Source: Futility Closet
Swiss physicist Auguste Piccard opened two new worlds in the 20th century. He was the first person to fly 10 miles above the earth and the first to travel 2 miles beneath the sea, using inventions that opened the doors to these new frontiers. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll follow Piccard on his historic journeys into the sky and the sea.
We’ll also admire some beekeeping serendipity and puzzle over a sudden need for locksmiths.
Intro:
Herbert Hoover’s doctor invented a game to keep him in shape.
William Howard Taft boasted that he lost 70 pounds on this diet.
Sources for our feature on Auguste Piccard:
Auguste Piccard, Between Earth and Sky, 1950.
Auguste Piccard, Earth, Sky and Sea, 1956.
Alan Honour, Ten Miles High, Two Miles Deep: The Adventures of the Piccards, 1957.
Fergus Fleming and Annabel Merulla, eds., The Explorer’s Eye, 2005.
Tom Cheshire, The Explorer Gene: How Three Generations of One Family Went Higher, Deeper, and Further Than Any Before, 2013.
Markus Pagitz, “The Future of Scientific Ballooning,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 365:1861, 3003-3017.
G. Pfotzer, “History of the Use of Balloons in Scientific Experiments,” Space Science Reviews 13:2 (June 1972), 199-242.
Don Walsh, “Dr. Piccard and His Wonderful Electric Submarines,” United States Naval Institute Proceedings 137:9 (September 2011), 102.
“Bathyscaphe Explores Ocean Bottom,” Science News-Letter 733 (Jan. 18, 1958), 35.
Jean Piccard, “Exploration by Balloon,” Scientific Monthly 47:3 (September 1938), 270-277.
J.R. Dean, “Deep Submersibles Used in Oceanography,” Geographical Journal 131:1 (March 1965), 70-72.
“Scientists Fortunate to Return from Region of Black Skies,” Science News-Letter 19:530 (June 6, 1931), 364.
“Auguste Piccard,” Physics Today 15:8 (August 1962), 80.
“Ten Miles High in an Air-Tight Ball,” Popular Science, August 1931, 23.
Mark…
The post Podcast Episode 206: The Sky and the Sea appeared first on FeedBox.