Mapping the Seafloor: GLORIA and the Emergence of a Cold War Planetary Imagination, 1965–2002

The Ocean has often, not unproblematically, been described as the last frontier of human exploration on Earth. During the Cold War, British oceanographers used sonar technology – shaped by the demands of national security – to explore and chart the seafloor. Designed in 1965 at Britain’s National Institute of Oceanography, GLORIA (Geological Long-Range Inclined Asdic), a towed sidescan sonar instrument, transformed seafloor mapping. Surveys revealed features such as tectonic plates for the first time as well as potential oil deposits that paved the way for commercial exploitation in the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean. GLORIA boosted the economic fortunes of the UK via sub-surface resource exploitation and international scientific diplomacy. Yet, despite being a pioneer instrument, it has received surprisingly little scholarly attention.
One of four GLORIA instruments, and assorted components and models, survive in SMG’s collection. Drawing on material culture, oral history and archival research, this project examines the GLORIA programme and associated network of objects, technologies, people, geopolitics and wider cultural forces. In contributing to the construction of a planetary imagination, GLORIA paradoxically helped to reveal both the potential of resource extraction, and the seafloor’s ecological fragility.
Unlike traditional historiographies focussed on leading scientists, this project unveils hidden histories in a formative moment of British oceanography, while seizing a rapidly vanishing opportunity to capture the intangible living memory of GLORIA.
This research is closely aligned with projects in the Science Museum’s forward cultural programme, thus meeting SMG research needs and providing rich potential for research impact and public engagement.