Today's newsreel from British Pathé is quite fascinating - Professor Augustes Piccard has just landed in Switzerland ( May 27, 1931 ) after becoming the first human being to enter the stratosphere. He reached an altitude of 51,775 ft ( nearly 10 miles ) in his unusual spherical gondola and witnessed the curvature of the Earth for the first time in history.
Professor Piccard's thirst for exploration extended to the deep deep ocean and, beginning in the late 1930s, he worked to design a similarly built steel gondola which would take a man under the sea. He called it a bathyscaphe and, in 1954, it did indeed take a man down to over 13,000 ft underwater.
Piccard was not only an inventor and explorer but a physicist as well. However, his most important claim to fame is that he was the inspiration for the character Professor Calculus in Herge's famous Tin-Tin cartoons!
Want to see the Professor in action? Check out "10 Miles Above the Earth" ( 1931 ) by clicking here.
Similarly themed news clips from British Pathé:
10 1/2 Miles Above the Earth ( 1932 ) - 1:53 minutes
Professor Piccard and the Diving Bell ( 1940-1949 ) - 0:37 minutes
Professor Piccard Test the Bathysphere ( 1953 ) - 0:56 minutes
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