Stories of Inventors: The Adventures of Inventors and EngineersDoubleday, Russell
History
Stories of Inventors: The Adventures of Inventors and Engineers
Doubleday, Russell
Inventions; Inventors
An air-lock separates the diver's section from the main hold so that it
is possible to pass from one to the other while the entrance to the sea
is still open. A person entering the lock from the large room first
closes the door between and then gradually admits the compressed air
until the pressure is the same as in the diving compartment, when the
door into it may be safely opened. When returning, this operation is
simply reversed. The lookout stands forward of the diver's space. When
the _Argonaut_ rolls along the bottom, round openings protected with
heavy glass permit the lookout to follow the beam of light thrown by the
searchlight and see dimly any sizable obstruction. When the diving
compartment is in use the man on lookout duty uses a portable telephone
to tell his shipmates in the main room what is happening out in the wet,
and by the same means the reports of the diver can be communicated
without opening the air-lock.
This little ship (thirty-six feet long) has done wonderful things. She
has cruised over the bottom of Chesapeake Bay, New York Bay, Hampton
Roads, and the Atlantic Ocean, her driving-wheels propelling her when
the bottom was hard, and her screw when the oozy condition of the
submarine road made her spiked wheels useless except to steer with. Her
passengers have been able to examine the bottom under twenty feet of
water (without wetting their feet), through the trap door, with the aid
of an electric light let down into the clear depths. Telephone messages
have been sent from the bottom of Baltimore Harbour to the top of the
New York _World_ building, telling of the conditions there in contrast
to the New York editor's aerial perch. Cables have been picked up and
examined without dredging--a hook lowered through the trap door being
all that was necessary. Wrecks have been examined and valuables
recovered.
[Illustration: SINGING INTO THE TELEPHONE
Part of the entertainment furnished by the telephone newspaper at
Buda-Pest.]
Although the _Argonaut_ travelled over 2,000 miles under water and on
the surface, propelled by her own power, her inventor was not satisfied
with her. He cut her in two, therefore, and added a section to her,
making her sixty-six feet long; this allowed more comfortable quarters
for her crew, space for larger engines, compressors, etc.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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