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From within the aluminum ball two men peered through port windows at the endless blue vacancy about them. The taller of the two, gawky, long-haired, bespectacled, clad in rough homespun and a towering collar, was Auguste Piccard, 47, Swiss professor of physics in the University of Brussels. The other was his assistant, Charles Kipfer, 20 years his junior. On their heads were baskets stuffed with pillows, to cushion them in case of a sudden drop of their gondola. They had been preparing for this ascension since last summer, had tried and failed last autumn (TIME, Sept. 22) and were...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Aeronautics: Two Men in a Ball | 6/8/1931 | See Source »

...silver speck in the sky, now vanishing, now swimming into sight again miles away, had most of Europe agog. It was staying up too long! Evidently it could not come down! There was said to be oxygen supply for only ten hours, and here it was 15 hours already. Piccard and Kipfer must be floating, like Mahomet in his coffin, dead in the middle...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Aeronautics: Two Men in a Ball | 6/8/1931 | See Source »

Professor Piccard blinked bewilderedly behind his spectacles at all the excitement. True, they had remained aloft longer than intended, but that was only because the gas valve had failed to work, and they were forced to wait until the cool of evening contracted the hydrogen in the balloon's bag which was only one-seventh full upon starting. Yes, it was fortunate that their oxygen held out so long. No, they suffered no hardship except heat and thirst. Half the shell of the gondola had been painted black to absorb the rays of the sun in the frigid stratosphere. Result...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Aeronautics: Two Men in a Ball | 6/8/1931 | See Source »

Newshawks from all over Europe converged upon Gurgl by rail, motor, cycle and airplane. Before long the mild-mannered Professor Piccard was impelled to say, in reply to a question about his "suffering": ". . . the worst experience is being called out of bed at 2 o'clock in the morning...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Aeronautics: Two Men in a Ball | 6/8/1931 | See Source »

Significance. Professor Piccard's prime purpose was to determine whether cosmic rays were, as believed, ten times more powerful in the stratosphere than upon reaching the earth through the atmosphere. Dr. Arthur Holly Compton, winner of the 1927 Nobel Prize for physics, said in Chicago: ''Such measurements have been made before with sounding balloons, but the conditions under which Professor Piccard made his observations would be much more satisfactory." He expected the results to prove "very valuable" to science...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Aeronautics: Two Men in a Ball | 6/8/1931 | See Source »

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