Oceanography

By Aaron1881
  • 5000 BCE

    The start

    Ocean exploration has begun with the first ocean diving and and the first sailing vessels. (scientific research)

  • DIving

    Deep sea Diving became possible when the development of suits and helmets were invented (scientific research)

  • Currents

    Benjamin Franklin was a well-known American scientist and he contributed to oceanography by making and compiling good observations of ocean currents off the US East Coast. He was particularly interested in the Gulf Stream, a fast-moving current of warm surface water that sweeps up from Florida, along the continental slope off the US East Coast, and then bends eastward across the North Atlantic all the way to Europe. (Scientific Research)

  • Trade

    By this time people were looking and finding new ways of trading with others and found paths in the ocean to take. People also were discovering new materials and resources. (Trade)

  • US Navy

    Matthew Fontaine Maury became head of the US Navy’s Department of Charts and Instruments to only discover that the Navy had very few charts of the oceans, but it did have a big storeroom of dusty logbooks from Navy ships. In these logbooks, sea captains traveling the North Atlantic had recorded their daily locations, as well the speeds and directions of winds and currents. (Scientific Research) (Navigation)

  • Darwin

    Charles Darwin’s scientific career began in the teeth of a gale, the HMS Beagle, a British warship, left Devonport, England, for an expedition to map the South American coastline and to carry out chronometer surveys all over the globe. (Scientific Research)

  • Map

    The first even map of the ocean floor. The Aqua-Lung is invented by Jacques Cousteau, and a prehistoric fish long thought to be extinct is found alive on the ocean floor. (navigation)

  • Titanic

    The oceans have always played a big role in wars, ships transported armies and supplies, besieged cities, and attacked enemy ships, but the Civil War helped launch a stealthy new seagoing weapon that became common in warfare-submarines. To combat this new threat, Navy leaders soon realized that they could detect submarines using sound transmitted through water. Huge efforts began to develop sonar, interestingly, was first developed to help avoid icebergs after the Titanic sank. (Navtication)

  • Drills

    An international group of oceanographic institutions and the U.S. National Science Foundation created a program of ocean drilling. Its initial goal was to test Tuzo Wilson's hypothesis of plate tectonics. (Scientific Research)

  • Crust

    Scientist Yehuda Bock initiated a network of GPS receiving stations placed throughout Southern California to study movements of the Earth's crust to less than 1/20 of an inch. Today, using continuous measurements of the positions of the stations, Scripps researchers rapidly determine which parts of Southern California are actively changing. (Scientific research)