A yellow, rubberized cotton gasbag shot upward from Augsburg, Germany before dawn one day last week, dragging after it a 7-ft. aluminum sphere, half black, half silver, from which flew a. Swiss flag. Up, up—and to the south and west—the balloon CH-113 soared until it was a gleaming globule in the rays of the sun not yet risen. Up above the 42,000-ft. mark reached by the late Balloonist Lieut. Hawthorne Gray, up past Lieut. Apollo Soucek's airplane altitude of 43,166 ft.—the highest that man had ever risen—the CH-113 entered the stratosphere eventually to hover ten miles above the earth.
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 now aloft largely because of the backing of King Albert's favorite Fund for Scientific Research. Their purpose: to study the intensity of cosmic rays in the stratosphere.
All day long the 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 of the sky!*
About 9 p. m. the CH-113 settled upon the glacier above the village of Ober Gurgl in the Austrian Tyrol. There the scientists rested until morning beside their deflated balloon, calmly working on their notes, securing precious instruments. A searching party met them toward midday, led them to safety and the world's news spotlight.
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: When far aloft, the air was 75° below zero Fahrenheit outside, it was 106° above inside. Their drinking water ran out. They resorted to licking the condensed moisture from the walls of their cabin. As to their flight itself, they had ascended much faster than they desired. But "our ascent was of fairy-like beauty. . . . The rare glances from the cabin windows which our work permitted us ... belong to the most beautiful which I have seen in my life. . . ."