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Techniques Perfected: Many expeditions were to follow using improved techniques perfected and instruments. The Norwegian polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930) invented the deep-water sampling Bottle [8] that bears his name. It can carry thermometers for determining the temperature at depth [9]. Plankton nets [7] were perfected and many ingenious instruments, such as the bathythermograph [10], were invented. A breakthrough came with the discovery of echo-sounding [13] just
before World War I, but it was only perfected for use at great depths after World War II.
A new era in marine geosciences was introduced in 1961 by the Mohole project on the US drilling ship CUSS I (from the initials of the participating oil companies). The aim to drill down to the earth's mantle was not achieved, but the accumulated experience was put to use in the American Deep Sea Drilling Project that started in 1968. This project confirmed the sea-floor spreading theory, which states that new sea-floor is generated along the mid-oceanic ridges.
A continuous process for making plate glass was invented about 1904 by Emile Fourcault in Belgium, and was perfected there and in Czechoslovakia soon after World War I. In the United States, Irving W. Colburn also perfected a continuous method, which was first used in 1917 by the Toledo Glass Company at Charleston, W. Va. The Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company installed its glassmaking system several years later. All three processes are based on the same idea.
4. If techniques perfected are perfected for freezing, or otherwise preserving, a live body for resurrection in a future generation, what is the individual's legal status in the meantime? A revocable trust might take care of his property for the benefit of his heirs until he is thawed. But what if he failed to set up such a trust? Even more precarious might be the legal status of these revived "Rip van Winkles." Presumably they would retain their citizenship, but what of their civil rights? Or their legal age? And if they failed to adjust rapidly enough to the strange conditions of the future, would they be liable to committal as incompetent? |
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