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Apr 5, 1394
Prince Henry the Navigator
New World explorer - 3rd son of royal family of portugal. He is most famous for the voyages of discovery that he organised and financed, which eventually led to the rounding of Africa and the establishment of sea routes to the Indies. Prince Henry established a school for the study of the arts of navigation, mapmaking, and shipbuilding. This would allow sailors to better guide their ships and to come up with new ship designs. -
Discovering the Gulf Stream
Benjamin Franklin was a well-known American scientist. He contributed to oceanography in the mid- to late 1700s by making and compiling good observations of ocean currents off the US East Coast. Franklin promoted using the Gulf Stream to speed up delivery of mail from America to Europe, as well as to improve other commercial shipping. -
Matthew Maury
American naval officer and oceanographer Matthew Maury (1806-1873). He studied old ships’ logs. He compiled charts of ocean-wind and sea currents. Maury set adrift weighted bottles known as ‘drift bottles’. These floated slightly below the surface of the water, and thus were not affected by wind. From the location and date on which the bottles were found, Maury was able to develop his charts of the ocean currents—the ‘paths’ of the seas—which greatly aided the science of marine navigation -
Challenger Expedition
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. The expedition was led by British naturalist John Murray and Scottish naturalist Charles Wyville Thompson. -
Sonar
Sonar is a technique that uses sound propagation (usually underwater, as in Submarine navigation) to navigate, communicate with or detect other vessels. Sonar may be used as a means of acoustic location and of measurement of the echo characteristics of "targets" in the water. use by humans in the water is initially recorded by Leonardo Da Vinci in 1490: a tube inserted into the water was said to be used to detect vessels by placing an ear to the tube. -
Bathysphere
The first bathysphere was devised by Otis Barton in 1928.The vessel was designed by Captain John H. J. Butler, an engineer with Cox & Stevens, Inc. In use, the bathysphere was suspended from a one-inch (2.54 cm) cable, and a solid rubber hose carried an electrical supply and telephone wires which were the occupants' only means of communication with the surface. On August 15, 1934, Barton and Beebe made a world record descent to a depth of 3,028 feet (923 m), the record remaining unbroken for 15 -
Pytheas, B.C
Pytheas of Massalia or Massilia (4th century BC), was a Greek geographer and explorer from the Greek colony, Massalia. He made a voyage of exploration to northwestern Europe at about 325 BC. He travelled around and visited a considerable part of Great Britain. Some of his observations may be the earliest report of Stonehenge. Pytheas is the first person on record to describe the Midnight Sun -
BC Eratosthenes
He was a Greek mathematician, elegiac poet, athlete, geographer, astronomer, and music theorist. He was the first person to use the word "geography" and invented the discipline of geography as we understand it. He invented a system of latitude and longitude. -
AD Ptolemy
Ptolemy was the author of several scientific treatises, at least three of which were of continuing importance to later Islamic and European science. The first is the astronomical treatise now known as the Almagest. The second is the Geography, which is a thorough discussion of the geographic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world.
