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 (AP) - Harold E. Froehlich, who designed a deep-sea
vessel used in the search for ocean life forms as well as the
Titanic, died at St. John's Hospital in Maplewood, a Twin Cities
suburb. He had cancer and died May 19 at age 84, his family said
Wednesday.

      Froehlich was named project manager for the vessel, named Alvin,
in 1962 when the Navy and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute
gave General Mills a contract to build a small, deep-diving
submarine. 

Two years earlier, he had helped build a mechanical arm
for the Navy-owned bathyscaph Trieste, which once descended more
than 35,000 feet underwater.

      Alvin -- nicknamed after Allyn Vine of the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institute -- could reach depths of more than 14,000
feet. In 1966, it was used to find a hydrogen bomb that was lost
after a U.S. military plane crashed off the Spanish coast. 

Later,
scientist Robert D. Ballard found giant tube worms and other
then-undiscovered aquatic life 7,000 feet underwater off the
Galapagos Islands. 

Ballard also used Alvin in 1986 to find the
Titanic, which rested more than 12,000 feet underwater in the North
Atlantic.

      Today, Alvin has made more than 4,100 dives, according to the
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

      Though Alvin was his best-known project, Froehlich worked on
many others during his career, such as high-altitude balloons and,
after joining 3M Co., surgical equipment such as skin staplers, his
wife, Avanelle Froehlich, recalled Wednesday.

      Asked what he was most interested in, she said: "I think
anything that he could puzzle out and make work. And of course his
family."

      Harold Edward Froehlich was born July 13, 1922, in Minneapolis
and served as a Navy signalman during World War II. 

He graduated
from the University of Washington with bachelor's degrees in
aeronautical and mechanical engineering and earned his master's
degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign.

      He retired from 3M Co. in 1989 and lived in St. Anthony, a Twin
Cities suburb. He is survived by his wife, of St. Anthony; two
children, Steve Froehlich of Grasston, and Jane Hansen of Deerwood;
a sister; and eight grandchildren.


      Services were held Wednesday in St. Anthony.

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Harold E. Froehlich, who designed a deep-sea
vessel used in the search for ocean life forms as well as the Titanic, died this month. He was 84. Froehlich's worked for General Mills and 3M.

Froehlich, designer of Alvin deep-sea vessel, dies at 84

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