CHAPTER 11
After his pioneering balloon flights into the stratosphere in 1931–1932, Auguste Piccard would pass the baton to his brother Jean. Working with Dow Chemical, the Goodyear-Zeppelin Company, and Union Carbide, among others, Jean Piccard looked to perfect the spherical gondola or “capsule” design his brother had ridden nearly into space. Two Nobel Prize–winning physicists—Arthur Holly Compton of the University of Chicago and Robert Millikan of Cal Tech—contributed their expertise in devising more accurate devices for measuring cosmic rays from inside the gondola. The disagreement between the two Nobel Laureates over the source of these rays provided a ready-made subplot for this next ascent into the heavens. And Chicago (Compton’s home) and its great fair provided an ideal platform from which to promote this daring attempt to both set a new height record and settle the ongoing (and increasingly publicized) dispute between Compton and Millikan.* The fact that Compton had once been Millikan’s student added further spice. He challenged his former mentor’s conviction that, as science writer Mark Wolverton later explained, cosmic rays might “reveal the mind of God.”1 That this dispute was one beyond the understanding of most ordinary people mattered less than the dramatic tension it added to the narrative that the press was keen to develop. On one level, the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair was seriously committed to demonstrating to the public the value of science in people’s lives. On the other hand, the carnival-like aspect of the fair led organizations such as the fair’s Science Advisory Committee to favor (as David DeVorkin in his excellent book on the 1930s race to the stratosphere described them) “stunts that would be wondrous for the twelve-year-old mind to behold.”2
Lenox Lohr’s head of concessions at the fair was one Forest Ray Moulton, professor emeritus in astronomy and mathematics at the University of Chicago. It was Moulton who initiated the fair’s formal overtures to Auguste Piccard with an eye toward having him make a return to America to supervise, and possibly take a more direct part, in an American-based attempt at a new world altitude record. With his background, Moulton was certainly aware of Piccard’s commitment to science, but as director of concessions, he also clearly grasped the potential for publicity and profit in having “Professor Calculus” recross the Atlantic and associate himself with the Chicago Fair. But though he would return briefly to America, Auguste made it clear that he was not available—his capable brother Jean, however, was. And it was with Jean that the fair’s organizers would ultimately treat.
For Jean Piccard, the years following his once initially quite promising academic career spent in Chicago, Lausanne, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, had failed to materialize into a formal tenured position and he now found himself struggling to make ends meet working in research and development. The opportunity to play a leading role in the most heavily publicized high-altitude ballooning event in history was not simply a realization of a lifetime dream, but potentially an opportunity to capitalize on the inevitable fame that would follow, to secure a tenured position at a university and also financial security for his family. Both then and in the years since, Jean Piccard has been criticized as a petulant glory-seeker, jealous of his twin brother’s success, using science as a convenient excuse to further his own egotistical aims. This is a decidedly ungenerous, not to say unkind, assessment of a talented, frustrated man, navigating what was for him a foreign (i.e., American) culture. His vision had its roots in his childhood with his brother. He was not an opportunist. He was a bold dreamer—and a man of science—with a longstanding interest in ballooning and stratospheric exploration. He was no flyby-night huckster. But he was a foreigner dealing with a group of Americans drawn from the highest levels of industry, academia, and the military with their own agendas, often acting in concert. His leverage was the Piccard imprimatur—the Piccard name carried weight with, most importantly, the press. But he had little else. No money. Precious few contacts. Not even a balloon pilot’s license. Thus, what ultimately transpired as a result of Forest Ray Moulton’s overture to Auguste Piccard is really quite a fantastic story. It is a story of two people’s creativity, courage, and above all, determination.
Lenox Lohr, Forest Ray Moulton, and Moulton’s young protégé from the University of Chicago, a young chemist named Irving Muskat, made certain that the stratospheric ascent staged in conjunction with the fair would be an altogether more ambitious and far more highly publicized flight than that of Auguste Piccard and Paul Kipfer in 1931. And it would be undertaken, not by the Piccards, but by the U.S. Navy in the form of would-be soloist, Lieutenant Commander Thomas Settle. Why Settle? He was an American, and as a naval officer he had chosen to place himself in harm’s way if called to do so. The fair’s organizers clearly favored having an American boy—one nicknamed “Tex,” no less—break the record rather than a foreigner. This was one of the few jingoistic gestures to mar the fair’s legacy. In a Pathé newsreel from that summer, Jean Piccard is featured speaking to an assembled crowd from the open hatchway of the spherical capsule. He is tall, thin, lanky, dressed in white with his sleeves rolled up, shirt open at the collar. He has the look of a visionary, a savant. As he explains various features of the gondola’s design, his heavily accented English is very noticeable. One has to listen carefully to understand what he is saying. Later in the film he has an awkward, staged conversation with a representative from Union Carbide (supplier of the hydrogen for the giant balloon).3 For a provincial American audience—and Americans can be very provincial—he was not the ideal messenger in this new age of “talkies” and mass popular media. The reason given to Jean Piccard for the choice of Settle was Piccard’s lack of a license from the National Aeronautic Association to actually fly a balloon, a deficiency that could have been readily rectified if the fair’s organizers had genuinely wanted Piccard to fly. They didn’t. To be fair, Settle was far more experienced in lighter-than-air aviation than Piccard, even having served as an observer aboard the Graf Zeppelin on its maiden trans-Atlantic voyage.4 Be that as it may, Piccard accepted the decision with more grace than he was given credit for, but remained undaunted in his desire to someday ascend into the stratosphere as his brother had done.
The new gondola—based on Auguste Piccard’s original capsule—was built using Dow Chemical’s new lightweight, yet extremely strong, product known as “Dowmetal.”* The giant balloon that would carry it aloft was constructed by Goodyear-Zeppelin, on the understanding that the cost would be offset by the official sponsors of the stratospheric ascent: the Chicago Daily News and the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC).5
In the months leading up to the ascent, planned for the summer of 1933, it was still not altogether clear whether Jean Piccard would play a direct role inside the capsule. His work as an advisor to the large American concerns involved was crucial, in that he understood his brother’s concept better than anyone else. But as the fair opened that spring, it had become increasingly clear that the “other” Piccard was to be elbowed out of the spotlight. It was Irving Muskat, now elevated to manager of the fair’s Chemical Section,6 who most bluntly and succinctly articulated the way the fair’s organizers had refashioned their conception of the stratospheric ascent: “the flight will be made by an American pilot with a gondola made by an American manufacturer out of material developed by an American manufacturer and with a balloon designed and constructed by an American company.”7
Into the maelstrom: Jean Piccard signing autographs at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair.
Jean Piccard was a naturalized American citizen, but, clearly, he wasn’t American enough. In the event, Piccard did well to have steered clear of the proceedings of August 5, 1933. They were an embarrassment, and nearly proved fatal.
As late as July 14, the Chicago News reported as a matter of fact that Jean Piccard would accompany Tex Settle as a science officer aboard the now-completed “A Century of Progress” Gondola. The article featured a photograph of Settle emerging from the hatch of the two-toned capsule, painted white on top and black on bottom.* The accompanying caption read: “Sealed in this metal ball with Jean Piccard, he will be carried eleven miles into the stratosphere in an attempt to bring the world’s altitude record to the United States.”8 This no doubt would have come as a surprise to Piccard, who by midsummer understood he was considered an unwanted nuisance by fair organizers and the Navy. Meanwhile anticipation was built in the press to pique public excitement. Articles with photographs featuring the silk being prepared for the massive balloon that would take the gondola to the edge of space appeared, as did staged photos of Commander Settle (not Piccard) testing a radio with the NBC logo clearly in evidence. Later, the News’s Dempster MacMurphy claimed Jean Piccard would sensationally parachute out of the gondola “several miles above of the earth,” quoting Tex Settle as his source: “The possibility of the fantastic vision of Dr. Piccard making a stork-like visit to a neighboring metropolis, however, is a constant, and chances are almost even that he will bail out.”9 This, of course, was ludicrous. It also made light of Jean Piccard as some sort of unnecessary baggage, whose main purpose, however unlikely, was to perform a wild stunt rather than conduct scientific experiments. The stratospheric ascent continued to be delayed as the wait for more favorable weather conditions kept putting it off. By July 25, the world knew that Jean Piccard would in fact not be going up with Settle—rather, it would be a solo affair. The irony of the Chicago News’s headline: “Settle to Go Aloft Alone in Piccard Flight” was positively Orwellian, cruel even. Arthur Holly Compton rationalized the solo effort by claiming that now additional apparatus for measuring cosmic rays could be installed inside the capsule.10 Just who was going to be conducting these scientific observations was anybody’s guess. Tex Settle would have more than enough on his plate trying to break the altitude record and get back to earth alive. Finally, in early August, fair weather descended on Chicago and preparations were made to stage the ascent (filling the giant balloon with hydrogen gas, preparing scientific instruments, selling tickets to the show). In the event it wasn’t until the early morning hours that the paying public was able to witness the giant balloon being readied for liftoff. This was more Wizard of Oz than NASA.
With much fanfare, Tex Settle’s balloon lifted off from Soldier Field in Chicago at 3:00 a.m. on August 5, 1933. Given an opportunity to think this through again, Settle might have recognized that it was irresponsible, reckless even, to try and ascend in a balloon of that size from a semi-enclosed space (the stadium) full of thousands of onlookers—not to mention the giant towers of the Sky Ride and the fair’s other tall buildings close by. This was a carnival act. Settle demonstrated skill in ascending and avoiding the dangerous obstacles nearby, but to the great disappointment of the onlookers, and Settle himself, the balloon rapidly descended to the ground soon afterward. A valve rope had caught in the balloon’s fabric, and torn it. “A Century of Progress” descended to earth in the Burlington Railway Yards. According to David DeVorkin, “Before the launch, Settle had decided to ignore this problem because he felt pressured to hold to the launch schedule.”11 Italo Balbo, Hugo Eckener, and Auguste Piccard had all faced similar pressures. Tex Settle—a career Navy officer—acted out of character that night. Fortunately no one was hurt, and surprisingly the gondola and balloon were in fairly good condition as well. For Jean and Jeannette Piccard, the latter held particular significance as they had negotiated an agreement with all the parties involved that they would receive the gondola and the balloon when the fair had finished with them. But the fair wasn’t finished with them.
On the morning of October 1, 1933, Chicagoans awoke to the following jarring and unexpected headline in the Chicago Tribune: “RUSSIANS CLAIM BALLOON MARK.” On September 30, Ernest Birnbaum, Georgi Prokofiev, and Konstantin Gudenoff ascended 11.8 miles into the sky, “the greatest height ever achieved by man.”12 Stalin’s Russia—as previously demonstrated by its willingness to engage with the aviation exploits of Italo Balbo and Hugo Eckener—was keenly interested in the heavens. Given its technological attainment at that point in its history, a manned high-altitude balloon ascent was the most readily available means for the Soviet Union to make its mark in aviation exploration. According to that morning’s Tribune, “The gondola in which they rode is shaped like a ball and is equipped with nine windows. When the takeoff was made it carried liquid oxygen enough to last three men 40 hours. In addition, there were numerous scientific instruments which functioned automatically.”13 That this stood in stark contrast to the fiasco of the American effort the month before, was evident to all. The same article closed with the following: “Commander T. G. W. Settle, America’s famous balloonist, left today for Akron and was expected to go from there to Chicago to prepare for a second attempt to set a new altitude record.”14 This was serious now. The altitude record had not yet been confirmed by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale in Lausanne, Switzerland, and the nature of the secretive totalitarian state lent itself to claims of suspicion and doubt. But for the United States, this was clearly now more than some sort of stunt at a fair. Planning immediately got under way for Tex Settle’s second stratospheric attempt. The Soviet ascent was not Sputnik,* but it certainly anticipated it. The first tremors of what would eventually become the famous Cold War–era “Space Race” between these two giant adversaries began in 1933.
Settle tried again on November 20, this time with a copilot (U.S. marine Major Chester Fordney), and not from a Chicago stadium full of people, but rather, from an unobstructed launch site in Akron, Ohio, the base of operations for Goodyear-Zeppelin. It was now the Navy’s show. The fair’s organizers who had helped sideline Jean Piccard were themselves now sidelined. With the fair having closed its gates on November 12, a direct link to the ascent was tenuous anyway. As for Compton and Millikan, their scientific experiments were not prioritized. The altitude record was.
Settle and Fordney were successful in their endeavor, exceeding the heights reached by their Soviet rivals. One gets the sense that for Tex Settle, this was always what it had been about. The science was merely a cloak for pushing the envelope of human endeavor and exploration that much further—going where no man had gone before. Added to this was the satisfaction that what he was doing was pro patria. This unfortunate linking of nationalism and aviation/space exploration, most pronounced among the Fascists, was also used by their fellow totalitarians the Communists, as well as by democracies like the United States.
Jean Piccard had moved on by then. He had obtained work with the Bartol Research Foundation in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. The foundation itself was associated with the prestigious Franklin Institute in nearby Philadelphia. Its director was the English physicist W. F. G. Swann, former head of the Carnegie Institute’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. Like Piccard, Swann had military experience with balloons, serving with the U.S. Army Signal Corps and Robert Millikan in World War I.15 Swann appreciated what Jean Piccard brought to the table. His encouragement, as well as his standing in the American scientific community, were absolutely crucial for Jean Piccard to use as a platform to achieve his stratospheric ambitions.
In an odd twist of fate, Tex Settle and Chester Fordney brought the “A Century of Progress” Gondola and balloon down in a swamp in southern New Jersey, not far from the Piccards’ home at the time (it was well they did, as they came uncomfortably close to overshooting the Jersey Shore and coming down in the Atlantic and likely meeting almost-certain death). When Jean and Jeannette heard the news, they raced to the remote site: “We went over there and Jean waded through several feet of water till he reached the gondola. Then he stripped and swam the bayou to get to the balloon itself.* It was in beautiful condition.”16 Later the Navy retrieved the gondola, but left the balloon to be salvaged by a local strawberry farmer.17 The Piccards were delighted. They had gambled that the capsule and balloon that Jean had helped design would still be flightworthy when the fair and the Navy were through with them. Now it was their turn.
Following the record American ascent, Jean and Jeannette Piccard startled the world by proclaiming that they would attempt to break Settle and Fordney’s record in 1934, on their own, together. This last bit of news was the most startling. The plan was for Jeannette Piccard and her husband to ascend high into the stratosphere and continue the scientific experiments that his brother had initiated. It wasn’t so much that Americans were shocked at the idea of a woman aeronaut—this was, after all, the era that produced Bessie Coleman and Amelia Earhart, among others. It was also the country that had produced the nineteenth-century acrobatic ballooning sensation, Leona Dare, who at the climax of her career had performed with none other than the “Great Spelterini” who had inspired the young Piccard boys to ascend to the skies in the first place.
What made Jeannette Piccard different was that—unlike Coleman, Earhart, or Dare—she was a mother. What kind of woman would place herself in a situation of such grave danger when she had three young sons back on earth who needed her? Clearly a double standard existed. Jean Piccard taking such risks might look reckless to a degree, but it also made him look like someone committed to loftier aims and, frankly, manly. What they were proposing turned all, or much, of this on its head. They had full trust in each other. They loved their children. But they also wanted their children not to be afraid. Fear paralyzes progress, and makes small people of us all. They were not afraid.
However, there was the issue of the balloon pilot’s license that had earlier been raised when Jean Piccard had (at least officially) been considered for the Soldier Field ascent. Jeannette Piccard arrived at a solution—she would learn to fly, obtain a license, and then pilot the craft. This would have the doubly salutary effect of then freeing her husband to focus exclusively on the various scientific devices measuring and recording data. This was at a time when most women would never think of driving an automobile with an adult male in the passenger seat.* It was a societal given that a man’s place was at the wheel. But Jeannette Piccard wasn’t any woman. She was a true partner in her husband’s life, and she was now going to train to be a partner in the attempt to fly higher than any human being had ever flown.
In order to achieve their objectives, sponsorship was an absolute must. Dow Chemical, on being informed that a mother of three was going to be piloting the craft with their corporate logo on it, backed out and required that it be removed. Goodyear-Zeppelin, a long-time supporter of the Piccards, also pulled out. In their attempt to secure a sponsor, the Piccards reached out to the National Geographic Society in Washington, DC. Jean Piccard entertained genuine hopes that the society would look favorably on their endeavor, but their proposal was treated with frosty indifference. Chicago—even though it was his wife’s hometown, and her family was well connected there—was a dead end. They had burned too many bridges in the Windy City in the struggle for control of the Soldier Field ascent, and besides, Settle and Fordney had already established the world altitude record. Ultimately, it was one of Chicago’s midwestern rivals that extended a hand to the daring couple.
Detroit in 1934 was one of the country’s largest and most dynamic cities. The tragic inner-city decline and the riots it spawned were still decades in the future at that point. Henry Ford and William Durant (General Motors) had established Detroit and its environs as the center of the burgeoning American automobile industry. Even though the Depression had taken a bite out of its general prosperity, Detroit still was a wealthy, up-and-coming city. But for the Piccards, Ford was the key man. Like Swann, he enjoyed immense prestige, and his support encouraged others within his orbit to commit themselves. Finally, the Detroit Aero Club, the Grunow Radio Company, and the People’s Outfitting Company (all of them based in Detroit) agreed to sponsor the record-breaking attempt. Ford offered the use of his personal air field for training purposes, and balloonist Edward Hill, winner of the Gordon Bennett Cup agreed to serve as Jeannette’s instructor. She made rapid progress. Bold, intelligent, skillful, Jeannette Piccard possessed all of the attributes one looked for in a potential pilot—except her gender. Ford proved to be very progressive, in this instance. One afternoon, he invited a special guest to observe the would-be aeronaut’s training. Orville Wright showed a keen interest in Mrs. Piccard’s progress. Jeannette’s young son, Donald (serving as a crew member at the air field), years later recalled shaking the flight pioneer’s hand and the kindness the great man had shown toward him. Orville Wright had suffered serious injuries as a result of a flying accident years before and had no illusions about the dangers the young boy’s mother was exposing herself to. But like Ford, Orville Wright was willing to lend his name and prestige to the endeavor. By June 1934, as the fair continued to draw huge crowds in its second summer, Jeannette Piccard flew solo for the first time in a balloon, and soon after was the first woman awarded a balloon pilot’s license by the National Aeronautic Association. The famous gondola designed by the Piccards and flown by Settle and Fordney was suspended in a place of honor in the Hall of Science. But now it would be removed for its next mission into the farthest reaches of the stratosphere.
Jeannette Piccard’s balloon pilot’s license—the first ever issued to a woman by the National Aeronautic Association (1934). Courtesy of Mary Louise Piccard.
Even with sponsors and famous backers, the Piccards were still largely making things up as they went along. Jeannette Piccard was particularly resourceful, launching a one-woman public relations campaign to generate enthusiasm—and additional funding—for the ascent. She personally designed commemorative stamps and brochures, and instead of couching her language in her responses to press inquiries (which more often than not focused on the dangers involved), she was bold, direct, provocative even. When asked about the possibility of a fatal mishap occurring, Jeannette responded, “If there’s some accident, don’t bother developing the film. The chemicals from our decomposing bodies will be enough.”18 She was not backing down. She wouldn’t be shamed into returning to hearth and home, where many of the press and public felt she belonged. And she had a chip on her shoulder as well. Both she and Jean had felt disrespected, and easily dismissed, by the organizers of the Chicago Fair. This was an opportunity to stick it to them. It was also part of her competitive personal makeup. Later, she tried to explain this force that drove her into the stratosphere to her father: “There are many reasons, some of them so deep-seated emotionally as to be very difficult of expression. Possibly the simplest explanation is that we started along this road . . . and I cannot stop until I have won.”19
In contrast to the Navy’s November 1933 ascent—which only paid lip service to the importance of the various scientific apparatus aboard the gondola—Jean Piccard and W. F. G. Swann collaborated in a serious-minded effort to better understand cosmic ray behavior. To a degree, Swann’s work in this field was a synthesis of the Millikan-Compton debate. Quantum theory had come up against a wall of sorts in trying to explain how cosmic rays were able to penetrate matter so deeply. As David DeVorkin explained, “most physicists at the time speculated that two particles might be involved: a new one producing cosmic ray ‘showers,’ and high-energy electrons that penetrated deeper than the laws of physics allowed. Swann thought that he could describe what was happening in terms of one particle.”20 But he needed proof. With this in mind, the Piccard Gondola would carry a series of Geiger counters and a heavy apparatus designed by Swann, known as a Stosse Chamber. This device incorporated a large pressurized spherical nitrogen gas tank, two electroscopes, and photographic cameras for recording the results.21 Piccard and Swann tried to interest Robert Millikan in collaborating in the experiments, but his response was tepid. He had already thrown in his lot with the U.S. Army Air Corps–National Geographic Explorer stratosphere balloon, set for an ascent in the summer of 1934 from a site in South Dakota. It was a disaster. The balloon burst into flames on its descent, and Millikan’s electroscopes were destroyed. Fortunately, the crew were able to parachute to safety, but for Millikan, who had long believed unmanned balloons were as effective as manned flights in gathering data, it seemed to confirm that he should not allow himself to be drawn too closely into the Piccard-Swann experiments. The U.S. Army’s top aeronaut, Albert W. Stevens of Maine, later remarked on how impressed he was that the Piccards clearly knew that their attempt at a new altitude record (which he also knew was very important to them) would be greatly hampered by having so much scientific equipment aboard. Stevens, who had escaped a fiery death earlier in 1934 when he parachuted out of the Explorer, would turn out to be a quiet but generous ally of the Piccards in their stratospheric effort. Even though his had ended in quite spectacular failure, he didn’t begrudge them their turn and he used the means at his disposal to help Jean test various features he was implementing in the Piccard Gondola.22 This was in the best spirit of aviation in its golden age.*
It’s worth pausing a moment to consider what all of this meant to the general public. Unlike air travel in a seaplane or a zeppelin, the significance of balloon ascents into the stratosphere was more difficult for the average person to grasp. Men like Millikan, Swann, and Compton were almost like priests of an alien religion: physics. There was a vague understanding that all of this could very likely lead to something. But just what exactly that was, well . . . It took an editorial in a magazine called Popular Mechanics to articulate this to the masses. Its banner claimed that it was “WRITTEN SO YOU CAN UNDERSTAND IT.” In the October 1933 edition, one year before the Piccard husband-and-wife ascent, it published “Why Explore the Stratosphere?” featuring a giant nighttime photograph of the failed Soldier Field ascent of August of that year. Few have articulated more cogently the answers to this question. It recognized the wonder of “this cold kingdom of mystery where there is no sound but the majestic music of the spheres, where the skies are deep blue, purple, and blue-black, where the sun shines forever, and the stars gleam with the cold ferocity of dagger points.”23 But then the article went on to raise a number of particularly prescient concepts: “the higher you rise the faster you fly, that speeds of five hundred miles an hour are not only practical, but highly desirable, that circumnavigation of the globe need require but two days of any man’s time, and that all these things are now realizable if we apply our present-day knowledge”; “rockets will find their element in the thinnest atmosphere. Authorities predict altitudes of 1,000 miles and more, and the rocket’s range will depend only on its ability to carry a fuel”; and “a Century of Progress wants more information on the blanket of ozone which is believed to absorb a great deal of the sun’s ultra-violet energy before it reaches the earth.”24 What was happening was clearly important. That this is even more evident to us now looking back from the twenty-first century, certainly makes it no less so.
On October 23, 1934, Jean and Jeannette Piccard woke early and arrived at the airfield to find forty-five thousand spectators waiting for them. Their enthusiastic cheers mixed with an undercurrent of anxiety for the fate of the couple. This was underscored in dramatic fashion when the Piccards’ young sons came forward with a bouquet of flowers for their parents. What if neither of them returned alive? To quiet these fears and add a bit of levity to the moment, the Piccards brought the family’s turtle, Fleur de Lys, with them into the gondola along with “Angel” food cake, in case “they met any up there” to share it with.25 Though it was no longer named “A Century of Progress,” the spherical capsule with its balloon filling with hydrogen was to a large extent the final act in a remarkable World’s Fair.
Albert W. Stevens was there, lending his professional eye to the proceedings. He was uneasy about the launch. A number of innovations made by Jean Piccard seemed unnecessarily risky.* The skies—predicted to be clear—were filled with a mass of low-hanging clouds, and Jeannette Piccard was an untried pilot. These were inauspicious portents, but the gods hadn’t factored in the sangfroid and sheer determination of this remarkable pair of aeronauts. Auguste Piccard, as always a class act, had earlier cabled: “It would be nice, if the name of Piccard through Jeannette, would once more be placed on the record list of the F.A.I.”26 In making this statement, he was recognizing that the pilot would be given honor of place in the record books, and that Jean was essentially along for the ride. He would have had it no other way.
Inside the gondola, the Piccards signaled they were ready for the pyrotechnic launch. Blasting caps and TNT were used to release the lines and start the balloon on its way, and to remotely release external ballast from inside the craft. This was a revolutionary concept that eventually became standard practice under the director of NASA’s manned spacecraft center, Robert Gilruth. Initially a crosswind caught the balloon, and a landline that hadn’t been successfully released by the detonation had to be released manually. In a Universal newsreel shot in the early-morning darkness during the launch, there is a palpable moment of genuine alarm as some of the ground crew hurry to push the gondola off before it collides with the ground.27 Jeannette was visible outside the hatch to her sons and the tens of thousands of onlookers gazing anxiously skyward. Stevens piloted an airplane to observe the Piccards’ ascent, but the cloud cover limited visibility. Up they shot into the air, through the clouds, and out of sight from those on the ground. For Jeannette, seeing the giant hydrogen-filled balloon filling out to its full height and shape sixteen stories above her, spoke to the elemental—the spiritual even—reminding her of “a magnificent cathedral.”28 As they passed through a layer of clouds, the balloon was violently shaken side to side. To Jeannette’s dismay, the rope controlling the vent valve at the top of the balloon had become obstructed. The line had to be freed, or else they wouldn’t be able to valve gas when they needed to and as a result would effectively be unable to control the balloon’s descent. Leaning out of the hatch and stepping onto the rigging connecting the massive balloon to the gondola, she reached to free the rope. Nearly ten thousand feet above Lake Erie, her foot slipped on some lead ballast that had been released earlier that morning.29 Regaining her footing, she completed her task and re-entered the capsule through the hatch, only to receive a gentle, but puzzled, admonition from Jean, who was so engrossed in his work that he hadn’t even noticed she was gone until just a moment before. They needed to seal the hatch and pressurize the cabin, as the air outside was becoming too thin to breathe.
Official invitation to Piccard Stratosphere Flight (note the September 1934 date; delays pushed the flight into late October). Courtesy of Bertrand Piccard.
They sped upward, ever upward, the altimeter steadily rising: 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 feet. The view from the craft was superior to those on earlier flights, as Jean Piccard had designed a frost-free window that he and Jeannette could look through. However, there was little to see below as the clouds stretched over a wide distance. This was cause for concern, because there was no way to know for certain where they were: how fast were they moving horizontally with the wind, as opposed to vertically? How long could they safely stay aloft and be confident they wouldn’t drift over the Atlantic? Jeannette Piccard said later, half-jokingly, that her goal was to land the balloon on the White House lawn in Washington. Eleanor Roosevelt, no doubt, would’ve been tickled if Jeannette had been able to pull this off. But now just getting back to earth safely anywhere was the goal. It must have been nerve-wracking in the extreme. All the while, Jean Piccard carefully minded the instruments entrusted to him by Professor Swann. Finally, at 57,579 feet the balloon stopped, suspended for a moment nearly eleven miles above the Earth. Then it began its descent. Could they have pushed on and broken Settle and Fordney’s mark, less than four thousand feet above? Perhaps. But in the final analysis, the added weight of the scientific instruments, the anxious uncertainty over just where they were above the map of the United States, and how much time they had left before the wind pushed them over the sea, decided the matter. But it wasn’t as simple as just letting the balloon descend; it had to be a controlled descent, or disaster was still very much a possibility.
Jeannette Piccard’s skills were tested to the utmost, as she needed to control the descent by shedding weight from the craft and using the ropes attached to the balloon to vent gas. As she later confided, there was a limit on what an aeronaut could reasonably hope to achieve regarding any kind of direction: “When you fly a balloon you don’t file a flight plan; you go where the wind goes.”30 There it was: both the terror and the wonder of balloon flight. Her plan may have been to land on the White House lawn, but instead the couple landed in a grove of elm trees near Cadiz, Ohio. It was a rough landing—damaging the craft to a degree that its further use in stratospheric exploration would no longer be possible. Jean Piccard suffered cracked ribs, but he was jubilant over the record-setting ascent* and the scientific phenomena he was able to measure in the stratosphere. That he had done this with his wife, against all the odds, must have made it all the sweeter. What their pet turtle thought is unknown.
Jean and Jeannette tried to capitalize on their celebrity following their stratospheric ascent. There was genuine popular interest in what they had done together. But it was largely superficial. Jeannette Piccard admitted she felt shame at having not been able to pilot the balloon back to Earth in a more graceful manner.31 She seemed to have forgotten what had happened to Tex Settle in Chicago—and he was supposed to have been one of the foremost aeronauts in the world! In the end, she was too hard on herself, not wanting to live up to the expectations of those who believed she was out of her depth, simply because she was a woman. On the other hand, she was awarded the prestigious Harmon Trophy in 1934 for her record-breaking ascent, joining the likes of her brother-in-law Auguste Piccard as well as Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Italo Balbo, and Hugo Eckener. From a strictly scientific standpoint, Jean Piccard was later criticized for incomplete recordkeeping during the flight. On the other hand, no less prestigious a personage than Albert W. Stevens remarked to W. F. G. Swann that in terms of pure scientific value, the Piccards’ ascent had been far superior to those of “A Century of Progress” or the ill-fated “Explorer,” and he was shocked how little actual credit Jean Piccard had received for what he had done; “no one told the important facts . . . that the Piccards had successfully carried your Geiger counter and the Stosse Chamber to a very high altitude and had used it over a considerable length of time . . . I had all I could do to keep from getting up and stating these things.”32
On the other hand, first Robert Millikan (who in the end had ultimately been convinced to contribute some equipment for experiments) and Swann, either explicitly or implicitly, recognized that the data that Jean Piccard had collected was compromised by the fact that he had failed to properly account for the release of lead ballast during the Piccards’ harried descent, and other factors. Given time, it was still technically possible to “do the math” and arrive at more accurate calculations. But these never came.33 Looking at the October 23, 1934, ascent in a larger context, one can’t help but feel that Jean Piccard was exhausted. He had tried for a not inconsiderable amount of time leading up to the ascent, going all the way back to 1932, to be all things to all people (husband, father, scientist, businessman, promoter, adventurer). Wasn’t that enough? Apparently not. Science is an exacting master.
To a certain degree too, the public at large had begun to see manned balloon flights to the stratosphere as redundant. The novelty was still there, but the novelty was beginning to wear off—and the physics, despite the best attempts of science journalists, remained as abstract and remote as ever for the average person. For a brief moment in late 1934, Jean and Jeannette Piccard were the toast of the town; but it didn’t last, melting away like Icarus’s wax wings in the sun.
Footnotes
* Essentially the dispute centered on the source of cosmic rays—did they originate in Earth’s upper atmosphere, or were they coming from the deepest reaches of outer space to Earth? The larger significance of this question was that it could provide proof that the universe was subject to the second law of thermodynamics and would eventually burn itself out (Compton), or eternally re-create itself (insinuating a God-like quality to cosmic rays) (Millikan).
* A magnesium alloy.
* Auguste Piccard had implemented this color scheme for his second stratosphere ascent in 1932. The white paint reflected the sun’s rays on top of the capsule while the black paint insulated the underside of the capsule, exposed to the freezing temperatures of the upper stratosphere.
* The first satellite successfully launched into orbit around the earth, in 1957, by the Soviet Union.
* It’s worth noting that the November weather was uncommonly mild that year in Philadelphia/South Jersey, with the temperature on Thanksgiving Day exceeding 70 degrees. Otherwise stripping and diving into a swamp in November would seem rather rash.
* Except perhaps the fictional “Daisy Buchanan,” and look how that turned out.
* Stevens could also be critical, but he was objective and fair. He understood the risks they were taking like few others could.
* For example, using controlled detonations to release the balloon’s landlines, and leaving a space at the base of the giant hydrogen-filled balloon to allow for mixing of air and greater stability. Given the highly flammable nature of hydrogen gas, it comes as no surprise that Stevens was feeling somewhat unsettled that morning.
* Jeannette Ridlon Piccard became the first woman to pilot a balloon into the stratosphere, in the process setting an altitude record for a woman aeronaut that would stand until 1963.