Auguste Piccard and Professor Calculus from the Adventures of Tintin.
But Auguste Piccard was much more than an inspiration for a cartoon character.
Auguste Piccard with the gondola that he designed.
The explorers trapped samples of the upper air in cylinders.
Analysis of these may prove it to be exceptionally rich in ozone.
With observations completed, the explorers attempted to descend, but without success.
As their oxygen tanks ran low, they floated aimlessly over Germany, Austria, and Italy.
They had been airborne for 17 hours.
All in all, Piccard made 27 flights.
Paul Kipfer and Auguste Piccard wearing makeshift helmets to like German laws which insist aeronauts should wear helmets.
Having conquered the heavens, Piccard decided to plunge into the watery depths.
The term bathyscaphe comes from the Greek termsbathos, meaning deep, andscaphos, meaning ship.
So Piccard used gasoline, which was lighter than water and being liquid, it was incompressible.
He designed a huge tank and filled it with gasoline.
The passenger-carrying gondola was suspended underneath this gasoline tank.
World War II interrupted the construction of the bathyscaphe, which was not completed until 1948.
In 1956, Auguste Piccard achieved a dive of 3,810 meters (12,500 feet).
Auguste Piccard died on 24 March 1962 of a heart attack.
He was 78 years old.
The Swiss physics professor held a teaching appointment in Brussels when Herge spotted his unmistakable figure in the street.
However, Piccard was a tall fellow, at 6ft 6in.
In contrast, Professor Calculus was short.
He had an interminable neck that sprouted from a collar that was much too large…
I made Calculus a mini-Piccard, otherwise I would have had to enlarge the frames of the cartoon strip.
