Alphabetical Index Index by Birth Year
Auguste Picard
* 1884 in Basel
+ 1962 in Lausanne
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Auguste Antoine Piccard was a Swiss physicist, inventor and explorer,
known for his record-breaking helium-filled balloon flights,
with which he studied Earth's upper atmosphere and cosmic rays,
and for his invention of the first bathyscaphe, FNRS-2,
with which he made a number of unmanned dives in 1948 to explore the ocean's depths.
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A bathyscaphe is a free-diving, self-propelled deep-sea submersible,
consisting of a crew cabin suspended below a float.
The first bathyscaphe was dubbed FNRS-2,
named after the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique,
and built in Belgium from 1946 to 1948 by Auguste Piccard.
Trieste is a Swiss-designed, Italian-built deep-diving research bathyscaphe.
In 1960, it became the first crewed vessel
to reach the bottom of Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench (10,935 m) ,
the deepest point in Earth's seabed.
The vessel was piloted by Swiss oceanographer Jacques Piccard,
son of Auguste Piccard, and US Navy lieutenant Don Walsh.
Der Mensch als Entdecker
