Deepest Dive

Because helium is light and therefore requires little effort to inhale, doctors have found it of value in treating asthma, croup, laryngitis and diphtheria when a constriction of the windpipe makes breathing difficult. It is also of value to deep-sea divers, as a 27-year-old engineer named Max Nohl demonstrated last week when he descended 420 ft. to the bottom of Lake Michigan. This was the deepest dive ever made in a diving suit.* An unofficial record of 361 feet was established in 1916 in Michigan's Grand Traverse Bay. Previous official record was 306 ft., set in 1915 by Frank Crilley of the U. S. Navy who reached the submarine F-4 at the bottom of Honolulu's Pearl Harbor.

When he was a senior at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Max Nohl joined the round-the-world broadcasting cruise of Phillips ("Seth Parker") Lord with a diving bell of his own design. After graduation in 1935, he became a professional diver, worked on several successful salvaging jobs, brought up nothing but an 1851 penny from the hulk of the West M or eland which sank in Lake Michigan in 1854. He started experimenting with helium mixtures in a decompression chamber at Milwaukee County General Hospital.

The suit in which Max Nohl made last week's record dive was designed by himself, with the aid of Captain John Craig, a writer, lecturer and explorer who had invented a successful undersea camera. The suit is of rubber and weighs, with helmet, shoes and weights, 200 Ib. An underdress of heavy fleece wool and waterproof canvas is worn inside, the rubber canvas trousers, with pockets, outside. The helmet is cylindrical, has a glass window 3/8 in. thick all the way around, so that the diver has as wide an angle of vision as he can turn his head.

There is no air supply coming down through a hose, the diver carries tanks of oxygen and helium on his back, inside the suit, adjusts his own atmosphere. Thus there is no airline to foul or puncture, and the diver can even disconnect his hoist line for greater freedom, keeping track of a "distance line" on the bottom so that he can find his way back to the surface connecting lines. If he happens to lose it, he can, according to Diver Nohl, rise of his own accord by valving gas into the suit.

The painful and sometimes fatal diver's affliction called "the bends" is caused by bubbles of nitrogen formed in the blood during a too quick ascent after a deep dive. Helium is so light that it tends to escape from the blood without forming bubbles of damaging size. Thus Nohl's suit considerably reduces the time necessary for a dive. But wishing to take no chances with his first 420-ft. try, he was brought up very slowly, in one hour and 45 minutes.

When he was derricked over the side of the Coast Guard cutter Antietam last week, his lines fouled at 200 ft. and he was brought back. Next time he got all the way down without difficulty. "Holy smoke," he yelled into his telephone, "I'm on the bottom." It was so dark that he could not see six inches. When he was hoisted back on board, the only thing that bothered him was cold feet.

No attempt has been made to commercialize the suit or keep its details secret, and the Navy has been supplied with all essential information. One purpose to which Messrs. Nohl & Craig hope to put it is the salvaging of valuable articles from the Lusitania. Two years ago, the Orphir, a privately financed salvage ship, located a large hulk off tne Irish coast by means of an echo-sounder, and this was assumed to be the Lusitania when a diver found two-inch rivets, such as used in constructing the Lusitania. Bad weather and other difficulties drove the searchers off before there was any opportunity to look for treasure. Nohl and Craig hope that their efficient suit with complete freedom of movement will encourage the Orphir's sponsors to try again.

*Dr. William Beebe's bathysphere record is 3,028 ft.

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