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Bathysphere, Nonsuch Island, Bermuda Deep Sea Expedition. Photo Album 1930-1931.
Oblong folio-format album compiled by Williams College undergraduate Jackson Edwin Guernsey (1910-1998); consisting of approximately forty-five pages containing approximately 168 individual small format black-and-white photographs of the research team and their work on land and at sea, exploring the depths in the bathysphere; the album 13 x 10 1/8 in.
The New York Zoological Society funded Charles William Beebe's (1877-1962) research in developing the bathysphere, a vessel capable of exploring the ocean at great depths. The project also employed a number of female scientists, artists, and research assistants on Nonsuch Island. In this album we find photographs of Gloria Hollister (1900-1988), who set a world record for the deepest dive performed by a woman on her thirtieth birthday in the bathysphere; Jocelyn Crane (1909-1998), who studied crustaceans and specialized in fiddler crabs; natural history illustrator for the Zoological Society's Helene-Therese Tee-Van (1893-1976); Kathryn Leigh [aka Binx], who served as laboratory secretary; Else Bostlemann, another artist; and others. (cf. Carol Grant Gould's The Remarkable Life of William Beebe, Washington: Island Press, 2004.)
The scientists, research assistants, and other contributors to the project are depicted working and playing in this fascinating album. Almost all contributors, and often the photographers themselves are identified on the backs of the photos in this likely unique set of images from the earliest days of the development of the bathysphere.
