ANIMATED OCEAN WAVES SERIES

And they had the idea of bringing a camera with them next time. From the glass portals along the tube, they observed red snappers, yellowtails, fat groupers, and other shimmery creatures weaving through the coral reef of the Bahamas. John Ernest and George were enchanted by their father’s machine. At one end of the tube was the boat on the surface of the water at the other, the submersible room.

ANIMATED OCEAN WAVES SERIES

The device was a series of flexible concentric tubes, “interlocking iron rings that stretched like an accordion,” as the Library of Congress puts it, made to suspend from a specially outfitted ship so that a diver could descend into a watertight chamber below.

To do so, the Williamsons turned to a piece of technology their father had designed for divers in undersea repair and salvage jobs. A century ago, the brothers John Ernest and George Williamson, the sons of a sea captain and inventor, would prove it. In the early days, when motion pictures were still new, filming the ocean was a radical idea.Ī surface-level shot of the waves was certainly feasible, but capturing footage of swaying undersea fauna, swimming fish, and marbled sunlight dancing on the seafloor? The consensus was: It couldn’t be done.

Animated ocean waves