ABSTRACT
Robert Ballard, marine geologist and oceanographer, developed deep-sea surveying tactics that led to the discovery of the Titanic, the Lusitania, the German battleship Bismarck, and John F. Kennedy’s PT-109, among others. He did it with the same basic technology being used by other deep-sea explorers but applied an entirely different strategy. Rather than using sonar to try to locate the vessel itself, he worked to find the debris field leading up to the vessel. It served to change the entire thinking about how to go about deep-sea exploration. When Ballard was asked, in an interview on CBS Television’s 60 Minutes, why he’d been able to achieve what others couldn’t, his reply was, “Because everyone had trouble thinking outside the box.”
