Question

In the early summer of $1930$, off the coast of Nonsuch Island, Bermuda, a bizarre vessel was lowered from the deck of the barge Ready into the sapphire waters of the Atlantic. This was the Bathysphere, a spherical steel deep-sea submersible designed by Otis Barton and championed by the renowned naturalist William Beebe. At a time when deep-sea exploration was limited to dredging nets that pulled up crushed, lifeless specimens, Beebe sought to observe marine organisms in their native, undisturbed habitats. The design of the Bathysphere was a marvel of utilitarian engineering. Barton realized that only a sphere could uniformly distribute the crushing hydrostatic pressure of the abyss, which increases by approximately $1$ atmosphere for every $33$ feet of depth. Cast by the Watson-Stillman Hydraulic Machinery Company, the sphere measured exactly $4$ feet $9$ inches in diameter and possessed steel walls $1\frac{1}{4}$ inches thick. Its weight, a formidable $5,400$ pounds, required a heavy-duty winch and a specialized steel cable capable of supporting several tons without twisting.

To allow Beebe to look out into the darkness, Barton installed $3$ window ports, though only $2$ were eventually fitted with windows while the third was plugged with steel. These windows were not made of standard glass, which would have shattered under the intense pressure, but of fused quartz cylinders. Each cylinder was $8$ inches in diameter and $3$ inches thick, ground and polished to optical perfection by the General Electric Company. To seal these windows against the steel frame, Barton utilized a mixture of red lead and putty, baking the assemblies in an oven to harden the seal. The interior of the sphere was cramped and hostile. Beebe and Barton had to crawl through a circular hatch just $14$ inches in diameter, which was then secured by a heavy steel lid fastened with $10$ large brass bolts. Inside, the researchers sat on the cold steel floor, surrounded by essential life-support equipment.

Oxygen was supplied from $2$ high-pressure cylinders, each containing oxygen at $150$ atmospheres, which was released through a reducing valve at a constant rate of $2$ liters per minute—sufficient for both men for up to $8$ hours. To prevent the accumulation of toxic gases, $2$ wire mesh baskets were suspended from the ceiling. One basket contained $3$ pounds of soda lime to absorb carbon dioxide, while the other held $3$ pounds of calcium chloride to remove moisture exhaled by the divers. A single, custom-designed cable connected the Bathysphere to the surface. This cable housed both a telephone line and a power wire that fed a $250$-watt spotlight. On the deck of the Ready, Gloria Hollister, a research associate and an accomplished zoologist in her own right, sat with a telephone headset, recording Beebe’s breathless, real-time descriptions as they descended.

On their historic dive of June 11, $1930$, the pair reached a depth of $800$ feet, far deeper than any human had survived in a submersible before. Over the next $4$ years, they pushed the limits of the vessel, culminating in a record-breaking dive to $3,028$ feet on August 15, $1934$. In the pitch-black depths, illuminated only by the faint glow of the spotlight and the bioluminescence of passing creatures, Beebe witnessed a world never before seen by human eyes. He observed species that were entirely new to science, such as the *Bathysphaera intacta* (the giant dragonfish) and the *Bathysidus pentagrammus* (the five-lined constellation fish). Because these observations were fleeting and could not be verified by physical specimens, some contemporary ichthyologists reacted with intense skepticism. They argued that the optical distortions of the thick quartz windows, combined with the psychological effects of sensory deprivation and nitrogen narcosis, had caused Beebe to misidentify known species or imagine entirely new ones. Nevertheless, Beebe’s meticulous notes, preserved through his telephone conversations with Hollister, laid the groundwork for modern deep-sea biology.

Based on the passage, is the statement that the Watson-Stillman Hydraulic Machinery Company ground and polished the Bathysphere’s $3$-inch-thick quartz window cylinders true or false?