When the barometer shattered, August Picard could only watch in horror as Mercury spilled

everywhere.

Picard and his assistant were floating several miles in the sky, in a metal shell dangling

beneath a balloon.

Unfortunately, the head shell was aluminum, and Mercury is not only poisonous to breathe,

it also eats through aluminum like acid.

If Picard did not figure out how to clean up that Mercury and fast, a hole would open

up in the shell.

All their precious air would rush out, they would suffocate in minutes, and there was

more at stake here than just Picard's life.

He had ascended that day to run some experiments, experiments with big implications.

This work could firm up Einstein's theory of relativity, and according to some people,

it would reveal the fate of the cosmos, and even whether God existed.

But to do all that, Picard first had to survive this flight.

It would not be easy.

But in doing so, Picard would live up to his future namesake, in boldly going where

no man had gone before.

In the Science History Institute, this is Sam Keane and the Disappearing Spoon, a

Topsy, Turvy, Sciencey History Podcast, where footnotes become the real story.

August Picard was born in Switzerland in 1884.

He stood six foot six with a body like a cornstock.

He looked like a happy Edgar Allan Poe, with tuffs of hair sticking out in a gaunt

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