Drift Station: Arctic Outposts of Superpower Science (2007) Hardcover Book - (William F. Althoff)

Closed to conventional passage, the Arctic Ocean and peripheral seas have nevertheless known European explorers since the sixteenth century. Systematic observation, however, dates only from the last years of the nineteenth century, with the epic drift of Fridtjof Nansen’s ice ship Fram (1893-1896), the first scientific expedition of the modern era. Twentieth-century technology―the icebreaker, radio transmission, nuclear power, and aircraft―opened the Arctic for survey, basic research, and observation. World War II saw the inhospitable circumpolar Arctic transformed into a theater of military operations.