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He had cancer and died May 19 at a suburban hospital, his family said.
Froehlich was named project manager for the vessel, named Alvin, in 1962 when the Navy and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute gave General Mills a contract to build a small, deep-diving submarine. Two years earlier, he had helped build a mechanical arm for the Navy-owned bathyscaph Trieste, which once descended more than 35,000 feet.
Alvin — nicknamed after Allyn Vine of the Oceanographic Institute — could reach depths of more than 14,000 feet. In 1966, it was used to find a hydrogen bomb that was lost after a U.S. military plane crashed off the Spanish coast. Later, scientist Robert D. Ballard found giant tube worms and other then-undiscovered life 7,000 feet underwater off the Galapagos Islands.
In 1986, Ballard used Alvin to explore and photograph the Titanic, which rested more than 12,000 feet underwater in the North Atlantic.
Alvin has made more than 4,100 dives, according to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.
Though Alvin was his best-known project, Froehlich worked on many others during his career, such as high-altitude balloons and, after joining 3M Co., surgical equipment such as skin staplers, his wife, Avanelle Froehlich, recalled Wednesday.
Asked what he was most interested in, she said: “I think anything that he could puzzle out and make work. And, of course, his family.”
Harold Edward Froehlich was born July 13, 1922, in Minneapolis and was a Navy signalman during World War II.
He retired from 3M in 1989.
