Roosevelt High School - Bwana Yearbook (St Louis, MO)

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EWENE w Cnurlfsy of St, Louis Post-Dispatch DR. BEEBE'S FLOAT ln the 1934 Veiled Prophet's Parade, the outstanding float, that of Dr. William Beebe's bathysphere, was one of most suggestive and interpretive that the city has seen for some time. The blue and green indirect lighting showed the beauty of the sea floor. It was a color scheme of interminglecl pink, white, and soft purple tints. The pink sea anemones and corals made one almost gasp with their startling likeness to these animals of the sea. Nothing was too vivid: nothing was out of place. One saw devil-fish, sharks, and lesser animals of numerous descriptions seemingly swimming around in the depths. The representation of the bathysphere itself was very convincing. It was a silver sphere with openings on all sides, representing the quartz windows in the original. MARGARET HILL Twenty-four 935

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93 BWEIHH feet, Beebe saw strange fish. As he watched them, from the sides of several of them flashed six or eight bright greenish lights, which had such a blinding effect on his eyes that the fish vanished completely, leaving not a trace of light behind them. To this day, Beebe has no idea what they were. At the surface of the ocean the fish are usually ultramarine blue on top and white underneath to match the colors of the open sea. Surface fish are seen to a depth of one hundred feet. A little deeper, most of the fish are rather transparent, and still deeper the fish are semi-transparent, silver, or pink. About five hundred fathoms downward is the scarlet and black zone. Most of the fish are black, and the majority of the worms and crustoceans are flame-red. As far down in the ocean as the sunlight penetrates, there are minute plants that furnish food to numberless fish, shrimp, and other sea creatures. Beginning half a mile down, however, is a world of non-vegetarians. The surface creatures form the food of the tenants of the twilight zone, and these in turn are devoured by the monsters of the black depths. Beebe noticed that ocean life was still abundant at twelve hundred feet. At twelve hundred fifty feet several of the silver hatchets passed, going upward. Suddenly Beebe saw not one form of ocean life, and between twelve hundred fifty and thirteen hundred feet were fifty feet of terrible emptiness. Not one light or organism was seen, and the ocean appeared to be an entirely different shade of blue. It seemed to Beebe that its most prominent characteristic was its transparency. At thirteen hundred feet, much to Beebe's relief, life, mostly luminous, again became visible. Barton had just read the thermometer at seventy-two degrees when he saw three squids shoot in and out of the light, changing from black to barred white as they moved. At fourteen hundred feet Beebe saw several creatures of remarkably large size which hovered in the distance. On June 20, l930, Beebe had made fifteen descents, one to fourteen hundred feet and several to eight hundred feet. Beebe said that several times he saw an amazing change of courtesy between the larger and smaller fish. To the ever-occuring question of how did he feel, Beebe can only quote the words of Herbert Spencer. l-le felt like an infinitesimal atom floating in illimitable space. SALLY CHASE 2 Twenty-three

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935 EVJZINH EXPLORING THE STRATOSPHERE NLY recently have people in. general become interested in the strato- sphere. It has been only within the last fifty years that much of the knowledge which we now possess of the gaseous portion of our sphere has been accumulated. The principal reason for the rapid growth of interest in this field is the possibility of using it as a lane for long distance flying. This would be desirable because it would mean the elimination of the storms, fogs, and winds encountered in the lower atmosphere and because much greater speed would be possible since less resistance would be offered by the air. There are, however, several problems involved. The most important of these is the difficulty of designing aircraft suitable for use in this region of extreme cold and diminished supply of oxygen. These problems are not beyond solution. Probably the intensive study which is being made of the stratosphere at the present time may lead to its being conquered in the near future. Until almost the end of the nineteenth century observations had been confined-'to the lower regions, and the conditions in the upper regions of the atmosphere could only be surmised. Observations made up to a height of two or three miles by means of sounding and passenger carrying balloons had shown that up to about three thousand meters above the earth conditions are very variable with regard to air currents and temperature. Above that level the changes in temperature were found to be more uniform, and the winds become generally more easterly in direction and much stronger. From this knowledge scientists assumed that decreasing temperature and increasing wind velocity would continue until the outermost portions of the atmosphere were reached. ln 1898 this supposition was upset by de Bort, a French meteorologist, who, by means of sounding balloons, made observations at higher altitudes than had formerly been attained. His conclusions were consistent with the early observations up to about eleven kilometers above sea-level. At that point, however, the temperature remained constant or even increased with the altitude. The first name given to this newly discovered region was uisothermal layerug later it was changed to the present term, stratosphere , The work and theories of de Bort have been confirmed and further advanced by numerous scientists since that time, among whom Gold, Milne, and Humphreys have been particularly important. Auguste Piccard, a Swiss-Belgian professor, accompanied by his brother jean, made a stratosphere flight in l9l 3 in an effort to measure the density and temperature of the gas inside their balloon. ln May, 1931, and in August, l932, Piccard made two more balloon ascents to study the cosmic rays in the stratosphere. It was believed that this would lead to other dia- coveries, such as the reason for the fading of wave-length and the cause of Twenty-Hue