The Bottom

The Navy's bathyscaph Trieste reached its goal last week: the bottom of the Marianas Trench, which is believed to be the deepest place in all the world's oceans. Manned by Jacques Piccard, son of the bathyscaph's inventor, Auguste Piccard, and Lieut. Don Walsh, the Trieste took 4 hr. 48 min. to settle slowly down to the Pacific Ocean's bottom, landing gently on soft silt that billowed up and looked like dust clouds when the lights were turned on. When the clouds cleared, Piccard and Walsh could see living creatures that moved unbothered by the pressure of more than eight tons per sq. in. The depth was 37,800 ft., which is 1.7 miles deeper than Mount Everest is high, and half a mile deeper than expected.

Wet with condensed moisture, and their teeth chattering from the cold of sunless water, the Trieste's men stayed on the bottom for half an hour and then started up, taking with them for later study observations and records of ocean depths no man before had ever seen.

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