330-PSA-172-61 (USN 710955):  Rear Admiral Daniel F. Smith, Jr., USN, Navy Chief of Information, right, accepts the original oil painting from an RCA advertisement hailing USS Seadragon’s east-to-west voyage under the polar ice gap in 1960 from Max Lehrer, Manager, RCA’s Washington Defense Office, August 11, 1961, at the Pentagon.  Admiral Smith accepted in behalf of Seadragon’s Commanding Officer, Commander Steele II, USN, and the submarine’s crew.  Mr. Lehrer expressed RCA’s pride in having been associated with the Seadragon’s voyage as supplier of a unique video tape recorder which rode a torpedo rack of the submarine during its historic voyage, recording and storing data on under-the-ice characteristics from externally installed TV cameras.  The Seadragon’s visit to the North Pole was the fourth by a United States nuclear submarine.  It was the first, however, to be equipped with closed-circuit TV secured to its exterior.  For 44 days, the submarine’s television “eyes” helped guide it under icepacks too crowded to surface through, enabled it at one point to find passage under a mass of ice estimated at more than three million tones.  When the 265-foot sub had completed it historic voyage, it held the distinction of having trail-blazed a possible new military and commercial route through the Northwest Passage.  Photograph released August 14, 1961.  (9/22/2015).
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