Talk:Aluminaut

article

Why is there so much in this article about the Alvin? It has its own article. 138.88.60.90 03:06, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

The first sentence claims that there were previous aluminum subs (German U-boats, WWII) but I cannot verify that anywhere. Perhaps the Aluminaut really is the FIRST aluminum sub? Fultie771 (talk) 04:41, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

It was added here. Gone now. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:25, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Blurb For DYK

Did You Know...

..that Aluminaut, the world's first aluminum submarine, helped recover an atomic bomb lost in an accident in 1966?

Scope

I want to congratulate the original author for a well-researched and well-formatted article. There is, however, too much extraneous information, e.g. about the historicity of the Reynolds headquarters, or the son of the founder. Neither of these have any obvious connection to the submarine and belong in other articles, or not referenced at all. --Dhartung | Talk 03:39, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, I merged some of the irrelevant history of Reynolds Metals with that article, especially the sources about the headquarters (most of the rest was already there, making it even more redundant here). I simply deleted the section about Alvin's continued work and the section about J. Sargent Reynolds, since they had no relevance here that I could see. I trimmed a few other things as well, and added a submarine category (perhaps not the best, but I saw no better alternative). It's a much tighter article now and you don't get the feeling you're reading something that might be significant but doesn't turn out to be. (We're an encyclopedia, not a magazine -- sidebars are accomplished by wikilinks!). I still feel the bit about the atom bomb search is a bit of a fake-out, because the text in our article basically says that Aluminaut was there, but Alvin did all the work. If that's the case, we should emphasize that she played a support role and leave it at that. --Dhartung | Talk 04:12, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Photo

Really needs a photo, I want to see what it looked like ¬¬¬¬AndyP

aluminaut trivia

I worked for Reynolds for 31 years and in the late 60's I was in the Los Angeles office. I got a call from Richmond headquarters that the Naval captain that was hired to operate the Aluminaut was to come to Los Angeles to give a presentation to 400 naval archetects at Port Hueneme. I was to meet him at the air port and take to the Port. The day of his arrival came and we got a teletype saying he was ill and would not make the trip. I was to meet a plane at the airport that was to have a film for me to show in his place. They were starting to send his speach to me on the old teletype machine on rolls of yellow paper if any of you remember. Errors and all!! I met the plane and was told the film did not make it to the plane in time. Now my new instructions were to read his speach to the audience the best I could. Well it was a vaudville act from page one as I read "you will see in this scene...." as I pointed to the empty screen. They laughed good naturedly and asked me to read the whole speach anyway. Between the Captains flowery type writing and the references to the missing film, it was pretty funny. To top off the speach they asked if I would take some questions from the floor. The first and only question was a very long tecnical question about the titanium bolts. I answered that I had no idea of the answer and that led to tha last laugh and a grand thanks for my attempt under these impossible conditions.(76.89.170.100 (talk) 21:53, 3 December 2009 (UTC))

Experiment not repeated

There doesn't seem to be any question that the experimental Aluminaut was worth trying, and that it served useful purposes. However it was not an experiment that Reynolds chose to continue into another model. I remember reading the reason, but can't find it, now. It seemed to me that the problem was basic to aluminium (or the aluminum of the 1960s). Something to the effect of: It's simply a poor choice of metal for the job -- compared to steel or titanium. In that same neck of the woods ... interest was high in the 1960s and 1970s when it appeared that the ocean would be the next frontier. Then it got down to pragmatics ... I remember Cousteau saying to an astonished crowd "The ocean is a vast desert" ... that wasn't the picture that came though in issues of National Geographic. And no one realized the Glomar Explorer magnesium node mining was a sham. When it began to sink in that the world wasn't going to be building 10,000 of small submarines, as I recall that was the end of Reynolds' interest. At any rate, Reynolds didn't continue, and it's worth noting why in the article. 98.210.208.107 (talk) 21:07, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Removed impossibile claim

I removed " and first tested in 1956. "

The citation was more than needed, it was impossibile.

My good friend John Ralston oversaw the construction of Aluminaut in 1964 at Miami Shipyards which would make testing it 8 years before questionable.

Mark Lincoln (talk) 21:00, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Dive records?

The plaque by Aluminaut where it's on display says it made 251 dives and set a depth record for a submarine. But nowhere have I been able to find any list of its dives or depths reached, not even for how deep its record setting dive was. Everywhere just says it "set a record". At the least, having the depth for the record setting dive would be a good addition to the article. Having a complete list of its 251 dives in six years would be a very nice addition. That was one hard working submarine. Bizzybody (talk) 01:56, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Sandwich

The bit about the recovered sandwich from Alvin is wrong, nobody tried to eat it. However, while I can cite a primary source, oral history from Woods Hole, that may not be permissible here. Suggestions? Keith Henson (talk) 18:12, 5 July 2023 (UTC)