ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes how advances in field instrumentation have led to a much greater understanding of the continent beneath the ice. It looks briefly at technologies being developed today and how these may be used in an Antarctic context in coming decades. The discovery of the Antarctic continent in 1820- 1821, by US sealer Nathaniel Palmer and English sailors Edward Bransfield and William Smith, was possible as a consequence of seafaring technology that allowed ships to voyage south across the icy Southern Ocean in search of marine mammal 'resources'. While the International Polar Year was a multi-disciplinary effort, involving all aspects of Antarctic, sub-Antarctic and Southern Ocean research, one of the research priorities concerned large-scale surveying of the 'unknown' regions of subglacial Antarctica. Technology has obviously influenced the discovery of subglacial Antarctica, with a pivotal moment being the use of airborne Radio-echo sounding over seismic investigations during the 1960s.
