Argo is an unmanned deep-towed undersea video camera sled developed by Dr. Robert Ballard

Robert Ballard

Robert Duane Ballard is a former United States Navy officer and a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island who is most noted for his work in underwater archaeology. He is most famous for the discoveries of the wrecks of the RMS Titanic in 1985, the battleship Bismarck in 1989,...

 through Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute's Deep Submergence Laboratory. Argo is most famous for its role in the 1985 discovery of the wreck of the RMS Titanic. Argo was also used in the discovery of the wreck of the German battleship Bismarck

German battleship Bismarck

Bismarck was the first of two s built for the German Kriegsmarine during World War II. Named after Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the primary force behind the German unification in 1871, the ship was laid down at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg in July 1936 and launched nearly three years later...

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The towed sled, capable of operating depths of 6,000 metres (20,000 feet), meant 98% of the ocean floor was within reach. The original Argo used to find Titanic was 15 feet long, 3.5 feet tall, and 3.5 feet wide and weighed about 4,000 pounds in air. It had an array of cameras looking forward and down, and strobes

Strobe light

A strobe light or stroboscopic lamp, commonly called a strobe, is a device used to produce regular flashes of light. It is one of a number of devices that can be used as a stroboscope...

 and incandescent lighting to illuminate the ocean floor.