Word: balloon
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Frenchmen looked up in wonder last year as a big orange balloon carrying two passengers floated back and forth across the country. Photographed by movie cameras in an accompanying helicopter, the balloon whisked by the spires of the Strasbourg Cathedral, almost bumped into the Eiffel Tower, skimmed within a few yards of Mont Blanc, dipped down to mast level over the Riviera. In Paris last week the resulting film, Voyage in a Balloon, gave audiences a stunning cloud's-eye view of virtually every remarkable tourist sight in France...
Voyage is the work of Albert Lamorisse, already known for his prizewinning shorts (Bim, White Mane, The Red Balloon) and probably the most original moviemaker in France. Echoing the consensus, Le Monde's Jean de Baroncelli, dean of Paris film critics, wrote: Voyage is "a tale of a dream realized. Pure cinema. Above all, a ravishing spectacle." Wrote Author André Maurois: "A film for poets and philosophers...
...space is a tough neighborhood for frail balloons. Microscopic meteorites punctured Echo's skin, allowing the gas inside to seep out. Sunlight exerted a slight but persistent pressure. Gradually Echo lost its regular shape; flat places and wrinkles appeared on its shiny surface. "She's prune-faced already," says Richard Slater of G. T. Schjeldahl, Northfield, Minn., the company that made the balloon. When Echo turns deliberately about once in eight to ten minutes, flat places sometimes act as mirrors, making the sun's reflection momentarily brighter. Wrinkled places dim the reflection. The radio waves that...
...weeks after launching, Echo stayed entirely outside the shadow of the Earth, but on Aug. 24 it dipped into darkness for two minutes while passing over the U.S. West Coast. Each day its stay in the shadow will increase, until in late December the balloon satellite will be in darkness for 35 minutes of its 118-minute orbit. When it goes into the shadow, it shrinks a bit, but Dr. Jaffe does not know how much...
Guns Galore. A shower of new products and processes is augmenting man's age-old efforts to get in out of the rain. Minnesota's Schjeldahl Co.'s polyester plastic balloon structures can be built in half a day, need only an ordinary building fan to keep them inflated, will last five to ten years. Quonset-shaped, the Schjel-dome will work in the arctic or the tropics, can be used for garages and greenhouses, swimming pool covers and grain warehouses, is repaired with a hot iron...