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Massey's was not the only sounding machine adopted during the nineteenth century. The Royal Navy also purchased a number of Peter Burt's buoy and nipper device. This machine was quite different from Massey's. It consisted of an inflatable canvas bag (the [[buoy]]) and a spring-loaded wooden pulley block (the nipper). Again, the device was designed to operate alongside a lead and line. In this case, the buoy would be pulled behind the ship and the line threaded through the pulley. The lead could then be released. The buoy ensured that the lead fell perpendicular to the sea floor even when the ship was moving. The spring-loaded pulley would then catch the rope when the lead hit the sea bed, ensuring an accurate reading of the depth.<ref name="Poskett" />
Both Massey and Burt's machines were designed to operate in relatively shallow waters (up to 150 fathoms). With the growth of seabed telegraphy in the later nineteenth century, new machines were introduced to measure much greater depths of water. The most widely adopted deep-sea sounding machine in the nineteenth century was [[Kelvite sounding machine|Kelvin's sounding machine]], designed by [[William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin|William Thomson]] (Lord Kelvin) and patented in 1876. This operated on the same principle as lead and line sounding. In this case, the line consisted of a drum of piano wire whilst the lead was of a much greater weight. Later versions of Kelvin's machine also featured a motorised drum in order to facilitate the winding and unwinding of the line. These devices also featured a dial which recorded the length of line let out.<ref name="Dunn">{{cite book | last1=Dunn | first1=R | editor1-last=Dunn |editor1-first=R |editor2-last=Leggett |editor2-first=D | title=Re-inventing the Ship: Science, Technology and the Maritime World, 1800-1918 | chapter=‘Their brains over-taxed’: Ships, Instruments and Users | location=Farnham |publisher=[[Ashgate Publishing]] | year=2012 |pages=131–156}}</ref>
===Echo sounding===
{{main|Echo sounding}}
Both lead-and-line technology and sounding machines were used during the twentieth century, but by the twenty-first, [[echo sounding]] has increasingly displaced both of those methods. A sounding line can still be found on many vessels as a backup to electronic depth sounding in the event of malfunction. [[GPS]] has largely replaced the sextant and chronometer to establish one's position at sea, but many mariners still carry a sextant and chronometer as a backup. Many small craft still rely solely on a sounding line.
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