I photographed this Stratosphere Ball at the Brussels Military Museum
On 27 May 1931, Swiss physicist Auguste Piccard and colleague Charles Kipfer flew the research balloon to 15,781 meters — an altitude that had never been reached by man at the time. The following year he bested that height in the Stratosphere Balloon Gondola 1932 and then again in the Stratosphere Balloon Gondola 1933
Piccard was the inspiration for the character Professor Calculus in The Adventures of Tintin.