词条 | Piccard, Auguste |
释义 | Piccard, Auguste Swiss-Belgian physicist born Jan. 28, 1884, Basel, Switz. died March 24, 1962, Lausanne ![]() Piccard was born into a family of Swiss scholars. His father, Jules Piccard, was a professor of chemistry at the University of Basel. Auguste and his twin brother, Jean, enrolled together at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, in Zürich, where they studied physics and chemistry, respectively. When they became doctors of science, both decided to teach in universities; Jean, the chemist, went first to Munich, then to Lausanne, and then to the United States; and Auguste, the physicist, stayed on at the Institute. In 1920 Auguste married the daughter of a French historian at the Sorbonne (Universities of Paris I–XIII (Paris I–XIII, Universities of)). ![]() ![]() In 1932, in a new cabin equipped with a radio, Piccard was able to reach an altitude of 17,008 metres (55,800 feet). The following year, using the same technique but with bigger balloons, other balloonists rose to 18,501 metres (about 60,700 feet) in the Soviet Union and 18,592 metres (about 61,000 feet) in the United States. As a child, Piccard had been fascinated by accounts of marine fish and thought that man should also descend into the depths. Now, after his aeronautical successes, he wanted to build a device capable of resisting the pressures of the ocean depths, the bathyscaphe. Depth-resistant cabins are, of necessity, heavier than water. Before Piccard, they had been suspended from a cable, but at great depths this procedure was not dependable. Piccard revolutionized the dive by the principle of the balloon. Just as a lighter-than-air balloon carried the nacelle, or balloon gondola, a lighter-than-water float would support the cabin. And just as the balloon required a release of ballast to rise, the bathyscaphe would release weight in order to ascend after having completed its dive. Air, because it is too easily compressed, was not used in the floats; Piccard chose heptane (a petroleum derivative). World War II interrupted the construction of the bathyscaphe, which was not completed until 1948. On Oct. 26, 1948, an unpiloted trial dive with the bathyscaphe was conducted successfully in shallow waters of 24 metres (80 feet). On Nov. 3, 1948, in a deeper dive of approximately 1,400 metres (4,600 feet), the cabin withstood the pressure perfectly, but the float was severely damaged by a heavy swell of water that it encountered after the dive. The bathyscaphe project was subsequently troubled by various difficulties until Jacques Piccard (Piccard, Jacques), Auguste's son, intervened. Jacques, an assistant in the economics department at the University of Geneva, had already conducted the negotiations with the French government. Then, while in Trieste for the purpose of preparing a study of that port, he received an unexpected offer from that city's local industry to build a new bathyscaphe. Thus, in August 1953, two bathyscaphes competed in the Mediterranean, at Toulon, France, and near Naples, Italy. The French-based craft descended to about 2,100 metres (6,900 feet), and the Italian-based craft went down to about 3,150 metres (10,300 feet). At the age of 69, Auguste Piccard had realized his dream. His son, abandoning economics, followed in his father's footsteps and collaborated in future work with bathyscaphes. In 1954 Piccard retired from teaching and left Brussels for Switzerland. His grandson Bernard Piccard made the first round-the-world balloon flight in 1999. Additional Reading French works include Pierre de Latil and Jean Rivoire, Le Professeur Auguste Piccard (1962), and A la recherche du monde marin (1954; Man and the Underwater World, 1956), which deals with the explorations undertaken by Auguste and Jacques Piccard. English translations of Auguste Piccard's writings are Earth, Sky and Sea and In Balloon and Bathyscaphe (both 1956). |
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