Overview

The greatest ocean depth yet located is the Challenger Deep, a part of the Mariana Trench that descends to a depth of 36,201 feet—almost seven miles down. While this great depth has not yet been reached, on January 23, 1960, the Trieste descended to 35,800 feet (10,912 meters), the greatest depth yet reached by man. This descent showed that the technology had been developed to take people virtually anywhere on Earth and that, just seven years after Mount Everest had been scaled, the depths of the sea had been conquered too. The technology that went into designing and building Trieste was later used for other...