Born January 28, 1884,
Basel, Switzerland
Died March 24, 1962,
Lausanne, Switzerland
Jacques Piccard
Born July 28, 1922,
Brussels, Belgium
Auguste Piccard was born into a prominent academic family in the Swiss city of Basel. He had a twin brother, Jean, who later became an important chemist. The brothers enrolled at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich; Auguste studied physics and Jean chemistry. During this time Auguste, who had become interested in using balloons in experiments, participated in several research studies involving balloons. In 1919 Auguste married the daughter of a professor of history at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1922 he was appointed to the chair of applied physics at the University of Brussels in Belgium, where his son Jacques was born the same year.
Jacques Piccard graduated from the Êcole Nouvelle de Suisse Romande in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1943, then continued his studies in economics at the University of Geneva. After serving in the French army from 1944 to 1945 he received his degree in 1946; he taught for two years at the university, then entered private teaching.
Having read the works of science-fiction writer Jules Verne as a child, Auguste Piccard was inspired to carry out some of Verne’s predictions. The first was to reach the highest altitude achieved by man. He was also interested in studying cosmic rays, so he began planning an experiment that would enable him to observe the rays at an altitude above 16,000 meters.
In order to conduct his experiment Piccard would need to design a low-pressure balloon that could penetrate the potentially fatal, low-pressure isothermal layer of the stratosphere. In 1930 Piccard received funding to build the balloon, which had an airtight cabin that was equipped with pressurized air. The airtight cabin has since become a standard feature in airplanes. The balloon was also very large so it would not have to be completely filled when it ascended.
Piccard tested his balloon on May 27, 1931. Accompanied by Paul Kipfer, he reached an altitude of 51,762 feet (15,781 meters); they were the first people to reach the stratosphere. Upon their return to Earth the scientists were honored in Zürich and Brussels. Piccard was able to exceed his altitude goal of 16,000 meters a year later when, with a cabin equipped with a radio, his balloon rose to 55,563 feet (16,940 meters).
Following this achievement Piccard set the goal of reaching the lowest depth. In order to accomplish this he needed to construct a vessel that would penetrate the sea. Using the same basic idea as his stratospheric balloon, he built a free-floating “deep-sea ship” that he called a bathyscaphe. The pressurized cabin of the bathyscaphe was attached to a float that contained lighter-than-water gasoline while another compartment was filled with lead shot to give it stability. When the vessel went below water, gasoline was emptied from the float; when it came up to the surface, the lead shot was released.
Construction of the bathyscaphe was interrupted by World War II. In 1948 Piccard was able to test his first experimental vessel, which he named the F.N.R.S. 2 for the Belgian scientific foundation that had supported the project. The unmanned F.N.R.S. 2 descended 4,600 feet (1,400 meters), then carried out other experiments with Piccard on board. There were problems with this first bathyscaphe, chiefly that it could not be towed and had to be carried in the hull of a ship. When the F.F.R.S. 2 was damaged in heavy seas, Piccard set about building a better vessel. In 1953 he constructed the F.N.R.S. 3, which was later acquired by the French navy. At that point Jacques Piccard joined his father in designing bathyscaphes.
While Jacques was in Trieste, Italy, to study the city’s port, local citizens commissioned him to build a bathyscaphe named the Trieste. In August 1953 the Trieste competed with the F.N.R.S. 3 in the Mediterranean—the Italian vessel, with the Piccards aboard, descended into the water off the coast of Naples and the French went into the sea at Toulon. The F.N.R.S. 3 reached 6,900 feet (2,100 meters) while the Trieste went to a depth of 10,300 feet (2,150 meters). Auguste had achieved his goal. Jacques left teaching to work full-time on bathyscaphes. In 1954 Auguste retired and moved to Lausanne, Switzerland.
Four years later the Trieste was bought by the U.S. Navy, which retained Jacques as a consultant. On January 23, 1960, Jacques and naval lieutenant Donald Walsh piloted the Trieste to a record depth of 35,800 feet (10,912 meters) in the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean. They reported that even at that depth they saw signs of life.
Jacques wrote about his experience in the August 1960 edition of the National Geographic magazine:
Like a free balloon on a windless day, indifferent to the almost 200,000 tons of water pressing on the cabin from all sides, balanced to within an ounce or so on its wire guide ropes, slowly, surely, in the name of science and humanity, the Trieste took possession of the abyss, the last extreme on our earth that remained to be conquered.
Following the success of the bathyscaphe, the Piccards developed the concept of the mesoscaphe—a “middle-depth ship” that would operate at depths down to 20,000 feet. If the bathyscaphe could be compared to an underwater balloon, then the mesoscaphe was designed to be an underwater helicopter. In 1969 the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts carried out the Gulf Stream Mission using the Piccards’ mesoscaphe to conduct a series of experiments under the Atlantic Ocean.
During the mission Jacques Piccard made a month long journey, from July 14 to August 14, 1969, traveling with the Gulf Stream from West Palm Beach, Florida, to a point 360 miles southeast of Nova Scotia. The six-man crew on the mesoscaphe measured and recorded the physical characteristics of the Gulf Stream and made observations of the rich animal life around them. The project also served the experimental needs of the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which wanted to find out how men would react to confinement in a small space over a fairly long period of time.
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