovery of living communities of animals at deep, dark, cold hydrothermal vents followed by the discovery of very hot hydrothermal smokers with their own communities revealed a life system powered by chemical systems rather than photosynthesis. This last realization, based upon Alvin observations, has led to a belief among many that life on earth may have started at hydrothermal vents and perhaps may have done so on other planets or moons of the solar system. Availability of Alvin to scientists from other research institutions through UNOLS (University and National Oceanographic Laboratory Systems) scheduling has permitted observational and experimental work to be done by the best in the world. Maturity of the operations of Alvin means that the number of dive days per year exceeds other deep diving research submersibles.

Supporting texts and citations to establish the dates, location, and importance of the achievement: Minimum of five (5), but as many as needed to support the milestone, such as patents, contemporary newspaper articles, journal articles, or chapters in scholarly books. 'Scholarly' is defined as peer-reviewed, with references, and published. You must supply the texts or excerpts themselves, not just the references. At least one of the references must be from a scholarly book or journal article. All supporting materials must be in English, or accompanied by an English translation.

1) "Six minutes after one o'clock on the afternoon of January 23, 1960, the refurbished Trieste [August Piccard's Bathyscaph] descended to the deepest known spot on earth, a mammoth gash in the floor of the Pacific about 200 miles southwest of Guam. Piccard and U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh dropped 35,800 feet, nearly seven miles, to the floor of the Mariana Trench", p15, Water baby: the story of Alvin, Victoria A. Kaharl, Oxford University Press, 1990. 2) "On June 5, 1964, several hundred people sat on the Laboratory of Oceanography [Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution] rooftop, hung out windows, and crammed into the WHOI parking lot before the world's first deep-diving submarine. On its glistening white fiberglass skins was written: 'BUILT BY LITTON' and 'RESEARCH SUBMARINE' and 'ALVIN.'" p46, ibid. 3) "It was March 24 [1966]. 'Tonight,' a New York Times reporter wrote, 'shrouded in the grayish parachute that clings to it tightly as a wet dress clings to a women, the bomb [unarmed H-bomb dropped during a midair collision over Spain] still lay on the side of a steep slope...as submariners gently tried once more to clamp a line around it.'" p78. "At 7 A.M. April 7, Alvin hovered at a safe depth of 1925 feet and the topside winches started to turn. In an hour the whole sassy package was at the surface - CURV [Cable Controlled Underwater Research Vehicle], the parachute and Nuke 4, only slightly dented from its 30,000-foot plummet through the sky. It was over." p79, ibid. 4) "At 9 o'clock in the morning on October 16 [1968], RV Gosnold escorted RV Lulu to the bright red Buoy Alpha. The weather was fair for Alvin's 307th dive." ... "[Paul] Stimson and Roger Weaver, a pilot in training, climbed into the sub. Pilot Ed Bland took his place in the sail and watched the line handlers pay out rope as he backed out Alvin from between the pontoons [of Lulu]. Bland ducked inside, shut the hatch, and the sub dropped through the frothing bubbles at the surface." ... "They were down only about 15 minutes when they discovered a short circuit in an outside camera, and surfaced. The repairs didn't take long." ... "'Prepare to launch,' Rainnie repeated from the bridge." ... "Broderson placed a ladder back into the passenger sphere for Stimpson and Weaver. The ladder came out and Bland got back into the sail. As Lulu's master held the catamaran in position against a 15-knot wind, the cradle rose and the chocks Alvin perched on were removed. Broderson looked to the line handlers for a nod. From the sail, Bland did the same and then signaled to start lowering the cradle." ... "The cradle dropped a foot, seven more feet to go, and suddenly Alvin's nose pitched down and Rainnie saw the wispy tuft of Bland's white hair disappear into the sea." p 114. ... "Bland, still straddling the open hatch, gulped for air as the buoyant submarine bobbed back to the surface." ... "Water poured into the submarine, taking away all that buoyancy. Got to get out." p115. ... "It took about 60 seconds from the time of the first cable parting to the sinking of the submarine. The three men escaped with only bruises and scrapes." ... "In 5000 feet of water, the sonar at the surface probably would not see the articles [thrown over as targets]. Even Alvin might be missed." ... "Luckily Buoy Alpha was there to mark the spot." p116. ... "On August 27 [1969], they went out again. ... <McCamis said he grabbed the controls and drove Aluminaut [the rescue submersible that WHOI had chartered] up onto Alvin so Canary [the Aluminaut regular pilot] could insert the toggle bar [at the end of the 7000 foot line lowered by Mizar into Alvin's open hatch]. ... Mizar's winch turned and Alvin rose. ... Slowly Mizar towed the submerged Alvin to Menemsha Bight off Martha's Vineyard. ... Alvin broke the surface on September 1, 1969. Bobby Weeks jumped in with the end of a hose to pump the water from the passenger sphere. Something was in the way. A jacket floated out of the sail. Weeks tossed it onto the barge. The lunch bag floated out. He threw that too and pushed in the hose. With the water out, Alvin was lifted onto the barge and doused with fresh water. ... [At the WHOI dock] the biologist Howard Sanders walked among the scattered debris shaking his head. What a sorry sight. 'Hey, Howard, look at this'. Winget held up a baloney sandwich which he had taken from the bag Weeks had tossed onto the barge. 'Looks good enough to eat, doesn't it?' said Winget. 'How's it taste?'. 'Salty but still tastes like baloney'. Surely, Sanders thought, Winget was joking. The engineer swore he wasn't; he showed Sanders the other sandwiches and the three apples; all looked fresh. But how could that be after being at the bottom of the ocean for ten months? Sanders took the lunches back to his laboratory and called WHOI's senior microbiologist,[Holger Jannasch]. p 123, 124, ibid. 5) “The incredibly fresh-looking sandwiches and apples that Howard Sanders carried to his laboratory attracted much attention. The microbiologists could not explain how after ten months at the bottom of the sea the lunches could still look fresh and, in fact, be fresh, untouched by decay. Could it be? No. Perhaps, someone suggested, the food had sat in a pool of battery acid. ¶The scientists photographed, poked and prodded the three waterlogged apples and three baloney and mayonnaise sandwiches. The apples tasted like apple, even smelled like apple. The concentration of enzymes in the fruit was equivalent to that of fresh apples. The baloney was still pink. Seawater had seeped into the crushed thermos bottle of bouillon but still tasted like perfectly good broth. The usual amount of bacteria was present in all the food. ¶Another puzzle was the healthy state of the bacteria. Like most life, bacteria brought up from the deep ocean were usually dead at the surface from the drastic pressure and temperature changes. In the zippered lunch bag, the food had been protected from scavengers, preserved by a combination of high pressure and cold temperature. In the biologists’ refrigerator, all the food spoiled in a few days. ¶Alvin’s misfortune immediately sparked a new field of study. … WHOI’s microbiologists tried to duplicate the unintentional experiment. They packed the essence of the same lunch … fastened the abbreviated lunch packs onto the lines of moorings used by the physical oceanographers for other experiments. When the organic material was retrieved with the buoys several months later, it was in excellent condition, proving that the preserved state of the Alvin lunches was no fluke. The metabolism of the bacteria was as much as a hundred times slower in the deep sea. ¶’The implications of the Alvin lunch experiment are obvious,’ microbiologists Holger Jannasch and Carl Wirsen wrote. ‘The deep sea is not a suitable environment for dumping organic wastes.’” p 135, 136, ibid. 6) “[Bob] Ballard made his first Alvin dive in July 1971 and by the end of the 1972 season, he had made twenty-three more, holding the record for the scientist with the most Alvin dives. ¶The Gulf of Maine dives were part of Ballard’s [PhD] thesis research on plate tectonics, the theory that the continents ride on slow-moving blocks of the earth’s crust. … ¶If the two plates in the North Atlantic separated, Ballard reasoned, there should be evidence of it in the continental shelves. At about the time the continents were thought to have pulled apart in the North Atlantic, a structural rock formation unique to the separated plates developed. The formation called the Newark System, had formed in the Appalachian Mountains. ¶Ballard did find pieces of the Newark System, rocks that could not have been found blindly with a dredge from a ship, because these were lying beneath other kinds of rocks.” p140, 141, ibid. 7) “On June 6, [1974], WHOI’s new ship RV Knorr, which carried Alvin and towed Lulu, headed for the Azores [to join the FAMOUS expedition at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge]. … ¶Knorr carried a full twenty-four-person complement of scientists, graduate students, technicians, and two members of the press … to document the first human probe to an underwater seam of the planet.” p 156, ibid. 8) In February 1977, some fifty scientists and technicians from Oregon, Massachusetts, California and Texas boarded Lulu and her escort Knorr and headed to the [Galapagos hydrothermal vent site]. … ¶Also on the Galapagos expedition were three National Geographic photographers. … ¶What interested the geologists [viewing the towed ANGUS recordings from the site] was the tiny temperature spike, so van Andel and Corliss headed for the Clambake on the first [Alvin] dive. …¶Within about fifteen minutes of touchdown at about 8000 feet, the sensor beeped and flashing red numbers indicated a hundredth of a degree rise in temperature. Suddenly Alvin was surrounded by life. ¶There were huge clamshells, stark white against the black elephant-skin basalt; brown mussels; a big bright red shrimp; a couple of white crabs scampering over the basalt; white squat lobsters; a brittlestar; a large pale anemone.” p 171-173, ibid. 9) “The morning of July 9, 1986, sailing day they tried once more [to operate JJ (Jason Junior, a remote operated vehicle) attached to Alvin] off the dock. The engineers stared hopefully into the water as Alvin carrying JJ and Von Alt [JJ’s designer], disappeared. Nearby, Ballard told reporters about his plans for going down the grand staircase [of Titanic]. Finally Alvin’s sail broke the surface. … ¶’Can we go?’ Ballard asked. ¶’Yes,’ Von Alt said. … ¶In three and a half days the AII [Atlantis II, now Alvin’s tender] reached the Titanic site. … ¶Ballard descended with the most experienced pilots, Dudley Foster and Ralph Hollis, to get the lay of the land and assess the dangers. … ¶The first direct glimpse of the Titanic was brief, perhaps two minutes’ worth. Hollis quickly backed Alvin away from the swirling sediment, and reasoning it was unwise to wait for the water to clear, headed for the surface.” p 287, 289, ibid. 10) “This year marks the 50th anniversary of two of America’s most iconic, cutting edge vehicles: the Ford Mustang and another vehicle that was hardly sleek or stylish and didn’t have a bold, jazzy name. Three years after President John F. Kennedy committed the nation to the goal of ‘landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth’ – and five years before we did so – a stubby white submersible was built with the goal of taking people to the bottom of the ocean and returning them safely to the surface: Alvin.” K. Madin and L. Lippsett, Oceanus Vol 51 Summer 2014 “The Once and Future Alvin, at 50 years old, the sub is reborn,” p 2 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 11) “One unforeseen outcome of Alvin’s ten-month immersion sent ripples through the ocean science community. Lunchbags abandoned at the sinking were still in the sphere. After nearly a year in seawater 5,000 feet deep, the bologna sandwiches were sodden and the apples wet. But they were not decayed. ¶WHOI microbiologist Holger Jannasch wasn’t too surprised; he had expected decomposition to be slow at cold temperatures in the deep sea. ‘It was not the well-preserved quality of the foodstuffs that startled us,’ he wrote, ‘but the utterly simple means of overcoming the decompression problem, used in this involuntary experiment.’ The decomposition problem was this: When scientists brought bacteria adapted to the high pressure of the deep ocean back to the surface, the rapid decompression killed the very microbes the scientists wanted to study. ¶Suddenly, Jannasch saw that instead of bringing the microbes up, they could do experiments in situ in the deep sea-by putting culture media in sample containers on the seafloor and allowing in seawater with ambient bacteria that would grow there. This insight ‘broke a roadblock,’ he said, and led to new experiments, new sampling and culturing instruments, and a blossoming of deep-sea microbiology that has yielded unfathomed biochemical discoveries, some with commercial and pharmaceutical applications.” p5,ibid. 12) “Since its birth in 1964, the deep-sea research submersible Alvin has been brought in every few years for overhauls. Most were routine maintenance – the submarine equivalent of a 30,000-mile service on your car. ¶’You have to take the vehicle completely apart to check the structural integrity of the sphere, frame, and other components,’ said Anthony Tarantino, a former Alvin pilot. ‘But you only make minor changes and usually put it back together, configured in very much the same way.’ ¶Some overhauls were more substantial, incorporating new technology and improvements. Alvin evolved. The original steel personnel sphere was replaced in 1973 with a titanium one that allowed Alvin to reach depths of 4,500 meters (2.8 miles). Along the way, a second manipulator arm and video cameras were added. Thrusters replaced a stern propeller to increase speed and maneuverability. Alvin’s white sail became red-orange to make it easier to spot when it surfaced. ¶As a result, the original sub that was christened a half-century ago looked very different from the one that investigated impacts from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in December 2010. After that mission, Alvin was brought to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) for a scheduled overhaul. ¶But this overhaul was nothing like all the rest. ¶The sub that engineers at WHOI began to disassemble in 2010 bore the same name as the one that was loaded on board the research vessel Atlantis in May 2013. But so does a 2014 Cadillac and the one your grandfather owned. ¶’This new Alvin has about 70 percent new components,’ said Pat Hickey, who headed the Alvin Operations Group during the overhaul project. ‘We basically redesigned and rebuilt the entire vehicle.’ ¶How that happened is a tale that began in the mid-1990s, when the community of ocean scientists first began contemplating what the future of deep-sea research would look like in the new millennium.” p10, L. Lippsett, ibid.

Supporting materials (supported formats: GIF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, DOC): All supporting materials must be in English, or if not in English, accompanied by an English translation. You must supply the texts or excerpts themselves, not just the references. For documents that are copyright-encumbered, or which you do not have rights to post, email the documents themselves to ieee-history@ieee.org. Please see the Milestone Program Guidelines for more information.

Alvin Milestone attachment to bibliography 1) Bathyscaphs have been lowered to great depths and the Trieste designed by Piccard and taken to the deepest part of the ocean is a bathyscaph without a tether. It had a propeller and some ability to move forward but otherwise limited mobility except the ability to descend to the greatest depth in the ocean and return to the surface. Its exploit is cited since it might be thought to diminish the unique capability of Alvin having preceded the launch of Alvin and exceeded the depth of Alvin but in fact wasn’t able to conduct the kind of research or operation on the seafloor that Alvin was able to do because of its limited maneuverability. 2) June 5, 1964 is a date in a published account of Alvin’s history and establishes a milestone in its design, construction, and eventual deployment. In fact the event described in the bibliography was not a true launch since there was no propeller or rudder yet, however it was otherwise complete and able to be put in the water. 3) The location and assist in the recovery of the H-bomb lost off the coast of Spain due to a midair collision of two US aircraft put Alvin on the map for the US Navy. First located March 24, 1966, the cascade down slope and eventual relocation and assist in recovery took place April 7, 1966. This was a practical and extremely valuable service this deep diving submersible provided. 4) The accidental loss of Alvin on October 16, 1968 in 5000 feet depth started a serendipitous field of hyperbaric microbiology. Eventually recovered ten months later the flooded sphere contained the bag lunches for the three men planning to have dived when Alvin sank. Oddly the lunches were soaked but still edible, a surprise to all but microbiologist Holger Jannasch, who suspected the cold and pressure would retard bacterial decomposition. 5) The discovery that high pressure inhibited microbial decomposition, at least by surface water microbes, resulted in deeply deployed experimental chambers to study these effects in situ. Since this discovery, though serendipitous, is so important that it is expanded upon with event 4 and event 5 in the bibliography. 6) Bob Ballard played an important role in Alvin during the early 1970s and took his studies using Alvin to the continental shelf off New England where he found evidence of sea floor spreading, the opening of the Atlantic Ocean, through a unique geologic formation that was unlikely to be found without a human occupied submersible with a manipulator. Ballard went on to explore the Mid-Atlantic Ridge with a French team in project FAMOUS. These two projects by Ballard represent the geologic commencement of Alvin use. 7) Ballard, in project FAMOUS, took news people along with the Alvin crew to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and brought Alvin to the attention of a wider audience. 8) In 1977 Alvin took part in what was probably the biggest discovery of the decade, possibly the century, when in February 1977 it found and sampled unique marine organisms in great abundance and often large sizes at a hydrothermal vent. While this vent was on a section of ridge near the Galapagos Islands, similar and not so similar vents have subsequently been found in about 40 other places and studied continuously up thru the present (2019). It had been assumed until this discovery by most biologists that life on the deep seafloor depended upon falling phytoplankton and other marine organism detritus from the surface where photosynthesis captured sunlight to create nutrients that could support sea floor life. But here the source was chemical from sulfur dissolved from rock and subsequently metabolized by bacteria and made available for consumption by these unique organisms. There are some who say that this source of energy might have permitted life to form away from the harsh early conditions at the surface and indeed might be the source of life on other planets and moons of our solar system. Thus this discovery, due to a great degree from Alvin’s exploration of what was originally a geological study of deep ocean ridges, has led to a new model of how life on earth began and then how it continues today. 9) Ballard used the shipwreck, Titanic, to further develop deep-sea submersible exploration. Jointly with a French team, with whom he had worked during FAMOUS, he obtained support from the US Navy to test an ROV that was of interest to the Navy. But it was the discovery of Titanic from a towed camera sled that pinpointed the wreck location and, with Alvin, he subsequently photographed Titanic and even deployed a small ROV to go inside the shipwreck. This caught the public’s attention as few other Alvin exploits did. 10) For the 50th birthday of Alvin, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution produced a special issue of their biannual magazine, OCEANUS. This 51st volume, No. 1, Summer 2014 contains interviews with people associated with the rebuild and operation of Alvin. 11) A personal explanation by Holger Jannasch about his epiphany concerning the preserved bag lunches is recited. Instead of trying unsuccessfully to bring microbes up from the seafloor to study, take the experiments to them with Alvin. This is the mode that microbiologists now employ. The deep sea microbes are adapted to the pressure and cannot be cultivated at normal atmospheric pressure. 12) Alvin was rebuilt between 2010 and 2013 and now contains its third personnel sphere, the 2nd and 3rd in titanium. Other changes permitted the present depth rating to 6,500 m.

Please email a jpeg or PDF a letter in English, or with English translation, from the site owner(s) giving permission to place IEEE milestone plaque on the property, and a letter (or forwarded email) from the appropriate Section Chair supporting the Milestone application to ieee-history@ieee.org with the subject line "Attention: Milestone Administrator." Note that there are multiple texts of the letter depending on whether an IEEE organizational unit other than the section will be paying for the plaque(s).

Please recommend reviewers by emailing their names and email addresses to ieee-history@ieee.org. Please include the docket number and brief title of your proposal in the subject line of all emails.