-
325
Pytheas
Pytheas sailed northward from Greece
to Iceland in 325 BC and worked out a
method for determining latitudes and
using astronomical measurements
proposed that tides were a product of
lunar influences. -
Jan 1, 1000
Prehistoric Man
Before 1000 B.C prehistoric man was surviving using wood, skin, and reed to travel across water. -
Sep 6, 1431
Prince Henry the Navigator
Henry also continued his involvement in events closer to home. In 1431 he donated houses for the Estudo Geral to reunite all the sciences — grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, music and astronomy — into what would later become the University of Lisbon. For other subjects like medicine or philosophy, he ordered that each room should be decorated according to each subject that was being taught. -
Benjamin Franklin
There are early maps, really charts, depicting the Gulf Stream, but Benjamin Franklin and Timothy Folger printed the first map of the Gulf Stream in 1769-1770. Copies remained lost for nearly 200 years until found in France. -
Matthew Maury
. His hard work on and love of plotting the oceans paid off when he became Superintendent of the Naval Observatory and head of the Depot of Charts and Instruments. Here Maury studied thousands of ships' logs and charts. He published the Wind and Current Chart of the North Atlantic, which showed sailors how to use the ocean's currents and winds to their advantage and drastically reduced the length of ocean voyages. -
Challenger Expidition
Modern oceanography began with the Challenger Expedition between 1872 and 1876. It was the first expedition organized specifically to gather data on a wide range of ocean features, including ocean temperatures seawater chemistry, currents, marine life, and the geology of the seafloor. -
Sonar
The world's first patent for an underwater echo ranging device was filed at the British Patent Office by English meteorologist Lewis Richardson a month after the sinking of the Titanic,[2] and a German physicist Alexander Behm obtained a patent for an echo sounder in 1913. -
Bathysphere
The first bathysphere was devised by Otis Barton in 1928.[1][2] The vessel was designed by Captain John H. J. Butler, an engineer with Cox & Stevens, Inc., the firm that Barton hired in 1929 to construct his "diving tank". After the first version proved to be too heavy to be practical, the final, lighter design consisted of a hollow sphere of 1-inch-thick (25 mm) cast steel which was 4.75 ft (1.5 m) in diameter.[1]
