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>Of the various liquids chosen as incompressible fillers, I hereby do NOT
>recommend a choice that Cousteau and Picard made once! They dived in a
>`bathyscaphe', which is a hollow steel ball with a float. The float needed to
>be filled with something incompressible, so they chose petrol (= gasoline)!!!
>OK, it worked.

The purpose of the gasoline was not as an imcompressible fluid, but as an
easily obtainable lighter-than-water gas to float the bathyscape, which
operated exactly as a lighter-than-air ballon, only underwater. In short,
the gas was acting in water as helium/hydrogen in air.
 The designers doubtlessly felt the flammabililty would be of little
problem thousands of feet below the surface; and that the pollution aspects
(not that anyone gave a damn in those days) were justified by the
scientific value of the missions.

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