Jeannette Piccard

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Jeannette Piccard
Piccard and the Century of Progress, landing Ohio 1934
Born	January 5, 1895 Chicago, Illinois
Died	May 17, 1981 Minneapolis, Minnesota
Residence	USA
Occupation	Balloon pilot, scientist, teacher, Episcopal priest
Spouse	Jean Felix Piccard
Children	John A. Piccard, Paul J. Piccard, Donald Louis Piccard

Jeannette Ridlon Piccard (January 5, 1895 – May 17, 1981) was an American teacher, scientist, priest, and aeronaut who was a pioneer of balloon flight. A member of the famed Piccard family of balloonists and of the International Space Hall of Fame, she was the first licensed female balloon pilot, the first woman to fly to the stratosphere, and a speaker for NASA. Her 1934 flight held the women's altitude record for three decades. Called a woman of causes and irrepressible, Piccard is remembered as one of the Philadelphia Eleven, the first women to be ordained Episcopalian priests.^[1][2]

[edit] Family and education

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Piccard was the daughter of Dr. John Ridlon, a noted orthopedic surgeon at Northwestern University, and Emily Ridlon,^[3] who had nine children. Piccard's identical twin, Beatrix, died at the age of three. Piccard held a lifelong interest in science and religion. Her answer at a young age to her mother's question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" was shocking for the time — "a priest."^[4] She studied philosophy and psychology at Bryn Mawr College and received her bachelor's degree in 1918. At Bryn Mawr in 1916 she wrote an essay, Should Women Be Admitted to the Priesthood of the Anglican Church?^[3] Piccard then studied organic chemistry at the University of Chicago, where in 1919 she received her masters, and met and married Jean Felix Piccard who was teaching there. A family of boys, the Piccards had three sons, John, Paul and Donald, as well as foster children. During the 1980s, Gene Roddenberry most likely named Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek for one or both of the twin brothers Auguste Piccard and Jean Felix Piccard, and derived Jean-Luc from her husband's name.^[5][6]

The Piccards taught at the University of Lausanne from 1919–1926. They returned to the United States when Jean Piccard took positions there, and lived in New Jersey, Massachusetts, Delaware and Pennsylvania. They moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1936 when he joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota, where Piccard was present for many of his lectures.^[7] She received a doctorate in education from the University of Minnesota in 1942, and a certificate of study from the General Theological Seminary in 1973.

[edit] World's Fair 1933

Piccard made her famous flight in the third and final voyage of the Century of Progress which she was the only Piccard to fly. The balloon was conceived for the World's Fair in 1933, held in Chicago to celebrate the city's centennial. It was the largest balloon in the world, 105 feet (32 m) wide, and 600,000 cubic feet (17,000 m³) that took 700 hydrogen cylinders to fill.^[8]

The Piccard family was more interested in science at high altitudes and in flying for the joy of it than in setting records.^[9][10] But competition to reach the stratosphere by balloon was in full force during the 1920s and 1930s. Auguste Piccard's flights reached 51,783 and 53,152 feet (16,201 m) during 1931 and 1932, altitude records soon broken by Prokofiev with Birnbaum and Godunov in the Soviet Union in 1933.^[11][12]

The Century of Progress was built for Jean Piccard who planned to fly it.^[12] Dow Chemical constructed the gondola designed by Auguste and Jean Piccard, Karl Arnstein^[13] of Goodyear built the balloon of rubberized cloth^[7] and Union Carbide provided the hydrogen. The National Broadcasting Company and the Chicago Daily News were sponsors, and newspapers publicized the event.^[8] Jean and Jeannette Piccard were to be given the balloon when the exhibition flight was completed.^[12]

Jean and or Jeannette Piccard were reported^[14] to have flown the balloon for the exhibition, but this was not to be. The US Navy borrowed the balloon and Lt. Cmdr. Thomas (Tex) G. W. Settle made the flight because he was a certificated pilot. 40,000 people came to see his flight that began before dawn on August 4, 1933. The centennial commission and Navy presented seven hours of ceremonies and parades at Soldier Field while the balloon was prepared, dramatically under searchlights. A gas release valve malfunctioned and the flight was aborted shortly after takeoff.^[15][8]

Naval Historical Center accounts omit the Piccards,^[8][16] but the Piccards then owned the Century of Progress. Although the Navy credits the Marines,^[8] it was Jeannette Piccard and thirty or forty men hired by the Museum of Science and Industry who rescued and dried out the Century of Progress after the aborted flight spread the balloon across Burlington & Quincy railroad tracks in downtown Chicago. Years later Don Piccard documented the rescue for the museum, where the gondola is now on permanent loan and on exhibit.^[17][15]

The armed forces again decided to use the balloon, and sponsored by the Army Air Corps and National Geographic Society, Settle with Maj. Chester L. Fordney of the US Marine Corps flew to 61,237 feet (18,665 m) for a new altitude record.^{[8][16][18][19]} Fruit flies were to fly for a US Department of Agriculture study of genetic mutation but died during flight delays. A research team put instruments for eleven experiments aboard — two from the University of Chicago's Arthur Compton and Robert Millikan^[8] to measure or observe cosmic rays, one for polarized light and one for studying the ozone layer. Compton, said to be disillusioned with balloon readings,^[1] published a summary of the research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.^[20] Millikan, pleased with the results from the self-recording electroscope, published with Bowen and Neher in Physical Review. The Navy and Marines then returned the balloon to the Piccards.^{[12][1] [21]}

[edit] Pilot's license

Jean and Jeannette Piccard planned a flight to the stratosphere, deciding he would concentrate on science and she would be pilot. Piccard studied under Edward J. Hill, a noted balloonist and Gordon Bennett Cup winner who was based at Ford Airport in Dearborn, Michigan.^[22] Henry Ford wanted them to succeed, provided use of his hangar, and brought Orville Wright to observe a flight that year.^[9] On June 16, 1934, Piccard flew her first solo flight and later that year the National Aeronautic Association licensed Piccard, making her the first woman spherical balloon pilot.^[23][3]

Ballooning was a dangerous undertaking, partly because human lungs cannot function unaided over something between 40,000 and 50,000 feet (15,000 m), and partly because hydrogen then used as a lifting gas is highly flammable. Hawthorne Gray of the US Army was a skilled balloonist who in 1927 was the first to reach the stratosphere. Gray had tested clothing, instrumentation and oxygen delivery in three flights that year, but he died of hypoxia when his oxygen ran out during descent. During January of 1934, the crew of Fedoseenko, Vasienko and Usyskin had died in the Soviet Union when their gondola separated from their balloon.^[11] The National Geographic Society refused to back a flight piloted by a mother. Longtime Piccard family backer Goodyear was reluctant to lend their support to a female pilot. Dow Chemical asked that their trade names and logo be removed from publicity and the Century of Progress balloon. The Piccards were able to obtain financing from the Grigsby-Grunow radio company, the People's Outfitting Company and Henry Ford who lent his hangar as a launch site.^[23]

[edit] Stratosphere flight

Piccard reached over 10 miles (16 km) up into the stratosphere. NASA technical definitions change. At one point they qualified the Century of Progress as a spacecraft and flight over 40,000 feet (12,000 m) space travel and Piccard the first woman in space. Today, NASA pilots are called astronauts for reaching 50 miles (80 km) up into the mesosphere.^[24]

45,000 spectators came to see them go, about two hours behind schedule on October 23, 1934, at 6:51 a.m. Piccard piloted Jean Piccard, herself and their pet turtle, Fleur de Lys, in the reconditioned Century of Progress. They lifted off from Ford Airport,^[23] with help from airmen on the ground who pushed the gondola. They reached 57,579 feet (17,550 m) or about 10.9 miles (17.5 km) up, travelled eight hours total in a journey over Lake Erie and landed about 300 miles (480 km) away from Dearborn near Cadiz, Ohio. Piccard had to choose a landing on elm trees rather than on a farmhouse and was saddened,^[25] knowing that the Century of Progress would never fly again. The balloon had separated from the gondola and was ripped, according to Piccard's description in Time magazine, "What a mess! I wanted to land on the White House lawn."^[1] Piccard maintained control of the balloon for the entire flight, a first in US history, and was the first to successfully pilot a flight to the stratosphere through a layer of clouds.^[4] She became famous as the first woman to reach the stratosphere. Her flight set the women's altitude record, and held it for twenty nine years, until 1963 when Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space in the Soviet Union's Vostok 6.^[23]

Piccard observed that the liquid oxygen stopped vaporizing as the balloon descended after the cabin doors were opened. Realizing that this would be fatal for a fighter pilot, Jean Piccard analyzed the phenomenon and created the liquid oxygen convertor.^[26] Jean Piccard developed a frost-free window, that was used on this flight and later by the Navy and Air Force in the B-24 Liberator or B-26 Marauder. Jean Piccard used blasting caps and TNT for releasing the balloon at launch and for remote release of external ballast from inside the sealed cabin. This was the first use of pyrotechnics for remote-controlled actuating devices in aircraft, an unpopular, revolutionary idea at the time. Later Robert R. Gilruth, who was one of Jean Piccard's students and collaborators and became the director of the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center, approved and used them in spacecraft.^[27][28] Also aboard the balloon were postage stamps for collectors and two instruments for studying cosmic radiation — one to study the bursting of lead atoms, and Millikan's 540 pound ionization chamber.^[29][1]

[edit] Plastic balloons

Jeannette and Jean Piccard, University of Minnesota, 1936

In 1935 and 1936, to reduce weight and thus enabling a balloon to reach higher altitudes, plastic balloon construction began independently by Max Cosyns in Belgium, Eric Regener in Germany, and Thomas H. Johnson and Jean Piccard, then at the Franklin Institute Bartol Research Foundation in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Johnson suggested cellophane to Jean Piccard.^[30]

Development continued in Swarthmore and began in Minneapolis when the Piccards moved to the University of Minnesota. Jean Piccard designed and in 1936 flew a cellophane balloon built by his students. The balloon was unmanned, 25 feet (7.6 m) wide, and made of tapered 33-foot (10 m) gores and one-inch 3M Scotch transparent tape. Jean Barnhill, Harold Larson and Lloyd Schumacher cut the gores that fit together like an "orange peel." Harold Hatlestad built the radio equipment and Robert Silliman built the telemeter^[7] that sent temperature and pressure data back. Photos show Piccard present at the launch. During the flight, Robert Hatch and Silliman maintained radio contact from a station on the roof of the university armory until the radio's battery froze from insufficient insulation.^[31][30] The balloon floated at 50,000 feet (15,000 m), and in ten hours traveled over 600 miles (970 km) to near Huntsville, Arkansas.^[30]

Piccard is credited with co-inventing the plastic balloon in 1936. The University of Minnesota physics department, now the School of Physics and Astronomy, made a final report on their high altitude research program for the US Navy. The report archived in the university libraries special collection is dedicated on the flyleaf to Jean and Jeannette Piccard as "inventors of the plastic balloon" and signed by the balloon scientists of the day.^[32]

[edit] Cluster balloons

Developed with John Ackerman of the University of Minnesota and piloted by Jean Piccard in 1937 in Rochester, Minnesota, the first multi-celled balloon was called The Pleiades and was made of 98 latex rubber balloons. In a letter to Robert Gray of the Dewey and Almy Chemical Co. later published in Time magazine, Piccard describes how he broke balloons with a hunting knife and revolver to control his descent. A TNT charge released the cluster as he expected but sent burning excelsior down that destroyed the first Pleiades. He suggested to Gray that rock wool in place of excelsior would prevent similar accidents in the future.^[33]

Balloon research stopped for the most part during World War II.^[10] During 1943 Piccard was briefly a secretary at the housing section of the Minnesota Office of Civil Defense.^[3]

In February 1946 with Otto C. Winzen, Jean Piccard proposed manned flight to the US Navy using clustered balloons made of thin plastic. In June the Office of Naval Research approved Project Helios and that year General Mills and the University of Minnesota contracted to build a cluster of 100 polyethylene balloons for atmospheric research.^[34] Piccard worked for General Mills^[3] on Project Helios and invented the reefing sleeve for control of the thin plastic during inflation. Helios was designed to reach 100,000 feet (30,000 m) for ten hours with a payload of instruments.^[16]

Jean Piccard helped Winzen design the Skyhook polyethylene balloons that replaced Project Helios in 1947. Skyhook balloons were used unmanned for atmospheric research by the Navy and for manned flights by the US Air Force.^[34][9] Later Jean Piccard developed electronics for emptying ballast bags.^[26] Piccard's involvement in these projects is less well documented. She was probably not so much known as an inventor but she was recognized by scientists of the era as a researcher and equal, who worked closely with her husband, as well as with their children.^[35][7] Gilruth considered her, "at least half the brains in the family."^[28]

Piccard later flew helium and hot air balloons, the former with Don Piccard in 1964.^[32]

Jean Piccard died in 1963. Gilruth asked Piccard to work as a consultant at NASA.^[36] She accepted and lived in a house in Houston she shared with another woman. Piccard spoke to groups at NASA about the space progam from 1964 to 1970, when Project Apollo was created and Apollo 11 made the first manned Moon landing in 1969. Gilruth then noticed a shift in Piccard's interests, away from space and towards religion.^[7]

[edit] Episcopal priest

In 1971, one year after the Episcopal Church admitted female deacons, Piccard was ordained a deacon, and in 1974, under remarkable circumstances, she was ordained a priest. In Philadelphia at the Church of the Advocate, three retired bishops – Daniel Corrigan, former church head of domestic missions, Robert L. De Witt of the diocese of Pennsylvania, and Edward Randolph Welles II of the diocese of West Missouri – ordained eleven women priests, cheered by a large congregation. A fourth bishop, José Antonio Ramos of Costa Rica, was there but was out of his jurisdiction. All eleven women risked suspension as deacons and the four bishops "could be suspended or deposed by a church trial court" for ignoring a church canon prohibiting retired bishops from performing "episcopal acts" unless asked by a local bishop. Five Episcopal priests objected at the point in the service when Corrigan asked if there was "any impediment" to the ordinations, one calling the ordinations perversions and one calling them unlawful and "schismatical."^[37]

Merrill Bittner, Alla Bozarth-Campbell, Alison Cheek, Emily Hewitt, Carter Heyward, Suzanne Hiatt, Jacqueline Means, Marie Moorefield Fleisher, Piccard, Betty Bone Schiess, Katrina Martha Swanson and Nancy Hatch Wittig were the eleven ordinands.^[38] Piccard was presented at the ordination by her son Paul Piccard. Another of the group, who were known as irregulars and sometimes called the Philadelphia Eleven, Carter Heyward became the 1974 Ms. magazine Woman of the Year. Suzanne Hiatt later said, "In retrospect, to have been ordained 'irregularly' is the only way for women to have done it.^[39] Cheek, Heyward and Piccard joined in a consecration and Piccard gave the absolution in a celebration of the eucharist at Riverside Church in Manhattan in November. Philip McNairy of the diocese of Minnesota who wanted women in the priesthood was concerned that the eleven were hurting the cause of the other women deacons, who numbered over one hundred at the time.^[2]

John M. Allin of Mississippi, the new presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, which had 3.1 million members at the time, called an emergency meeting of the House of Bishops in Chicago.^[37] Harold B. Robinson, diocese of Western New York, and two colleagues set in motion charges accusing the three bishops of breaking their vows and violating church laws. They withdrew charges when the House of Bishops, in a carefully worded resolution that passed 129 to 9 with 8 abstensions, challenged the ordinations, decried the bishops' actions, calling them understandable but "wrong."^[40] But the church was moving in this direction already, and the General Convention of 1976 voted to open the priesthood to women.^[39]

Piccard served as a deacon or irregular at St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota from 1975-1977.^[41] In 1977 the Episcopal Church recognized her ordination. Kathryn Piccard, her granddaughter who also became an Episcopal priest, later quoted in The New York Times, said, "She wanted to expand the idea of what a respectable lady could do."^[42] Piccard became a volunteer chaplain at St. Luke's Hospital, now United Hospital, and assistant pastor with pastor Denzil Carty at Episcopal Church on Maccubin, both in Saint Paul.^[43] From 1968 to 1981 she was an honorary member of the Seabury-Western Theological Seminary board of trustees.

Piccard died of cancer at age 86 at Masonic Memorial Hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota.^[4]

[edit] Honors

• Harmon Trophy^[44] 1934
• National Aeronautic Association Certificate of Reward & Performance 1935
• Balloon Club of America, Silver Recognition Salver, 1934 flight 25th anniversary 1959
• American Astronautical Society (AAS) William Randolph Lovelace II Award 1965
• University of Minnesota Outstanding Achievement Award 1968
• University of Minnesota Alumni Association Alumni Wall of Honor
• Honorary member, Sigma Delta Epsilon Graduate Women in Science 1971
• International Space Hall of Fame 1998
• Nominated, posthumously, FAI Ballooning Commission Hall of Fame
• Piccard Memorial Trophy, Balloon Federation of America, renamed for Piccard
• Solo Flight, play by Pat Donohue, about Piccard
• Jeanette Ridlon Piccard Book Fund, named for Piccard, Bryn Mawr College Library

[edit] Piccard family balloonists

• Auguste Piccard (physicist, balloonist, hydronaut)
  • Jacques Piccard (hydronaut)
    • Bertrand Piccard (psychiatrist, balloonist)
• Jean Felix Piccard (organic chemist and balloonist)
  • Jeannette Piccard (wife of Jean Felix) (balloonist)
    • Don Piccard (balloonist)

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

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• Sorenson, Paul (1998-1999). Looking Back.... AEM Update, University of Minnesota Institute of Technology. Retrieved on 2007-01-27.
• Diocese of Easton (April 21, 2006). The path to priesthood... "The Philadelphia Eleven". Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
• Century of Flight (undated). Jeannette Piccard. Retrieved on 2007-01-24.
• Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (1470-1983). The Piccard Family Papers, Register. Prepared by Warren Ohrville and Joseph Sullivan et al. 1995. Retrieved on 2007-01-31.
• Piccard.info (undated). Jeannette Ridlon Piccard. Retrieved on 2007-01-31.
• Museum of Science and Industry (2003). MSIChicago Exhibits: The Piccard gondola. Retrieved on 2007-01-31.