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Alvin’s Forebear

June 9, 2018

On January 20, 1961, in the midst of the Cold War, the bathyscaphe Trieste rolled down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., during the Inauguration Day parade of President John F. Kennedy. Its appearance commemorated the brief visit to Challenger Deep (the deepest known part of the ocean) made by Jacques Piccard and Lieutenant Don Walsh in 1960. That event helped provide motivation for the U.S. Navy, and ultimately WHOI, to build the human-occupied submersible Alvin. Today, Alvin has been through several overhauls and upgrades and made nearly 5,000 dives. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Navy and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Archives)