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Soft Wadding. Jacques smiled and refused. For a moment father and son clung to each other, as if too moved to speak. Then the old professor began: "It was very important, very lovely. And I must say that the chief merit of this undertaking goes to my son Jacques. It was he who guided the Trieste." There had been no trouble at all; the Trieste had functioned perfectly. She had snuggled down on the sea bottom (where the pressure was about 500 lbs. per square inch) "as on a soft wadding." The result, said Piccard, "is what he had foreseen. It is possible for man to descend into the sea depths using means created by him. The problem is to overcome physical obstacles by using physical principles." He had not felt, he made clear, that he was running much risk. "Everyone," he remarked, "is in the habit of trusting a railway bridge. We trust the eternal laws of physics."
After evaluating the records of his instruments and developing his photographs, if any, the professor will presumably tell more about his daring voyage to the bottom of the sea. But first he plans to go to Lausanne, where Jacques will be married. Later he hopes to take the Trieste to the east coast of the U.S., where the ocean is much deeper than the Tyrrhenian Trench.
* From the Greek, meaning depth ship.
* Piccard promised his wife that he would make no more balloon ascents. He did not promise that he would not balloon to the bottom of the sea.