DEPTHS

    TRIESTE: THE BEGINNING OF DISCOVERING

      On 23 January 1960, the Swiss-designed bathyscaphe Trieste, originally built in Italy and acquired by the U.S.Navy, descended to the ocean floor in the trench manned by Jacques Piccard (who co-designed the submersible along with his father, Auguste Piccard). 

        Their crew compartment was inside a spherical pressure vessel. Their descent took almost five hours and the two men spent barely twenty minutes on the ocean floor before undertaking the three-hour-and-fifteen-minute ascent. Their early departure from the ocean floor was due to their concern over a crack in the outer window caused by the temperature differences during their descent. The measured depth at the bottom was measured with a manometer at 10,916 m.

   

Lt. Don Walsh, USN (bottom) and Jacques Piccard (center) in the bathyscaphe Trieste.

More info about the person: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Piccard