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www.seadiscovery.com Marine Technology Reporter 31in 1967, we found a ship off the coast of Bodrum Turkey, and that was really the first find of an ancient shipwreck using high-tech equipment. Just before that Doc Edgerton used my sonar working with Alex Magee to find the Henry the VIII warship, the Mary Rose. I was also a member of the hydrographic society. These are individuals who map the ocean floor primarily for naviga-tion. You use this data to clear a harbor for a ship to come in. For a long time a harbor would be checked sometimes by an echo sounder but they would also drag a chain across the harbor between two boats at a certain depth and if the chain didn?t hit anything they would declare it clear. When I first got into this kind of work I found this operation to be clunky and clumsy. I thought somedaywe are going to make equipment so they don?t have to do that, and in fact they don?t have to do that anymore. The Klein multibeam sonar is now used to substitute the wire drag search. We have also been involved with the military for mine hunting operations and of course when planes godown. Even though I am now retired when I hear on the news a plane has gone down, first it takes me back to when I was involved looking for these things, secondly somewhere around the world, I know one of my cus- tomers is going to be on their way in the middle of thenight to go do a search. A lot of these things have been found and I feel proud that I have had a part in making that happen. MTR: You eventually started your own company. MK:Yes, I was with EG&G for about five years. I was a kid and wanted to make better equipment. I didn?t start it for financial reasons. I wanted to improve the equipment. The big company went too slowly for me and I went off on my own. I did some consulting at first. I did some con- sulting for MIT and Benthos among others, but my goal was to make new equipment and so I was living in Lexington, Mass., in a rented home and literally started the company in my basement, Klein Associates. In 1989 it was sold to a Japanese firm and then sometime later was purchased by L3 Communications. It is now called L3 Klein. MTR: How has your technology fit in for the Offshore Industry? MK: When I started making these things my goal hadbeen to make a sonar to look like pictures so a wreck ?It was after the Thresher search that I became determined to make side scan sonar that could really make pictures of things on the sea floor, so a shipwreck would look like a shipwreck and an airplane would look like an airplane. ? MTR#9 (18-33):MTR Layouts 11/30/2011 1:34 PM Page 31
