# Why no online reference to diver Bannon? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 21, 2011, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-online-reference-to-diver-bannon/589826 "2011-07-21T08:24:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![mac\_bolan00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b3f665/32.png) [@mac\_bolan00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mac_bolan00)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-online-reference-to-diver-bannon/589826/1 "2011-07-21T08:24:42Z")
it’s something i read in an old popular mechanics issue. it must have been from the 50s or 60s. a volunteer diver (USN?) named Bannon allowed himself to be subjected to near-total isolation. this could scare some people to death. it does me sometimes when i think about it: the diver wore breathing gear with air supplied using rubber hoses (and little else.) he was immersed in a large tank filled with water kept at body temperature. the walls and bottom of the tank were opaque and it had an opaque lid. floaters/sinkers strapped to his body kept him at neutral bouyancy. so he was right in the middle of the tank. and then they closed the lid. i don’t recall if he had a way to talk to the scientists but sensors were glued to his body which the scientists can monitor. so a few seconds inside the tank and he was totally blind. a minute or two and his skin had no sense of touch. a few more minutes and he started to lose his orientation (up or down,) except for occasional bubbles near his ear which he can still feel and tell him which way was up. in time he started hallucinating. he told scientists he was spinning and tumbling faster and faster (when they knew he was perfectly still.) i think he threw up once. when the (mad) scientists finally opened the lid and fished him out, they told him he had just a record of sorts (some consolation.) i do recall the experiment was somewhat life-threatening. any dopers know about this? ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-online-reference-to-diver-bannon/589826/2 "2011-07-21T11:18:09Z")
I spent a minute looking, but didn’t find anything quickly. You can proably find it yourself as Google books has digitized _Popular Mechanics_ and you can search and read all the issues. How sure are you it was _Popular Mechanics_ and not _Popular Science_? It’s also digitized. How sure are you the name was _Bannon_? ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-online-reference-to-diver-bannon/589826/3 "2011-07-21T11:25:42Z")
In Tom Clancey’s _The Cardinal of the Kremlin_, the KGB used something like that as an insidious torture and interrogation device. ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-online-reference-to-diver-bannon/589826/4 "2011-07-21T11:51:57Z")
Did the guy turn into a gorilla? ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-online-reference-to-diver-bannon/589826/5 "2011-07-21T13:10:15Z")
I have no idea, either, but will just add that this was the plot of the pilot of the original “Hawaii Five-O” series. In fact, the opening scene is a person in a “sensory deprivation tank.” ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-online-reference-to-diver-bannon/589826/6 "2011-07-21T14:05:53Z")
Did anybody work on this _before_ John C. Lilly? > [@](#): > > **Development of the sensory deprivation tank** > > In 1953, he began a job studying neurophysiology with the US Public Health Service Commissioned Officers Corps. At the NIMH during 1954, with the desire of isolating a brain from external stimulation, he devised the first isolation tank, a dark soundproof tank of warm salt water in which subjects could float for long periods in sensory isolation. Lilly and a research colleague were the first to act as subjects of this research. …[RIGHT][CITE](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Lilly#Development_of_the_sensory_deprivation_tank)[/RIGHT] CMC fnord! ---
**Author:** ![GythaOgg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/49beb7/32.png) [@GythaOgg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GythaOgg)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-online-reference-to-diver-bannon/589826/7 "2011-07-21T14:53:57Z")
I suspect the account the OP recalls reading may have been exaggerated by whomever wrote it up. Richard Feynman describes in one of his autobiographies participating in a series of somewhat similar experiments while under the influence of LSD - he didn’t find it to be unpleasant at all, IIRC. ---
**Author:** ![Keeve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f07891/32.png) [@Keeve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Keeve)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2011, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-online-reference-to-diver-bannon/589826/8 "2011-07-21T15:11:26Z")
I recall many experiments of this sort on astronaut-candidates in the late 1950s. ---
**Author:** ![mac\_bolan00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b3f665/32.png) [@mac\_bolan00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mac_bolan00)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-online-reference-to-diver-bannon/589826/9 "2011-07-22T00:08:30Z")
> [@samclem](#): > > I spent a minute looking, but didn’t find anything quickly. > > You can proably find it yourself as Google books has digitized _Popular Mechanics_ and you can search and read all the issues. > > How sure are you it was _Popular Mechanics_ and not _Popular Science_? It’s also digitized. How sure are you the name was _Bannon_? pretty sure it was PM. it was a bound compilation, with black and white pictures and all the ads were black-ink illustrations. there’s this one-page regular article i liked: “i’d like to see them make…” wherein readers would write letters describing things they want to come out of the market." but i could be wrong since people used to treat PM and PS as one and the same. i’m sure about the name bannon. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-online-reference-to-diver-bannon/589826/10 "2011-07-22T00:38:03Z")
Was it the issue that had the flying car in it? ---
**Author:** ![mac\_bolan00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b3f665/32.png) [@mac\_bolan00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mac_bolan00)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-online-reference-to-diver-bannon/589826/11 "2011-07-22T00:54:10Z")
could be, could be. ---
**Author:** ![chorpler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chorpler/32/2888_2.png) [@chorpler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chorpler)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-online-reference-to-diver-bannon/589826/12 "2011-07-22T00:57:31Z")
Aren’t [sensory deprivation tanks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_tank) pretty common in alternative therapy now? Lisa and Homer tried it on the Simpsons some years back… What sounds really scary is the “coffin cure” Larry Niven described in his early novel **A Gift from Earth**. Same idea, but used as a torture device to soften somebody up for interrogation. The victim was immobilized in the sensory deprivation chamber and not allowed to sleep, then left for a few days, which seemed like forever to them… ---
**Author:** ![Keeve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f07891/32.png) [@Keeve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Keeve)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-online-reference-to-diver-bannon/589826/13 "2011-07-22T02:07:10Z")
> [@mac\_bolan00](#): > > pretty sure it was PM. it was a bound compilation, with black and white pictures and all the ads were black-ink illustrations. there’s this one-page regular article i liked: “i’d like to see them make…” wherein readers would write letters describing things they want to come out of the market." > > but i could be wrong since people used to treat PM and PS as one and the same. i’m sure about the name bannon. Memories are not as accurate as we’d like to think, especially decades later. When I was about 7 years old, there was a particular comic book that I wanted very badly, but my parents would not let me buy it. The cover art and subject of the cover story were burned into my memory, and when I got old enough, I went to quite a few back-issue magazine stores and comic-book conventions in search of it. The effort was so fruitless that I sometimes wondered if I had imagined the whole thing. Finally, about 35 years after the comic was published, I found it on EBay. I was amazed at how the general picture of the cover was very much as I had remembered it, while several details were distinctly – and to my great disappointment, undeniably – different from how I remembered it. (In gratitude to the guy who put it on EBay, I did bid on the comic, even though my curiosity had been quenched. But when I lost the auction, I declined to pursue it any further.) ---
**Author:** ![Keeve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f07891/32.png) [@Keeve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Keeve)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-online-reference-to-diver-bannon/589826/14 "2011-07-22T02:09:20Z")
Also, more than a few old tv shows and movies somehow changed something or other, during the decades between when I first saw them and when I finally saw them again. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-online-reference-to-diver-bannon/589826/15 "2011-07-22T02:37:03Z")
> [@mac\_bolan00](#): > > pretty sure it was PM. it was a bound compilation, with black and white pictures and all the ads were black-ink illustrations. there’s this one-page regular article i liked: “i’d like to see them make…” wherein readers would write letters describing things they want to come out of the market." > > but i could be wrong since people used to treat PM and PS as one and the same. i’m sure about the name bannon. Here’s the problem–google books, using “popular mechanics” and “bannon” shows nothing, and all their issues are searchable. So, either NOT PM, or NOT Bannon. ---
**Author:** ![mac\_bolan00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b3f665/32.png) [@mac\_bolan00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mac_bolan00)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-online-reference-to-diver-bannon/589826/16 "2011-07-22T02:57:18Z")
well, thanks for the effort. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![mac\_bolan00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b3f665/32.png) [@mac\_bolan00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mac_bolan00)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 10:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-online-reference-to-diver-bannon/589826/17 "2011-07-22T10:56:40Z")
EUREKA! Popular Science July 1967 page 66. And sorry guys, his name is Robert Gannon. He spent 90 minutes in the tank. First page illustration is just as I remember it 😃 and there’s an “I’d like to see them make…” page just before it. Thanks for the help! ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2011, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-no-online-reference-to-diver-bannon/589826/18 "2011-07-22T11:29:53Z")
Good job of digging. Our memories are indeed faulty. _Popular Mechanics_ \> _Popular Science_ Bannon —\> Gannon.