Robert Ballard Essay

Words: 617
Pages: 3

“I love the ocean-what can I do?” says Mr. Robert Ballard as a young high schooler. Robert Duane Ballard is an American Marine Geologist born on June 30, 1942 to parents Chester Patrick and Harriet Nell (May) Ballard in Wichita, Kansas. He was raised in Southern California with his 3 siblings, where he developed his passionate love for the sea. Additionally, Ballard was a member of the Army and the Navy in his lifetime. Robert Ballard is best known for his discoveries of the luxury American cruise liner, The RMS Titanic, in 1985, and also The Lusitania, a British cruise ship that was torpedoed by the Germans in World War One. The Lusitania contained one thousand, one hundred ninety-eight people including one hundred twenty-eight U.S citizens. This act by the Germans was one of the reasons that the United States joined the war. …show more content…
One of those contributions was the invention of a remote controlled video camera sled called Argo. It was one of the most important machines in science history, because of its discovery of the RMS Titanic. This unmanned deep-sea exploration tool was three and a half feet wide, fifteen feet long, and over forty thousand pounds in weight. The Argo had several incandescent lights and multiple cameras so that the ocean floor could be lit for Ballard and his team to see. After the crew discovered possible findings, he brought out the Alvin (as shown in Figure One), a deep diving underwater vessel that could hold a small crew. Along with the Alvin, he also used the Jason Junior (as shown in Figure Two), an unmanned remote controlled small vessel that could fit through tight spaces. Ballard was in the Alvin when the machines were sent underwater to more closely observe the wreckage of the