DIVE LOG AUSTRALASIA FEB 2025 ISSUE 410

John Williamson and his Amazing ‘Photosphere’

T here is no substitute to compare with the diver’s eye when exploring the seabed. Surely no one filmed sharks underwater before Hans Hass and J. E Cousteau? Surely no one made an underwater movie before the 1960s TV series SEA HUNT and no one photographed tropical reefs before the age of the Aqualung? Pioneers are easily forgotten, and few pioneers who lived as adventurously as John Ernest Williamson, the first underwater film-maker, are remembered today. Williamson was born in Liverpool, England of a Scottish seafaring family who emigrated to the USA with his family and started a ship-fitting business in Norfolk, Virginia. John became a shipwright and engineer, through his love of the sea. His inspiration continued to come from the sea and, although he had never been below the surface, strange visions of what it would be like filled his head. In 1912, Williamson was seized with an inspiration to take pictures of the world beneath the sea. His idea was to build an observation chamber fitted to the end of a flexible metal tube, which could be wound down 10m to the sea floor, from a barge above. The chamber was fitted with a two-metre diameter clear glass window and powerful electric lights to illuminate the depths below. The film-maker climbed down a ladder within the 1.6m flexible tube to the observation chamber, where he could sit with his camera behind the glass window, safe and dry, to observe and record the underwater world.

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DIVE LOG Australasia #410 - February‘25

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