Auguste Piccard
A man who designed his own balloons and submarines to touch the edge of space and the ocean floor, charting two frontiers.
1884–1962 (age 78)·Swiss physicist, inventor, and explorer·Birthday: January 28·The Lost Generation
Biography
Auguste Piccard was an explorer who built his own vehicles to go where no one could follow. A Swiss physicist with a boundless curiosity for the unknown, he looked up and saw the stratosphere as a new laboratory. In 1931, he and an assistant climbed into a spherical, pressurized aluminum gondola of his own design, suspended beneath a massive hydrogen balloon. They ascended over ten miles into the sky, becoming the first humans to enter the stratosphere and see the curvature of the Earth. Not content with conquering the vertical above, he then turned his genius downward. He invented the bathyscaphe, a deep-sea vessel that used buoyancy principles similar to a balloon. With it, he made unmanned dives, paving the way for his son Jacques to later reach the deepest point in the ocean. Piccard was the archetype of the scientist-adventurer, personally risking his life to gather data from the planet's most extreme environments.
The Lost Generation
1883–1900
Came of age during World War I. Disillusioned by the carnage, they rejected the certainties of the Victorian era and built modernism from the wreckage — in art, literature, and politics.
Auguste was born in 1884, placing them squarely in The Lost Generation. The events that shaped this generation — world wars, depression, and rapid industrialization — shaped the world they entered and the choices available to them.
#1 When Auguste Was Born
The biggest hits of 1884
Auguste's Life & Times
The world at every milestone
1884Born
President: Chester A. Arthur
1889Started school
Eiffel Tower opens in Paris
President: Benjamin Harrison
1897Became a teenager
President: William McKinley
1900Could drive
Boxer Rebellion in China
President: William McKinley
1902Could vote
The eruption of Mount Pelee kills 30,000 in Martinique
President: Theodore Roosevelt
1905Turned 21
Einstein publishes the theory of special relativity
President: Theodore Roosevelt
1914Turned 30
World War I begins
President: Woodrow Wilson
1924Turned 40
First Winter Olympics held in Chamonix, France
President: Calvin Coolidge"It Had to Be You" — Isham Jones
1934Turned 50
Gas: $0.19/galPresident: Franklin D. Roosevelt"Stars Fell on Alabama" — Jack TeagardenBest Picture: It Happened One Night
1944Turned 60
D-Day: Allied forces land at Normandy
Gas: $0.21/galHome: $3,400Min wage: $0.30/hrPresident: Franklin D. Roosevelt"Swinging on a Star" — Bing CrosbyBest Picture: Going My Way
1954Turned 70
Brown v. Board of Education desegregates US schools
Gas: $0.29/galHome: $8,925Min wage: $0.75/hrPresident: Dwight D. Eisenhower"Little Things Mean a Lot" — Kitty KallenBest Picture: On the Waterfront
1962Died at 78
Cuban Missile Crisis brings the world to the brink
Gas: $0.31/galHome: $12,800Min wage: $1.15/hrPresident: John F. Kennedy"Stranger on the Shore" — Acker BilkBest Picture: Lawrence of Arabia
Key Achievements
- Made the first manned flight into the stratosphere in 1931, reaching an altitude of 15,781 meters (51,775 ft).
- Invented the bathyscaphe, a free-diving deep-sea submersible, leading to the exploration of the ocean's abyss.
- Set multiple world altitude records during a series of pioneering high-altitude balloon flights in the early 1930s.
- His work provided crucial direct measurements of cosmic rays and atmospheric conditions in the upper atmosphere.
Did You Know?
The character of Professor Cuthbert Calculus in Hergé's 'The Adventures of Tintin' was directly inspired by Auguste Piccard.
He was a twin; his brother Jean Felix was also a scientist and a balloonist who made high-altitude flights in the United States.
His son, Jacques Piccard, piloted the bathyscaphe Trieste to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in 1960.
“The exploration of the stratosphere and the abyss are but two aspects of the same problem.”
