extending modern cartography to the ocean depths

Journal of Historical Geography 32 (2006) 605e626www.elsevier.com/locate/jhg

Extending modern cartography to the ocean depths: military patronage, Cold War priorities, and the HeezeneTharp mapping project, 1952e1959Ronald E. Doel a,*, Tanya J. Levin b and Mason K. Marker cDepartment of Geosciences, joint with Department of History, Program in History of Science, Oregon State University, 306 Milam Hall Corvallis, OR 97331, USA b Independent Scholar, Muenster, Germany c Department of Civil Engineering and Geomatics, Oregon Institute of Technology, Klamath Falls, OR 97601, USAa

Abstract The rst comprehensive map of any ocean basindcovering the North Atlantic regiondwas created in the US in the 1950s. Compiled by Bruce C. Heezen and Marie Tharp, researchers at Columbia Universitys Lamont Geological Observatory, the HeezeneTharp physiographic map of 1957 was signicant in several respects. It dened the large-scale physiological provinces of the seaoor, and highlighted its major physical features (including the Rift Valley of mid-oceanic ridge, which Tharp discovered). Military funding for oceanographic research in the early Cold War made possible extensive sea voyages that provided these Columbia researchers sea-oor depth proles and other critical information; military secrecy persuaded Heezen and Tharp to adopt the physiographic approach when national security restrictions made new bathymetric maps born classied. But overlooked until now is that the HeezeneTharp map also deeply depended on extensive support from Bell Labs, then laboring to install the rst transatlantic telephone lines. Heezens hope that the map would support the theory of the expanding earth over the resurrected theory of continental drift did not succeed. But the 1957 North Atlantic Physiographic Chart did rearm that representations of the seaoor, mediated by new technologies, fundamentally reected changing motivations for studying the oceans. 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Keywords: North Atlantic; Cartography; Oceanography; Physiographic map; Heezen; Tharp; Cold War

* Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] 0305-7488/$ - see front matter 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2005.10.011

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R.E. Doel et al. / Journal of Historical Geography 32 (2006) 605e626

Introduction One of the most profound advances in mid-twentieth-century mapping was the creation of the rst detailed maps of the seaoor. In the late 1930s, little was known of the features of the submerged ocean oor beyond a handful of discrete landforms and regions. At that time the ocean basins were classied into several broad provinces, their contours somewhat arbitrarily dened.1 But two decades later, Bruce C. Heezen and Marie Tharp of Columbia Universitys Lamont Geological Observatory published the rst comprehensive map of the seaoor of the North Atlantic Ocean, the rst of a series of maps that came to encompass the South Atlantic, Indian Ocean, and eventually all the globes ocean basins. Detailing some 12 million square miles, roughly four times the area of the continental US, the HeezeneTharp North Atlantic map of 1957 was the rst that dened the large-scale physiographic provinces of the seaoor, denitions that are still in contemporary use, and identied its major geological features (including the Rift Valley bisecting the extensive linear mountain range called the mid-Atlantic Ridge). Their mapping program provided critical evidence in support of the theory of plate tectonics, accepted by a majority of earth scientists by the end of the 1960s. In terms of its cartographic signicance, the rst published Heezene Tharp map, initially controversial, ranks among the most innovative mapping achievements of the last half-century.2 The maps which Heezen and Tharp produced were not only completed in the early Cold War period, but were fundamentally shaped by the Cold War. Data points employed by these researchers to create their maps owed to improved instruments, including sounding devices and automated depth recorders, nanced by US defense agencies. Even more signicant was the tremendous geographic extent of their mapping program. Pentagon funding for oceanographic research in the late 1940s and 1950s allowed research vessels to routinely ply paths across the entire expanse of the oceans for the rst time, an unprecedented expansion of pre-World War II oceanography (which, with few exceptions, was primarily restricted to coastal investigations). The HeezeneTharp map of the North Atlantic seaoor was also shaped by industrial patronage, because Heezen gained critical support from Bell Laboratories when AT&T prepared to lay the rst transatlantic telephone cable in the 1950s. But even here commercial and military aims intersected. Bell Labs was simultaneously installing communications cabling for secret US undersea eavesdropping arrays, for which accurate maps were equally crucial.3 The HeezeneTharp mapping program reected military inuence in another and no less significant way. After the Pentagon decided to classify depth data for national security reasons in the early 1950s, Heezen and Tharp elected to create a physiographic map over a bathymetric map, thereby skirting restrictions on disclosing depths at precise positions. But as they soon discovered, the physiographic approach also gave them advantages in portraying poorly reconnoitered regions of the seaoor, allowing extrapolation between narrow slivers of survey data from Atlantic-crossing ships. As with all maps, the form, design, and content of the 1957 North Atlantic seaoor map revealed as much about the mapmakers as it did the subject under study.4 While certain oceanographers did view the ocean as a set of discrete locations, places related to one another in one grand physical system, as Philip E. Steinberg recently observed in his The Social Construction of the Ocean, Heezen and Tharp were less interested in creating a precise map of particular ocean oor features than in determining its characteristic landforms and orientations in order to discover how the seaoor and the earth itself had evolved.5 Their map became a conceptual space


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to work out competing theoretical interpretations; ultimately, by focusing attention on the entire North Atlantic and subsequently other ocean oors, it also helped dene the ocean basins as a bounded environmental region vulnerable to pollution and exploitation.6 While in certain respects an example of state cartography because of the tools, methods and patronage on which it relied, the HeezeneTharp map was a private technical work, not intended primarily for general audiences, which challenged US military hopes to limit access to strategic geographic information about the seaoor. It thus dees easy characterization.7 In the 1970s, a noted artists painting of the HeezeneTharp world ocean-oor map (underwritten by the National Geographic Society) made this map one of the most popular and widely recognized cartographic works in recent history, a Gods eye view of the entire earth that came to be an icon of twentieth-century planetary exploration.8 Cartographic techniques pursued by Heezen and Tharp, the central issue in several prior accounts, are only briey reviewed here.9 Instead, this study examines how military patronagedand demands for practical terrain assessments from telephone cable engineersdshaped this important mapping program.10 Rather than addressing iconography, we focus on the actual processes of surveying and compiling maps; rather than reviewing an early map, we focus on one created in the second half of the twentieth century.11 It is not a comprehensive history of eorts to chart the ocean depths, an important work which remains largely unwritten. Based on burgeoning studies of oceanography and the earth sciences in the US after World War II, our study also draws extensively on previously underutilized archival collections, on recently declassied documents, and on the more than 200 hours of interviews done for the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Oral History Project of Columbia Universitys Oral History Research Oce, the largest oral history project to date in the history of the earth sciences.12

New imperatives to map the ocean oor Until the mid-1940s, eorts to map the ocean oor beyond the immediate coastline were episodic and spotty. While the North Atlantic Ocean was one of the most tracked seas, immediately accessible to Western Europeans and to North Americans, researchers at the turn of the twentieth century had only a sketchy sense of its major landforms and provinces. What information was available came from state-sponsored oceanographic voyages, such as those conducted by the USS Taney in 1849 and the HMS Challenger expedition of 1872e1876, which sought depth measurements in part to aid whaling. Insights into the nature of the seaoor also came from commercial ships laying cable for the rst transatlantic telegraph lines from Newfoundland to Ireland, beginning in the 1850s. Hydrographers soon perceived certain large-scale geographic features, including a northern elevation quickly dubbed Telegraph Ridge. Although the US naval ocer Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806e1873) forcefully advocated depth-sounding eorts to advance physical oceanography as well as economic ambitiondhis Physical Geography of the Sea rst appeared in 1855dtechnological advances came slowly. For navigational purposes, knowing minimum depth suced. Not until the operational needs of submarine telegraphy posed specic new questions did advanced new methods for determining seaoor depths (and for the rst time, retrieving bottom samples) come into use in the 1860s.13 By the early twentieth century, the rise of oceanography as an international scientic discipline and further advances in depth-sounding instruments inspired scientists to step up mapping eorts.

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In 1903, Prince Albert I of Monaco, long interested in oceanography, agreed to nance production of a Carte generale bathymetrique des oceans (GEBCO), which rst appeared in 1905; responsibility for subsequent, expanded editions later passed to the International Hydrographic Bureau, created in 1921.14 Sea-oor soundings proliferated in the interwar years, particularly following the invention of the echo sounder. The German Meteor expedition of 1925e1927dnanced by the Weimar government to reassert Germanys scientic standing and national pride following World War Idwas the rst oceanographic expedition to systematically employ echo sounders to create seaoor proles. The Meteors traverses across southern Atlantic Ocean latitudes bordering Germanys African colonies revealed seamounts and broad abyssal plains; they also conrmed that the enigmatic mid-Atlantic Ridge (a sharp northesouth rise rst indicated in late nineteenthcentury soundings) seemed continuous across the regions it surveyed.15 The burgeoning use of echo-sounding technology encouraged leaders of the International Hydrographic Bureau to seek a new version of the Carte generale. Both scientists and naval ocers perceived the ocean oor as an international commons, and emphasized the importance of international cooperation in producing increasingly accurate ocean-oor maps. Information about the seaoor was virtually useless until put on charts, Scripps Institution of Oceanography director T. Wayland Vaughan declared in 1933, arguing that further updates to the Carte Generale were one of the most urgent needs for advance in the study of a number of the very large problems of oceanography, geophysics and geology.16 Within a decade, however, seaoor mapping became a far more nationalistic and secretive undertaking. World War II caused the oceans to become far more relevant to national security because of two technological developments: long-distance communications that utilized the acoustic properties of the sea, and antisubmarine warfare. The accuracy of SONAR range-nding and communications equipment depended on knowledge not only of temperature proles across the ocean but the character of the seaoor, since acoustical signals were aected dierently by at abyssal plains versus rocky, elevated slopes. Advances in submarine design also made antisubmarine warfare a critical defense concern in the early Cold War years, one that came to rival ballistic missile programs and strategic nuclear weapons deployment as central pillars of US national defense policy. Naval planners sought improved maps of the seaoor to better understand where submarines could travel undetected, where seamounts posed heightened risk of collision, and where enemy submarines could hide. As US Navy ocials developed the secret SOSUS (SOund SUrveillance System) project, a network of cable-linked listening devices that covered key areas of the Atlantic (and later Pacic) oceans and allowed Soviet submarines to be tracked, knowledge of the seaoor became even more strategically important. Civilian scientists in the Pentagons Research and Development Board intended to identify key unsolved scientic problems crucial to national defense, declared the entire eld of oceanography crucial because of undersea warfare. Creating a comprehensive map of the ocean oor was a critical component of this task.17 After World War II, expanded US mapping eorts began at the major east and west coast oceanographic institutions: the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Concentrated mapping studies also began at the Lamont Geological Observatory of Columbia University, founded in 1949 by the geophysicist W. Maurice Ewing, formerly of Lehigh University and WHOI. Born of Columbias desire to pursue new research opportunities in geophysics, Ewings leadership in earth sciences elds of intense interest to the Pentagon, and the surge of military support for earth sciences research after World War II,


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Lamont Geological Observatory was a quintessential Cold War institution, largely dependent on military contracts to support its research programs. Under Ewing, an intense hard-driven man ercely determined to understand the nature of the seaoor and the forces that shaped it, Lamont became a key research center devoted to wide-ranging studies of the physical properties of the ocean oor.18 Through the late 1940s and early 1950s, Ewing worked to quickly expand Lamontdhoused on the former Hudson River estate of the J. P. Morgan nancial advisor Thomas Lamont, just north of Manhattan. While Ewing did not succeed in establishing research spanning the full range of the physical and biological environmental sciences, as he had rst hoped, he soon jumpstarted new eorts in geochemistry, seismology and marine geology, and recruited new graduate students to Lamont.19 The challenge that Ewing faceddshared by all directors of oceanographic institutionsdwas gaining access to the deep oceans, a far more expensive activity than surveying near-shore regions.20 Drawing on his World War II connections with WHOI, Ewing and his graduate students initially took part on cruises of the Woods Hole research ship Atlantis. Later, frustrated by his ability to pursue eld research, he leased the sea-going tug Kevin Moran for a three-month voyage.21 Not until Ewing persuaded Columbia University to purchase the 200foot former luxury yacht Vema in 1953 to serve as Lamonts research vessel were Lamont researchers able to aggressively survey the deep ocean regions around the globe. Securing the Vema allowed Ewing to investigate broader swaths of the ocean than had been possible before, and made mapping projects feasible.22 Two individualsdone drawn east to Lamont as a graduate student, one hired for her drafting skillsdcame to lead the mapping eorts at Lamont. The student-and-soon-to-become-Lamontresearcher was Bruce C. Heezen (1924e1977), an ambitious, outspoken geology undergraduate at the Iowa State University whom Ewing met in 1947 while on a lecturing tour. Convinced of his talent and enthusiasm, Ewing then brought Heezen to Columbia as his graduate student. By contrast, Marie Tharp (1920e) straddled the border between geology and geography. One of roughly 10 female students recruited to the University of Michigans petroleum geology program during World War II to replace geologists involved in war work, Tharp earned a Masters degree in geology in 1944. Finding few job prospects with oil companies after the War ended, Tharp then secured a BS in mathematics from Tulsa University in 1948, relocated to New York, and found work as an assistant to Heezen.23 Their early careers oer a snapshot of the divergent opportunities for men and women in the earth sciences in mid-twentieth-century America. One of very few female researchers at Lamont during its rst decades, Tharp had limited nancial security and few opportunities to attend scientic meetings. Typical for this period, her contributions often remained invisible: 1950s New York Times reports of seaoor discoveries made by Heezen and Tharp often mentioned Heezen alone.24 Heezen and Tharp also illuminated another social dynamic: both professionally and personally close to Heezen, she was part of a creative couple in science.25 Heezens interest in interpreting the topography of the ocean oor arose from a conuence of factors. Soon after arriving at Lamont, Heezen joined Ewing on North Atlantic expeditions, quickly absorbing Ewings relentless determination to gather as much seaoor data in the shortest possible time. Early in his graduate career, Heezen also read and re-read Dutch geologist J. H. F. Umbgroves comprehensive and inuential 1947 text The Pulse of the Earth. While Heezen rarely annotated books in his personal library, he heavily underscored several chapters in Umbgrove,

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particularly The Floors of the Oceans. While occasionally disagreeing with Umbgrovedincluding over what processes were primarily responsible for transporting sediments onto the continental shelvesdhe took special note of Umbgroves argument that structures in the Atlantic ocean basin resembled those in the African continent, as well as his assertion that the Indian Oceans Carlsberg Ridge formed almost the exact mirror-image of the famous Rift Valley in East Africa, since both places experienced volcanism and earthquake activity.26 Such issues deeply intrigued Heezen. More than many other graduate students at Lamont in its early years, he regarded earths evolution as a question contemporary geophysical methods could address.27 Another reason that Heezen became deeply interested in processes that had sculpted the seaoor was work he did for his Masters thesis at Columbia, which explored the powerful Grand Banks earthquake of 1929 oshore from Newfoundland. By carefully studying records of transatlantic telegraph cable breaks, Heezen concluded that this 7.2-magnitude quake had generated intense turbidity currentsdrapidly owing dense mixtures of sand and seawaterdthat swept down the continental shelf, successively snapping telegraph cables at lower depths.28 Whether turbidity currents in fact existed was not then universally accepted by marine geoscientists, in part because these powerful, short-lived phenomena challenged reigning uniformitarian assumptions in geology, which held that slow, steady, continuous processes in nature were far more likely than those that were abrupt, discontinuous, and catastrophic.29 Heezen nevertheless felt certain that his interpretation was correct. In the 1950s, increasingly interested in ocean mapping, Heezen joined the international advisory committee for the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO).30 A third reason that Heezen became committed to seaoor topography research was his longterm professional involvement with AT&Ts Bell Labs, beginning in 1951.31 In the early 1950s Bell Labsdits Murray Hill, NJ campus less than a two hours drive from Lamontdbegan planning the rst undersea telephone line from the US to Britain and Europe, a project code-named TAT-1 (Trans-Atlantic Telephone-1). While TAT-1 was a commercial venture, Bell Labs was also quietly involved in laying cables for the secret SOSUS undersea submarine surveillance system, utilizing cables and repeaters (used to boost signal strength along the length of the underseas cable) similar or identical to those on TAT-1.32 Heezen came to the attention of Bell Labs engineers on account of his studies of turbidity currents and telegraph cable breaks in the Grand Banks. Bell engineers sought his advice about how they might avoid environmental engineering hazards while routing TAT-1 from the coastal town of Clarenville, Newfoundland to its counterpart in Oban, Scotland.33 Heezens contract work with Bell Labs aided Tharp and him in two distinct ways. First, working with Bell Labs engineers soon provided him access to a rich, vastly expanded source of seaoor data far beyond what Heezen had reviewed for his Grand Banks study.34 Telegraph cable breaks were commondowing to corrosion, chang on exposed rock faces, and seaoor grappling by commercial sheries operationsdand Heezen gained direct access to late nineteenth- and twentieth-century cable-splicing records from numerous international rms, such as Cable and Wireless (C&W) in London, far superior to those maintained by US companies.35 Although telegraph cable data covered only a narrow transect of the deep ocean oor, they provided invaluable information on bottom temperature variations and cable failures, allowing Heezen to better assess the frequency of turbidity current ows as a geologic process [Figs. 1 and 2].36 In August 1956 an ecstatic Heezen wrote to the engineer Charles H. Elmendorf, his chief Bell Labs contact, that


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Fig. 1. Control Chart. This diagram reveals ship tracks from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Lamont Geological Observatory expeditions, as well as from British Admiralty surveys; lines marked by alternating long dash and two short dashes were highresolution soundings made during the 1927e1929 German Meteor expedition. Oft-visited Puerto Rico and Bermuda were both of high concern to the US military in the early Cold War. Research vessels on these voyages often recorded magnetic, seismic, and gravity data, as well as depth proles and occasional sea-bottom photographs. Originally published in Heezen, Tharp and Ewing, The oors of the oceans, 1959, reproduced with permission.

while changing trains in Paris he had dashed to the oces of the French Cable Oce, nding their cable break records as valuable as those of C&W.37 Heezens Bell Labs contract thus greatly increased his access to seaoor data beyond that available at Lamont or published through state-sponsored exploring expeditions. Second, his Bell Labs contract provided Heezen and Tharp invaluable nancial resources. In 1956 Heezen used contract funds to hire the M/V Theta out of St. Nazaire, France for a three-week Atlantic Ocean voyage to investigate a number of C&W cable failuresdwell beyond what Vemas tight scheduling would have allowed. The importance of Heezens connections with Bell Labs, a major center of military-industrial research, has been overlooked in earlier accounts of the maps history.38 Military contracts at Lamont had allowed Heezen and Ewing to produce numerous proles of ocean oors, yet these funds proved insucient to reduce data or prepare detailed maps. Bell Labs funding made the HeezeneTharp North Atlantic physiographic map possible. Indeed, Heezens commitment to produce a useful analysis of the North Atlantic seaoordone that would permit his Bell Labs colleagues to lay expensive telephone cable with condence of minimal repairdhelped shape the eventual HeezeneTharp physiographic map in fundamental ways. By the mid-1950s Heezen was thinking hard about practical routes to lay cables, inspiring him to reect on the limitations of depth soundings.39 While condent about new seaoor prole data from Lamonts new Precision Depth Recorder (PDR)da device developed by sta member Bernard Luskin in 1954 that automatically recorded depth measurements with an accuracy of one part in 3000dHeezen realized that few North Atlantic soundings met the PDRs exacting

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Fig. 2. Route of the rst transatlantic submarine-telephone-cable system. Finding a path that would require minimal maintenance by Bell technicians involved Heezen in pragmatic as well as theoretical studies of the oceans oor. From ONeill, A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System (cit. n. 3), 342, reproduced with permission.

standards. His Bell Labs experiences also made him increasingly suspicious of pre-1945 Hydrographic Oce seaoor data, noting for instance his conviction that certain earlier depth soundings likely recorded passing schools of sh; other published measurements, he felt, reected botched reductions or carelessly jotted entries.40 Heezen certainly had weighed potential largescale errors in existing seaoor data before consulting at Bell Labs. But the immediate pragmatic demand of determining seaoor cable routes also gave immediacy to this task, and made his mapping work with Tharp deeply pragmatic as well as a cutting-edge scientic program. The physiographic map emerges: 1952e1959 Ewings ruthless determination to amass as much information as possible on the nature of the seaoordthrough cores, magnetic proles, seismological records, direct samples, and depth measurementsdstimulated eorts to systematically analyze this burgeoning data. While researchers at Scripps and WHOI also saw advantages in producing maps to interpret burgeoning data about the seaoordH. William Menard, Heezens counterpart at Scripps, began mapping the Pacic in the 1950sdEwings insistence that Lamont scientists on oceanic cruises run multiple instrument lines, make frequent corings, and gather high-resolution depth proles gave Lamont an advantage in total volume of relevant seaoor information.41 By the early 1950s, taking full advantage of the new Columbia ship Vema, and prior Woods Hole Atlantis cruises that had targeted the mid-Atlantic Ridge, Heezen and Tharp were in an extremely advantageous situation to produce new maps of the Atlantic and other world oceans.42


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One challenge that they and other prospective mapmakers faced was the states growing concern with earth sciences data as a threat to national security. Through the 1940s, the US government did not seek to classify earth sciences data as it did atomic information and methods of detecting atomic explosions. But the successful testing of the rst Soviet atomic weapon in 1949, and the outbreak of the Korean War the following year, made Pentagon ocials increasingly cautious about the international sharing of seaoor data, commonly done prior to World War II. In 1952 the Pentagon sought to classify a broad range of formerly available information in the earth sciences, including geomagnetic data, upper atmospheric data, and oceanographic data. Because the major Cold War weapons projectsdthe ballistic missile and antisubmarine warfare eortsddepended on precise gravitational measurements and accurate seaoor contours, military authorities sought to restrict access to this information to cleared individuals, prohibiting publication of any precise seaoor depths greater than 300 fathoms (1800 feet).43 Sea-oor depth soundings especially worried Navy ocials, who feared that disclosing precise depths would compromise their ability to maintain robust antisubmarine warfare defenses.44 Civilian earth scientists, including oceanographers, resisted Pentagon plans to classify basic data in the earth sciences. Athelstan Spilhaus, Dean of the University of Minnesotas Institute of Technology and a senior military consultant, prepared a strong rebuttal for the Research and Development Board. Other geophysicists joined in, including the Minneapolis consulting engineer Lorenz G. Straub, who argued that classifying earth sciences information harms actual security by attracting attention to what is important. Impeding the exchange of scientic data, he added, meant that new ndings were less carefully reviewed and deciencies thus harder to spot.45 Naval leaders were not convinced. They insisted that depth soundings made after 1952 remain classied along with any new bathymetric maps.46 Initial discussions of what became the HeezeneTharp physiographic map of the North Atlantic emerged at this same time. In 1952 Heezen made a quick free-hand sketch of the North Atlantic basin, based on his emerging condence about its dominant landforms and provinces. He and Tharp then quickly developed plans for a detailed physiographic map that could incorporate now-classied depth soundings without revealing secret bathymetric details. The physiographic approachdwhich portrayed physical features from an oblique perspective, their scale and position carefully controlleddoered them several advantages over other cartographic techniques. In addition to enabling them to circumvent Navy secrecy policy, physiographic diagrams allowed Heezen and Tharp to extrapolate morphological trends to regions where depth data were scarce (the inverse of the motivation behind most physiographic diagrams, where complex eld information is simplied for improved visual clarity). Despite having the most complete set of North Atlantic deep-sea measurements in the worlddgiven their access to cable company records as well as Lamont studiesdHeezen and Tharp were well aware that their data set was limited. As a result they became inclined even more towards a physiographic map by the work of their Columbia University colleague Armin K. Lobeck, a geologist and cartographer whose 1939 Geomorphology: An Introduction to the Study of Landscapes oered a compelling case for utilizing physiographic diagrams.47 Tharp came to employ Lobecks methods in preparing their ocean-oor maps, aware (like Heezen) of the tremendous diculty of visualizing the seaoor.48 Finally, the physiographic map was especially helpful for Heezen in communicating information about the seaoor with engineers at Bell Labs planning

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the rst commercial undersea telephone cable.49 In essence, Heezen and Tharps choice was overdetermined, and not due to classication issues alone. Creating the rst drafts of what became the HeezeneTharp North Atlantic map involved numerous researchers and assistants, including plotters and drafters, more than a dozen in all.50 Determining the scale of the map may have been the easiest task of all: Heezen and Tharp decided to maintain the 1:5,000,000 base scale then utilized by GEBCOs bathymetric chart series and the US Navys classied maps. They also employed a vertical exaggeration of 40:1, consistent with the extensive data published from the German Meteor expedition of 1925e1927.51 The central work involved compiling, evaluating, and recording all historic and contemporary depth data. They then created high-resolution proles for cross-Atlantic survey cruises (particularly those produced by Luskins Precision Depth Recorder), and then plotted these reduced values on North Atlantic base charts. Only after this work was completed could Tharp and her assistants begin the task of creating the physiographic map, translating compiled depth measurements and surrogate ocean oor information into the elevations and shadings inherent in this diagram [Fig. 3].52 The kind of error-checking that Research and Development Board members had worried would not be done because of secrecy classication thus was achieved, at least to an extent, within Lamont itself.53 Because Heezen and Tharp worked so closely and directly with one another in creating their rst ocean basin map, few letters passed between them. It is therefore dicult to reconstruct how each sought to shape the seaoor topography portrayed in the North Atlantic physiographic map. Disputes were inevitable because of the limited number of ocean-spanning depth proles: lling gaps between these widely-spaced proles was an issue open to interpretation. The nal North Atlantic map of 1957 was based no less on geological and geographical intuition than on exacting methods of experimentation in the physical sciences. One early dispute involved the existence of the Rift Valley in the mid-Atlantic Ridge: by 1952 Tharp was convinced that it was real, in part because of the high correlation between shallow-focus earthquakes and the ridges central axis, although two years passed until Heezen accepted her interpretation.54 This was a signicant development: Heezen then came to accept that the Rift Valley in Africa was morphologically similar to the central valley of the mid-Atlantic Ridge, and he visited the Rift Valley to better understand its geology.55 Heezen also believed that the structure of the world-encircling mid-ocean ridge system supported the theory of the expanding earth, which held that the earths major geophysical features were best explained if the planet was slowly swelling over time. Heezens commitment to the expanding earth theory, then most forcefully advocated by Australian geologist S. Warren Carey, convinced him that the major structures of the ocean oor were tensional features caused as the earth swelled. For Heezen, the expanding earth theory also best explained the at, deep sands of the abyssal plains, whose existence had convinced Ewing to reject the idea of continental drift.56 Both Heezen and Tharp understood how much was at stake in developing theories of the earth, and both felt passionate about their at times diering interpretations of the North Atlantic seaoor. Sometimes mapping disagreements between them boiled over. Occasionally, Heezen grabbed a power eraser to vanquish Tharps interpretation of the trend lines for undersea mountain chains; after reviewing their data, Tharp frequently redrew these landforms along her preferred orientations, employing all available seismic, magnetic, coring, and bottom-photography data. What is clear is that this creative couple in science mutually produced the North Atlantic physiographic map: Heezens views did not always prevail.57


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Fig. 3. Marie Tharp, Method of preparation of physiographic diagram. Ship track lines were traced on a chart, alongside measured depth proles (plotted at 40:1 vertical exaggeration). Tharp then prepared physiographic sketches along track lines utilizing these depth proles; after this, she and Heezen used all available datadand their judgment of trend lines and alignmentsdto ll in intermediate areas. From Heezen, Tharp and Ewing, The oors of the oceans, reproduced with permission.

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Fig. 4. Physiographic diagram of the Atlantic Ocean by Bruce C. Heezen and Marie Tharp, 1957. This large-scale map (measuring roughly 71 141 cm, or 28 55 inches) was rst distributed with a Bell Laboratories technical publication, underscoring its relationship to the laying of the rst transatlantic telephone cable. From Elmendorf and Heezen, Oceanographic information for engineering submarine cable systems, 1957, reproduced with permission.

The HeezeneTharp North Atlantic map was rst published in full as an insert to a volume of the Bell System Technical Journal in September 1957, accompanying an article on the TAT-1 route-survey challenge [Figs. 4 and 5].58 But it was a subsequent 1959 HeezeneTharpeEwing monograph published by the Geological Society of America, another institutional patron of this project, which for the rst time oered Heezen and Tharps explanation of the maps foundations. A capstone to seven years labor, their 1959 publication spelled out the voluminous data backstopping the map. Heezen and Tharp provided hints of their theoretical commitments: a passage likely written by Heezen argued that the mid-Atlantic Ridge, like the African Rift Valley, was likely caused by extension of the crust.59 But the monograph primarily justied their overall classication of the North Atlantic ocean into three distinct provinces: the continental margins, the ocean basin oor (containing the vast, at abyssal plains), and the continuous mid-oceanic ridge. This became the maps most enduring contribution, for it created the modern classication scheme for the worlds ocean basins. Moreover, it was the most comprehensive map of any ocean ever produced until that time.60 New maps and the new global geophysics The HeezeneTharp North Atlantic map of 1957, when rst published, did not receive universal acclaim. Indeed, criticisms of the maps design and content arose on several fronts. British oceanographer Anthony S. Laughton, writing to Heezen in 1958, expressed concern that Heezen and Tharp had drawn a continuous valley through the mid-Atlantic Ridge when so few data points existeddparticularly since other 1950s survey tracks, in his view, failed to show the rift at all.


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Fig. 5. Detail from the 1957 HeezeneTharp physiographic diagram. Tharps detailed map included the midatlantic ridge and its continuous Rift Valley (upper left corner), unclassied depth measurements (in fathoms), several named seamounts and at-top mountains (called guyots); at lower right, an abyssal plain.

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At least one oceanographer questioned whether the Rift Valley existed at all.61 Other marine scientists objected to the fundamental design of the map: for them, the limited number of prole tracks and isolated depth soundings meant that the map was speculative and of marginal value.62 At Scripps, Menard argued that marine geosciences would advance faster if researchers limited their mapping to well-reconnoitered regions, thus reducing unhelpful speculation.63 In certain respects this criticism reected long-standing frictions between geophysicists and geologists about the signicance of geological eld data andda far larger issuedwhether the methods and approaches of geophysicists were more rigorous and precise than those of geologists in producing knowledge about the earth. Similar tensions had emerged in the early twentieth century, when geophysicists had disparaged geological and paleontological evidence for continental drift by asserting the primacy of physics-based methods; the HeezeneTharp physiographic map clearly belonged to the geologicalegeographical tradition.64 Heezen and Tharp nevertheless remained condent about the general accuracy and importance of their work, determined to update their North Atlantic map even while aiming at the larger goal of creating a global ocean map. Available patronage continued to determine their next steps. Responding to defense contractors who sought specic geographical maps of the Gulf of Mexico and the far northern Atlantic Ocean, Heezen noted that it would be possible to produce specialized maps on an accelerated schedule if funds were provided for plotting and drafting: a physiographic diagram of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, Heezen estimated, would cost $25,000 to pay for drafters and calculators.65 But their primary aim remained mapping the remaining ocean basins. While their 1957 North Atlantic map had required private Bell Labs funding to reach fruition, expanding state funds for oceanography enabled Heezen and Tharp to begin new mapping eorts. International Geophysical Year (1957e1958) funds allowed them to chart the southern Atlantic Ocean, and the International Indian Ocean Expedition soon thereafter supported their map of the Indian Ocean. By the late 1960s Heezen and Tharp had created physiographic maps for all the ocean oors, including the oor of the Arctic Ocean, one of the least accessible and last explored though perhaps the most critical and sensitive for antisubmarine warfare.66 Moreover, from 1973 to 1977, they worked to complete a composite World Ocean Panorama [Fig. 6]. Painted by the Austrian artist Heinrich Berann for the National Geographic Society, the global physiographic map, including an updated portrait of the North Atlantic basin, became one of the most widely recognized maps in the twentieth century, an icon of the post-World War II campaign to comprehend the last unexplored geographical expanses on earth.67 This map version became far more famous than the HeezeneTharp 1957 North Atlantic physiographic map or its immediate successors. Nevertheless, Heezen regarded Tharps detailed black-and-white charts as the more scientically signicant, dismissing the Berann painting as more frivolousd apparently because the far larger-scale 1957 map included many more soundings, named features, and detailed depictions of individual seamounts and guyots than did the world map [see Fig. 5].68 The mapping project nevertheless failed to achieve one of Heezens major aims: to convince fellow geoscientists to support the expanding earth theory. Heezen advocated the expanding earth concept from the time their North Atlantic physiographic map appeared, and gained a number of adherents for itdmost notably the German-born biophysicist-turned-geophysicist Pascual Jordan at the Johns Hopkins University.69 But by the late 1960s earth scientists rejected Heezens argument that the world-circling mid-ocean ridge system could not be reconciled with continental drift, instead regarding the ridge as a fundamental element of the rapidly solidifying theory of


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Fig. 6. Heinrich Caesar Berann, Northern Atlantic Ocean, 1968. Based on the HeezeneTharp maps, which by the 1960s came to include all ocean basins, Beranns paintings brought the HeezeneTharp physiographic diagram to worldwide audiences. Versions of Beranns maps were featured in National Geographic; his world oceans depiction became one of the most recognizable maps of the twentieth century. Lateral ridge-bisecting faults (known as transform faults) are depicted here although not in the 1957 map, their existence and extent not yet then discerned. Courtesy http://www.berann.com, reproduced with permission.

plate tectonics: for them, the ridge system (and the earthquakes tightly concentrated within its central Rift Valley, earlier identied by Tharp) marked the edges of the plate boundaries.70 Rather than reinforcing Heezens preferred theory, the 1957 North Atlantic map and its immediate successors instead primarily served as an intellectual and conceptual space where the 1960s earth sciences community worked out rapidly shifting ideas on what geologic forces had sculpted the unfamiliar topography of the ocean oor. The HeezeneTharp maps allowed geophysicists to co-locate rapidly expanding data from magnetic and gravity studies and earthquake plots as well as corings and sea-oor photography. Later editions of the 1957 North Atlantic map incorporated newly discovered lateral faults previously known only in the Pacic; in addition, the mid-Atlantic ridge mountains became sharper and more jagged in later renderings as distinctions between familiar continental landforms and the more alien ocean-oor landscapes became better understood. The maps eventually served a related function in biological

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oceanography, allowing researchers in this eld to identify distinct biomes within oceanic basins.71 Because Heezen and Tharp had adopted the Mercator projectionda view of the world deeply familiar to US and European audiencesdtheir maps resonated with popular as well as scientic audiences.72 As with most maps, their utility went well beyond what its creators had originally envisioned or intended.

Conclusion In June 1960, Heezen traveled to Iceland, visiting where the northern mid-Atlantic ridge rises above sea level. I was not disappointed, he wrote, nding the topography of Iceland to be remarkably similar to the topography of the mid-Atlantic ridge.73 Since no one, Heezen included, had ever directly witnessed this undersea range, the HeezeneTharp map had become for him far more than a line drawn on paper. It had rmed up spatial relationships and geographical knowledge, creating a mental landscape against which new landforms could be compared. This physiographic map is in some ways the ocean oor, former Heezen graduate William Ryan later mused: Its our only multi-dimensional picture of it. that map and every subsequent revision to it.74 Heezen, Tharp, and their colleagues certainly recognized that many geographic features on the 1957 map were boldly extrapolated from very limited data.75 The rst HeezeneTharp physiographic chart thus was simultaneously both scientic and subjective.76 Moreover, scientic and non-scientic audiences read the map quite dierently. Geoscientists argued whether the map captured the essential nature of geological features on the ocean oor; individuals lacking the shared tacit knowledge within this scientic community saw a once-obscured landscape now portrayed with seeming precision. No single narrative adequately captures the impact of the rst Heezene Tharp physiographic map.77 All maps reect the political and social circumstances and perspectives of their times; they also reect the goals of those willing to fund necessary surveys, and hence are shaped by the practical aims of these patrons.78 The pioneering HeezeneTharp map of the North Atlantic ocean oor was no exception. Fundamental theoretical questions certainly were never far from the minds of Heezen and Tharp: both recognized that their map would embody assumptions they held about what geological processes had shaped the undersea landscape. Heezens intellectual commitment to the theory of the expanding earth was no less evident in their 1957 North Atlantic map than his conviction that turbidity currents were a signicant, widespread phenomenon. The design of their map was also inuenced by national security policy: US military restrictions on publishing depth measurements over 1800 feet made the physiographic map an optimal choice (as did its facility in allowing Tharp and Heezen to portray poorly-surveyed areas). But what has been largely overlooked is that the 1957 map was also strongly shaped by Heezens involvement with Bell Labs in their trans-Atlantic telephone cable-laying eort. Despite the militarys dominant inuence on oceanography in the early Cold War, commercial concerns played a signicant role. His consulting work for Bell Labs gained Heezen access to critical records of cable breaks from international telegraph cable companies in France and England, and secured him valuable additional ship time for depth prole studies in the North Atlantic. By working closely with Bell Labs engineers on the practical problem of choosing routes for the new TAT-1 cable, Heezen gained a particularly intimate understanding


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of a broad swath of the Atlantic seaoor; this utilitarian challenge helped lter Heezens perceptions of a topography that could not be experienced directly. As with turn-of-the-twentiethcentury eorts, images of the seaoor reected changing motivations for studying the oceans. Communication needs of the major western nations during the second industrial revolution, joined with antisubmarine warfare concerns during the Cold War, placed a premium on understanding the topography and stability of the seaoor.79 Heezens quest to use the map to support the expanding earth theory is equally a reminder that scientic maps carry no fewer underlying assumptions than their political counterparts.80 The mixed heritage of this map does not diminish its importance in the history of geography. As a pioneering sketch of a vast and poorly reconnoitered region, the rst HeezeneTharp map shares traits with such justly famous historical antecedents as William Clarks Fort Mandan Map (prepared during the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1804e1805, the rst to accurately depict North Americas Pacic Northwest) or Martin Waldseemullers 1507 Universalis Cosmo graphia, the rst map to attach the name America to the newly discovered continents of North and South America. Each of these maps xed a general perception of the regions characteristic landforms and potentials; if economic, political, and military demands had made such maps valuable in the rst place, the maps themselves challenged others to ll in the blank spots and improve their accuracy and completeness. Like their geographic predecessors, the 1957 HeezeneTharp map of the North Atlantic and their own subsequent revisions were eventually superseded (although not entirely supplanted, as later investigations revealed its overall accuracy). In this instance, new technological advances made higher-resolution elevation maps possible. By the 1980s satellite radar altimeter and gravity data permitted construction of new global ocean maps, including computer-generated digital maps. Satellite data (which mapped sea surface variations that closely approximate undersea terrain) lled in information where no ship tracks were available. Yet even in the 1990s certain large areas of the seaoor remained unmapped by depth sounding from the sea surface.81 The HeezeneTharp maps thus have additional signicance by being among the last large-scale twentieth-century maps drawn by hand rather than produced by mechanical or computerized processes.82 Because Beranns worldwide version of the HeezeneTharp physiographic charts remained in widespread circulation at the start of the twenty-rst century, it has continued to shape popular perceptions of the nature of the seaoor. The pre-eminent value of the 1957 HeezeneTharp North Atlantic map almost certainly rests with the geological and geographical information they provided researchers at a critical period in the history of the modern earth sciences. By synthesizing available data, redening the physical provinces of the ocean oors, and providing new information on the physical structure of the midAtlantic Ridge, Heezen and Tharp made clear the Ridges tremendous 45,000 mile extent, encircling the globe. By pointing to parallels between the Ridges Rift Valley (which Tharp discovered) and its morphological analogs in Africa and in Iceland, and by identifying the close proximity of undersea earthquakes to the Rift Valley, they underscored an emerging view of a dynamic ocean oor. While it was another and quite dierent mapdthat of magnetic anomalies on the ocean oor straddling the Juan de Fuca Ridge o the coast of western North America, rst published in 1961, providing evidence of seaoor spreadingdthat became the most signicant map used to advance the theory of plate tectonics, the HeezeneTharp map was itself a constitutive contribution to new global geophysics.83

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Acknowledgements We thank sta members of the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, and the NOAA Central Library, in particular Doria Grimes, John Hebert, Pamela M. Henson, and Gary North; we also thank Cathy Barton, Denis Cosgrove, Kristine C. Harper, A. Jon Kimerling, Frederick Nebeker, Tiany C. Vance, and our anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. Doel and Levin are especially grateful for support from Columbia Universitys Oral History Research Oce [Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Oral History Project] and the Center for History of Physics, American Institute of Physics; Doel also acknowledges support from NSF SBR-9511867 and DIR-9112304. Notes1. G. Wust, Zur Nomenklatur der Grossformen der Ozeanboden, Publication Scientique (International Association of Physical Oceanography) 8 (1940) 12e124. 2. First published in C.H. Elmendorf and B.C. Heezen , Oceanographic information for engineering submarine cable systems, The Bell System Technical Journal 36, 5 (1957) 1047e1093. The most denitive presentation of this map and its supporting data is B.C. Heezen, M. Tharp and M. Ewing, The oors of the oceans: I. The North Atlantic, The Geological Society of America Special Paper 65 (1959). Recent histories of twentieth century cartography and geographic thought have overlooked mapping eorts directed at the ocean oor; see for instance R. McMaster and S. McMaster, A history of twentieth-century academic cartography, Cartography and Geographic Information Science 29, 3 (2002) 305e321; G.J. Martin and P.E. James, All Possible Worlds: A History of Geographical Ideas, Third Edition, New York, 1993. 3. E.F. ONeill (Ed.), A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System: Transmission Technology (1925e1975), Murray Hill, NJ, 1985, 366. Further background appears in M. Kelly and G. Radley, Transatlantic communicationsdan historical resume, The Bell System Technical Journal 36, 1 (1957) 1e5. 4. J.B. Harley, Maps, knowledge, and power, in: D. Cosgrove and S. Daniels (Eds), The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments, Cambridge, 1989, 277e312, esp. 278e 279. 5. P.E. Steinberg, The Social Construction of the Ocean, Cambridge Studies in International Relations: 78, Cambridge, 2001, 2. 6. J. Hamblin, Oceanographers and the Cold War: Disciplines of Marine Science, Seattle, 2005; Steinberg, The Social Construction of the Ocean, 134. 7. On post-war developments in cartography and their implications for reading modern maps, see J. Pickles, A History of Spaces: Cartographic Reason, Mapping, and the Geo-coded World, London, 2004, 13. 8. Pickles, A History of Spaces. A more radical postmodern critique of cartographic traditions is J.B. Harley, The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography, Baltimore, 2001. 9. The most satisfactory historical account of this maps origins to date is C. Barton, Marie Tharp, oceanographic cartographer, and her contributions to the revolution in the earth sciences, in: D.R. Oldroyd (Ed.), The Earth Inside and Out: Some Major Contributions to Geology in the Twentieth Century, London, 2002, 215e228. Helpful rsthand accounts include M. Tharp, Mapping the ocean oord1947 to 1977, in: R.A. Scrutton and M. Talwani (Eds), The Ocean Floor, New York, 1982, 19e31; M. Tharp and H. Frankel, Mappers of the deep: how two geologists plotted the mid-Atlantic Ridge and made a discovery that revolutionized the earth sciences, Natural History 10 (1986) 48e62; M. Tharp, Connect the dots, in: L. Lippsett (Ed.), Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory: Twelve Perspectives on the First Fifty Years 1949e1999, Palisades, New York, 1999, 33e37. 10. On this larger theme see N. Oreskes and J.R. Fleming (Eds), Perspectives on geophysics, special issue of Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 31B, Sept. 2000; B.C. Hacker, Military patronage and the geophysical sciences in the United States: an introduction, Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 30, 2


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11.

12. 13.

14. 15.

16. 17.

18.

19. 20.

21. 22.

23. 24.

25.

26.

27. 28.

(2000) 309e313; R.E. Doel, Constituting the postwar earth sciences: the militarys inuence on the environmental sciences in the USA after 1945, Social Studies of Science 33, 5 (2003) 635e666. L. Martins, Mapping tropical waters: British views and visions of Rio de Janeiro, in: D. Cosgrove (Ed.), Mappings, London, 1999, 148e168; F. Driver and L. Martins (Eds), Tropical Visions in an Age of Empire, Chicago, 2005; M.J. Blakemore and J.B. Harley, Concepts in the history of cartography: a review and perspective, Cartographica 17, 4 (1980) esp. 23e26. T.J. Levin and R.E. Doel, The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Oral History Project: a preliminary report, Earth Sciences History 19, 1 (2000) 26e32. M.F. Maury, Physical Geography of the Sea, New York, 1855. On these developments see H.M. Rozwadowski, Technology and ocean-scape: dening the deep sea in mid-nineteenth century, History of Technology 17 (2001) 217e247, esp. 222, 224e225, 232, 242e243; H.M. Rozwadowski, Fathoming the Ocean: The Discovery and Exploration of the Deep Sea, Cambridge, MA, 2005, 69e95. J. Carpine-Lancre et al., The History of GEBCO 1903e2003: The 100-Year story of the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans, Lemmer, The Netherlands, 2003. S. Hohler, Prolgewinn. Karten der Atlantischen Expedition (1925e1927) der Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft, NTM 10, 4 (2002) 234e246; S. Hohler, Depth records and ocean volumes: ocean proling by sound ing technology, 1850e1930, History and Technology 18, 2 (2002) 119e154; M.T. Greene, Geology in the Nineteenth Century: Changing Views of a Changing World, Ithaca, NY, 1982, 181e183. Library of Congress, J.C. Merriam papers, Box 175, Folder Vaughan, T. Wayland, Vaughan to Merriam, Nov. 2, 1933. M.A. Dennis, Earthly matters: on the cold war and the earth sciences, Social Studies of Science 33, 5 (2003) 809e 819; N. Oreskes, A context of motivation: US Navy oceanographic research and the discovery of sea-oor hydrothermal vents, Social Studies of Science 33, 5 (2003) 697e742; R.E. Doel, The earth sciences and geophysics, in: J. Krige and D. Pestre (Eds), Science in the Twentieth Century, London, 1997, 361e388. No study adequately addresses the history of this institution. An introduction to recent work appears in Levin and Doel, The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Oral History Project; participant accounts are found in Lippsett (Ed.), Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Doel, Constituting the postwar earth sciences. Scientists in this era similarly faced a challenge in gaining access to earths upper atmospheres and space itself, although in this instance state funding alone could support such work, see D.H. DeVorkin, Science with a Vengeance: How the Military Created the US Space Sciences after World War II, New York, 1992. M. Bracker, Vast canyon found in Atlantic Ocean, The New York Times (Oct. 6, 1952) 7. M. Ewing and B.C. Heezen, Oceanographic research programs of the Lamont Geological Observatory, Geographical Review 46 (1956) 508e535; N. Oreskes (Ed.), Plate Tectonics: An Insiders History of the Modern Theory of the Earth, Boulder, CO, 2002; Levin and Doel, The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Oral History Project. Comprehensive biographies exist neither for Heezen nor Tharp. On Heezen, see M. Tharp, Heezen, Bruce, Dictionary of Scientic Biography 17 (1990) 387e390; on Tharp, Barton, Marie Tharp, oceanographic cartographer. See for instance I.H. Freeman, Crack in world is found at sea, The New York Times (Feb. 1, 1957) 22; Gendered work in oceanography in this period is discussed in N. Oreskes, Laissez-tomber: military patronage and womens work in mid-20th-century oceanography, Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 30, 2 (2000) 373e 374. Broader context appears in M.W. Rossiter, Women Scientists in America: Before Armative Action, 1940e 1972, Baltimore, 1995; L. Schiebinger, Has Feminism Changed Science?, Cambridge, MA, 1999. Barton, Marie Tharp, oceanographic cartographer, 218, makes this observation, borne out in the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Oral History Project interviews. The best introduction to this topic is H.M. Pycior, N.G. Slack and P.G. Abir-Am, Creative Couples in the Sciences, New Brunswick, NJ, 1998. J.H.F. Umbgrove, The Pulse of the Earth, The Hague, 1947, quoted at 224, see also 100, 220. Heezens personal copy of this work is at the Rare Book Room, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (hereafter NOAA) Central Library, Silver Spring, MD, USA. Tharp, Heezen, Bruce, Dictionary of Scientic Biography; Scrutton and Talwani, The Ocean Floor. B.C. Heezen and M. Ewing, Turbidity currents and submarine slumps and the 1929 Grand Banks earthquake, American Journal of Science 250 (1952) 849e873; Tharp, Heezen, Bruce, Dictionary of Scientic Biography, 388;

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R.E. Doel et al. / Journal of Historical Geography 32 (2006) 605e626 Center for History of Physics, American Institute of Physics, Marie Tharp oral history interview by R.E. Doel, Sept. 14, 1994. Gradual acceptance of Heezens turbidity current studies by marine geologists is noted in P.H. Kuenen, No geology without marine geology, Geologische Rundschau 47, 1 (1958) 1e10. C.C. Albritton, Jr., The Abyss of Time: Changing Conceptions of the Earths Antiquity After the Seventeenth Century, New York, 1980; D.R. Oldroyd, Thinking about the Earth: A History of Ideas in Geology, Cambridge, MA, 1996; N. Oreskes and R.E. Doel, Geophysics and the earth sciences, in M.J. Nye (Ed.), The Cambridge History of Science, Vol. 5: Modern Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge, 2003, 538e552. On the acceptance of turbidity currents as a geological phenomenon see Smithsonian Institution, Bruce C. Heezen papers (hereafter Smithsonian-Heezen), Box 6, Folder Kuenen, Ph. (Professor), Heezen to Kuenen, Oct. 28, 1957. Carpine-Lancre et al., The History of GEBCO, 58. Private les of Marie Tharp, Heezen, Annex 4A, 3 (no date, circa 1966). On SOSUS see Oreskes, A context of motivation. G.E. Weir, From surveillance to global warming: John Steinberg and ocean acoustics, International Journal of Naval History 2, 1 (2003), available online at, http://www.ijnhonline.org/volume2_number1_Apr03/PDF% 20Apr%2003/article_weir_pdf_apr03.pdf. Heezen also worked directly with subsidiary Bell Labs/AT&T rms involved in the TAT-1 cable project; see for instance Smithsonian-Heezen, Box 9, Folder 1956e57, Heezen to Mr. B. Nichols, Long Lines Department, American Telephone and Telegraph Company, Apr. 2, 1956. Smithsonian-Heezen, Box 9, 1956e57, Heezen to J.A. Smalle, Jan. 11, 1957, and NOAA Central Library, Bruce C. Heezen papers (hereafter NOAA-Heezen), Box 1, NotesdElmendorf, Bell Telephone Labs, Heezen to Elmendorf, Aug. 27, 1956. Smithsonian-Heezen, Box 9, 1956e57, Heezen to Elmendorf, Aug. 27, 1956; Heezen to Nichols, Apr. 2, 1956. Smithsonian-Heezen, Heezen to Elmendorf, Aug. 27, 1956. M.D. Fagen, A.E. Joel, E.F. ONeill, G.E. Schindler and Bell Telephone Laboratories Inc., A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System, New York, 1975. See for instance Smithsonian-Heezen, Box 9, Folder 1957e57, Heezen to Chuck [Charles Drake], Jul. 3, 1956. NOAA-Heezen, Box I, Heezen, BTL OI Report, early draft [no date, circa 1956], 18e23. On Pacic Ocean mapping see H.W. Menard, The Ocean of Truth, Princeton, 1986. N. Oreskes, From continental drift to plate tectonics, in: Oreskes (Ed.), Plate Tectonics, 3e23, on 23. National Archives II, R.G. 330, Research and Development Board (hereafter NARA-RDB), Box 446, Folder 3, Earl Droessler to Athelstan Spilhaus, Mar. 23, 1953. G.E. Weir, An Ocean in Common: American Naval Ocers, Scientists, and the Ocean Environment, College Station, TX, 2001. NARA-RDB, Box 446, Folder 3, Straus to Earl G. Droessler, Dec. 11, 1952. NARA-RDB, Box 446, Folder 3, Droessler to Athelstan F. Spilhaus, Mar. 23, 1953. A.K. Lobecks Geomorphology: An Introduction to the Study of Landscapes, New York, 1939, expanded on his earlier Block Diagrams and Other Graphic Methods Used in Geology and Geography, New York, 1924. Heezen and Tharp also acknowledged the inuence of the Harvard cartographer Erwin Raitz in preparing their 1957 map; see Heezen, Tharp and Ewing, The oors of the oceans, unpaginated introduction. NOAA-Heezen, Box I, Heezen, draft LGO Technical Report 28 A Mid-Atlantic Ridge Prole, no date (circa 1955) 26. Elmendorf and Heezen, Oceanographic information for engineering submarine cable systems. Heezen, Tharp and Ewing, The oors of the oceans, unpaginated acknowledgements page. Barton, Marie Tharp, oceanographic cartographer, 220; Heezen, Tharp and Ewing, The oors of the oceans, 4. See Heezen, Tharp and Ewing, The oors of the oceans; see also B.C. Heezen and M. Tharp, Physiographic diagram of the North Atlantic, Geological Society of America Bulletin 67 (1956) 1704; Barton, Marie Tharp, oceanographic cartographer, 220. Further analysis appears in C.J. Barton, Cartoons or cartography? The physiographic diagrams of Bruce C. Heezen and Marie Tharp, MA thesis, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, 1999. Heezen was not always fastidious in handling classied depth data; see Smithsonian-Heezen, Box 3, Folder Dunkle, Dr. M. William, Jr., William M. Dunkle, Jr. to Heezen, Apr. 10, 1957. Tharp and Frenkel, Mappers of the deep; Smithsonian-Heezen, Box 14, Folder Read File Aug. 1975 to Aug. 1976, Heezen to James H. Shea, Feb. 23, 1976; Barton, Marie Tharp, oceanographic cartographer, 221.

29.

30. 31. 32. 33.

34.

35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53. 54.


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55. B.C. Heezen, The rift in the ocean oor, Scientic American 203 (1960) 98e100. 56. B.C. Heezen, Geologie sous-marine et deplacements des continents, la topographie et la geologie des profondeurs oceanographiques 83 (1959) 204e295; B.C. Heezen, Paleomagnetism, continental displacements, and the origin of submarine topography, International Oceanographic Congress 31 Auguste12 September 1959, Washington, DC, 1959, 26e28. Columbia University Oral History Research Oce (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Oral History Project; hereafter LDEO) interview, Gordon Hamilton OHI (Doel, Mar. 15, 1996). 57. These arguments are borne out in the LDEO oral history interviews; see for instance Alma Kesner OHI (Doel, interviewer, Oct. 1995, 44), and Mark Langseth (Doel, interviewer, Dec. 13, 1995, 179). 58. Elmendorf and Heezen, Oceanographic information for engineering submarine cable systems. 59. Heezen, Tharp and Ewing, The oors of the oceans, 103. 60. One indication of this monographs importance was its high citation rate: more than 80 researchers other than the authors referred to it by the early 1960s, a large number for the earth sciences community at the time; see the Science Citation Index 1955e1964, column 33629. 61. Smithsonian-Heezen, Box 1, Anthony S. Laughton to Heezen, Jan. 27, 1958; see also Tharp oral history interview (Doel, Sept. 14, 1995), 183. 62. C. Mukerji, A Fragile Power: Scientists and the State, Princeton 1989, 126. 63. H.W. Menard, Geology of the Pacic sea oor, Experientia 15 (1959) 205e213. Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives, Henry William Menard papers, Box 69, Folder 6, Menard to Heezen, Jan. 6, 1958. 64. A more detailed discussion of this larger issue appears in Oreskes and Doel, Geophysics and earth sciences. 65. Heezen-SI, Box 9, Folder 1958, Heezen to Mr. C.A. Boudreau, Jr., Apr. 14, 1958 and NOAA-Heezen, Box A, Heezen to R. Grith, Canadian Overseas Telecommunications Corp., Feb. 18, 1958. 66. B.C. Heezen and M. Ewing, The mid-oceanic ridge and its extension through the arctic basin, in: G.O. Raasch (Ed.), Geology of the Arctic: Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Arctic Geology, Toronto, 1960, 622e642. 67. Even though the US Navy ended its classication of bathymetric data in 1961 (in part to bolster a cooperative USe Soviet program to map the Arctic Ocean promoted early in the Kennedy Presidency), by this time both Heezen and Tharp were convinced that the physiographic approach communicated valuable geologic information and continued this strategy. For background see W. Sullivan, U.S., Soviet, Canada to pool arctic data, The New York Times (Jan. 26, 1960) 1. Funding for the nal world physiographic ocean map (1973e1977) also came from the US Oce of Naval Research; see Barton, Marie Tharp, oceanographic cartographer, 221. A larger context for interpreting iconographic maps is provided in D.E. Cosgrove, Apollos Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in Western Imagination, Baltimore, 2002. 68. Private les of Marie Tharp, interview John Lear of Bruce Heezen, Oct. 17, 1985, 10. 69. Smithsonian-Heezen, Box 6, Folder Jordan, Pascual, Jordan to Heezen, Jan. 20, 1964; Heezen, Geologie sousmarine. Heezen continued to advocate the expanding earth hypothesis into the 1970s; see B.C. Heezen and C.D. Hollister, The Face of the Deep, New York, 1971. 70. W. Sullivan, Scientists doubt earth expansion, The New York Times (Jan. 8, 1961) 66. On the inuence of geophysical methods in the acceptance of plate tectonics see Oreskes, From continental drift to plate tectonics; K.-H. Barth, The politics of seismology: nuclear testing, arms control, and the transformation of a discipline, Social Studies of Science 33, 5 (2003) 743e781; H.E. LeGrand, Shifting Continents and Drifting Theories, Cambridge, 1988. 71. Smithsonian-Heezen, Box 4, G-Miscellaneous, R. George to Heezen, Jul. 1, 1975; Barton, Marie Tharp, oceanographic cartographer, 225. 72. S. Schulten, The Geographical Imagination in America, 1880e1950, Chicago, 2001, 239e242. Heezen and Tharp plotted their ndings on unpublished globes (including acrylic applied to a basketball), avoiding Mercator projection distortions; see R. Grim, The Library of Congress Geography and Map Divisions globe collection, News (The International Coronelli Society for the Study of Globes), 2003, 9e15. 73. Smithsonian-Heezen, Box 7, Folder Udintsev, Dr. G.B., Heezen to G. Udintsev, Nov. 23, 1960. 74. LDEO oral history interview with William B.F. Ryan (Levin, Jul. 1, 1997) 54. 75. On this issue see Pickles, A History of Spaces, 9. 76. J.B. Harley [New Nature of Maps, 151] rightly emphasizes that the veneer of science can divert attention from underlying non-objectivity, and that map silences ought be identied and addressed. In this instance Heezen, Tharp, and Ewing (1959) did oer candid assessments of the maps uncertainties and extrapolations. Silences certainly

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R.E. Doel et al. / Journal of Historical Geography 32 (2006) 605e626 existed in the HeezeneTharp 1957 map, although earth sciences colleagues became aware of many of them as the maps larger implications were debated in the 1950s. Pickles, A History of Spaces, 19; see also D. Cosgrove, Introduction: mapping meaning, in: Cosgrove (Ed.), Mappings, 1e23, esp. 2e3. M. Monmonier, Drawing the Line: Tales of Maps and Cartocontroversy, New York, 1995. Rozwadowski, Technology and ocean-scape, 243. B. Latour, Drawing things together, in: M. Lynch and S. Woolgar (Eds), Representation in Scientic Practice, Cambridge, MA, 1988; D. MacKenzie, Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance, Cambridge, MA, 1990. W.H.F. Smith and D.T. Sandwell, Global seaoor topography from satellite altimetry and ship depth soundings, Science 277 (1997) 1957e1962; P.R. Vogt and B.E. Tucholke, Imaging the ocean oor: history and the state of the art, in: P.R. Vogt and B.E. Tucholke (Eds), The Western North Atlantic Region, Boulder, CO, 1986, 22. McMaster and McMaster, A history of twentieth century academic cartography. These magnetic stripesdsuccessively younger towards the ridge and mirrored on both sidesdprovided direct evidence for seaoor spreading; see LeGrand, Shifting Continents and Drifting Theories; new perspectives appear in R. Mason, Stripes on the ocean oor, 31e45; L.W. Morley, The zebra pattern, 67e84; N. Oreskes, From continental drift to plate tectonics, 3e27, all in Oreskes, Plate Tectonics.

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82. 83.

extending modern cartography to the ocean depths

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