Unfathomable: The Invention of Modern Deep-Sea Diving | Hacker News Reader

Unfathomable: The Invention of Modern Deep-Sea Diving

unfathomable.epicmagazine.com

101 pointsThevet19 comments

I normally hate this format of webpage, but now that I'm seeing it used to tell a story, it makes so much sense. It's a very frustrating thing to go to the marketing page of some company who you want information on and be bombarded by animations and scroll hijacking. In the case of this story though, it was immersive and made it easier to read.

I guess my point is, I wish people would use the right tool for the job, like the author(s) of this page, rather than always reaching for the coolest, flashiest thing around.

Very well done, in this case.

Down arrow skipping nearly a page at a time was still annoying, but I agree, very well done.

As a (presumably) unintended side-effect, I can't view the page at all on Pale Moon. Perhaps my ad-blocker is nuking it. Yet another reason not to get too fancy.

Then you're missing out on a really excellent site.

I don't think it's Pale Moon, since it displays fine for me. What are you using as an ad-blocker? (I'm using uBlock Origin.)

It still makes no sense to me. I apparently have to turn on all the Javascript and allow cookies to see anything more than a blank white page. Then it still adds bugs to all forms of scrolling (space bar, arrows, two-finger swipe), and does weird font stuff that makes parts of the text overlap. Putting that aside, I still have to deal with random shit scrolling at different speeds and background colors changing from time to time.

Ugh. Why?!

OMG I found a website that requires javascript and cookies – the nerve of people to demand that I enable some 20-year-old browser features just to view their content.

The officer in charge when the Royal George sank, Lt. Philip Charles Durham, not only survived the sinking, but his naval career survived and he went on to become a full Admiral. "He came from a wealthy landed family", says Wikipedia. In most navies, if you sink your ship in harbor, your career is over.

Good reading on this topic: "Marine Salvage - the unforgiving business of no cure, no pay".[1] There's an amusing chapter on the salvage of the Maine in Havana harbor. The Corps of Engineers did it the hard way, by building a dam around the wreck site and pumping the water out.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Marine-salvage-unforgiving-business-c...

Google gave me http://www.spanamwar.com/mainsalv.htm on that salvage.

It's remarkably similar to this summer's recovery of a British World War Two bomber: http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2016/08/missing-world-..., but technology, of course, has progressed.

If anyone is interested in that salvage story, read here: http://www.spanamwar.com/mainsalv.htm

Amazing that this could be done in 1912.

Beautiful article!

This stuck out at me:

> Physicians of the era were ignorant of the cause and often did more harm than good, administering remedies like leeches or turpentine enemas. Some doctors recommended divers might take “some therapeutic Cognac” upon resurfacing, a stiff drink being a common treatment for misunderstood maladies.

Ok, leaches, I kind of get. "Therapeutic Cognac", ok, I've had my share of therapeutic whisky after hurting myself. But... turpentine enema? Really? I just can't imagine an illness that would be cured by squirting turpentine up someone's butt.

Two points are relevant.

One, against what alternatives was a turpentine enema competing. A man was dying. What are you going to do, if you don't know what to do?

Two, this was still the turmoil of technological advances created by the Industrial Revolution being applied to medicine. One could say the Enlightenment (18th century) was the catalyst, but it took time for those changes to wash over all fields, particularly with reference to an ever increasing technological state of the art.

The Nick is an interesting show, albeit set a bit later at the dawn of the 20th century, that grapples with the same themes. 'If the best training we have suggests one course of action, but technology enables another that seems it would be better, which do I choose?'

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Knick

Miasma theory still had its adherents 100 years ago.

Very interesting read. I was particularly surprised by John's role in the Crimean war; I had no idea something like that occurred

Yeah, the whole beginning and middle of the story were already fascinating, especially with the earlier family legacy. But then to actually be submerged in a naval battle with a pair of wire cutters at age 54 and be the last best hope against the humiliation of the greatest navy the world had ever seen? I mean you couldn't invent a more dramatic story.

Amazing article - informative and well written. Thank you for posting.

This is the antithesis of the click-bait title: academic, almost pedestrian sounding title with a mind-blowing story attached.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1659619/

What did they use to make this site? All I can see in the page source is JS. Is it just a parallax backbone site?

Awesome job by the way, looks fantastic!

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