2023-04-24 08:00:00
Boldness is a hereditary condition. At least that is the conclusion we could reach if we review the history of a lineage of explorers who tested the limits of the technical and the human. How could it be otherwise, we talk about the Piccards.
The beginning of this family saga dates back to the year 1884 and is located in the city of Basel, Switzerland, where on January 28 a couple of twins are born as a result of the love between a physics teacher and an artist: their names are Jean Felix and Auguste Piccardand although they don’t know it yet, their destiny will be to push the human technical capabilities of their time to the limit.
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The Jean and Auguste family were committed to science and art, which inspired their love of exploration in both of them and imprinted on them a strong scientific vocation. Thus, the first, Jean, graduated in chemistry in 1907 and received his doctorate in technology just two years later, in 1909.
Auguste, for his part, did so in natural sciences, obtaining a doctorate in 1910. He continued his training at the universities of Paris and Cambridge, and a couple of years later, in 1912, he became professor of physics at the University Lausanne, where he began his research on the cosmic rays and the stratosphere. After a short period of time, he would soon settle in Belgium, where he spent almost all of his teaching career, and where theory seemed to fall short before his desire for knowledge, so he decided be himself the one who went to the stratosphere to take the necessary measures for their field of study and observe first-hand cosmic rays.
Thus, in 1925, he ordered a pressurized capsule to be built by a Belgian beer barrel factory that could be propelled by a hydrogen balloon and that had the capacity to house two people and all the scientific instruments he might need. This is how he was born “Nacelle”the cabin that propelled by a pressurized balloon called “FNRS-1“, took the first people in history – the scientist and his wife, Jeanette – to the Earth’s stratosphere.
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The trip, in which Piccard and his wife They became the first humans to see the curvature of the Earth. and the dark color of the sky during the day, lasted thirteen hours and reached an altitude of 15,781 meters, a world record at the time. A record that would nevertheless be surpassed by his brother Jean de él 3 years later, in 1934, reaching 17,552 meters high.
This first trip was followed by another 26, not without setbacks that on occasion could have cost him and his usual companion, his assistant, their lives. Paul Kipferin which they broke successive height records.
A journey from the clouds to the abyss
However, the limits of the atmosphere seemed not to be enough for the scientist, so after his stratospheric feats Piccard turned his gaze to the bottom of the ocean and in 1947 built his first bathyscaphe. A little later he would improve his design, giving rise to a second bathyscaphe named Triestewith which on September 30, 1953 it descended to 3,150 meters in the waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea and to 4,000 in 1954.
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However, it would be his son, Jacques Piccardfollowing in his footsteps, the one who would write his name forever in the records when in 1960 he managed to descend to the Mariana Trench, resetting the world record for the depth reached by a human being at 10,960 meters, an unbeatable record with which he reached the deepest point in the oceans.
The family saga of adventures, however, would not end here, and the audacity and desire for exploration of the Piccards would manifest once again in one of Jaques’ 3 children, Bertrand Piccard, Auguste’s grandson, who in the late 1990s embarked on a challenge in which all his predecessors had failed: go around the world in a hot air balloon without engine or rudder, and without making any stopover. His journey, which culminated in landing in the Egyptian desert after 21 days and 47 minutes of flight, broke 7 world records.
In the recent past, specifically in 2016, Bertrand also became the first person to circumambulate the earth aboard a plane powered exclusively by solar energy. Unfortunately, and though he would be proud of it, Auguste would not be around to witness his grandson’s exploits, as he died of a heart attack in 1962, two years after his son reached rock bottom. of the ocean.
His name, however, lives on, forever immortalized in the character of Professor Calculus, a character in the adventures of Tintin, or in the figure of Captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek.
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