Hello Steve - I was internet surfing and I came across your site on the Trieste. My name is Martin Klein, and I was heavily involved with the Trieste and the search for the Thresher. I was a new M.I.T. electrical engineer at E.G.&G., Inc. in Boston when the Thresher sank in 1963. I designed the first side scan sonar for the sub, and I spent a lot of time with her in Boston and San Diego. Even made a shallow dive or two to test the sonar. I also went on the Mizar with Chester Buchanan where we tested an early long-baseline acoustic navigation system. I guess we were really pioneers. There were two sonars on the Trieste, mine and a CTFM unit from Straza. The systems worked, but the sonar pictures from both were very unsatisfying to me, so I was determined to develop something better. I wound up developing a higher frequency, narrow beam dual channel side scan sonar which became the first successful side scan sonar. In 1967 I went to Turkey with famed marine archaeologyist George Bass to help find the wreck of a 2000 -year-old ship. That same year the sonar was used to help find the wreck of Mary Rose in England. In January of 1968 I started my own company, Klein Associates, Inc. in the basement of a rented house in Lexington, Mass. and then moved to Salem, NH.
Our sonars were used to help find most of the famous shipwrecks - the Titanic, the Breadalbane, the Lusitania, the DeBraak, the Atocha, the Hamilton and Scourge, Benedict Arnold's gunboat in Lake Champlain and countless others. It was also used to find the remains of the Space Shuttle Challenger and the wreckage of many aircraft.
I am retired now, but Klein Associates continues to make advanced side scan sonar.

A year ago, at a convention of the National Model Railroad Association, I ran into Dan Johnson who designed the Straza sonar. He is also retired now.
I have some other photos for the site which I plan to send.
Best regards to you and to fellow Trieste veterans.

Marty Klein