Eduard Spelterini
Encyclopedia
Eduard Spelterini was a Swiss
pioneer of balloon
ing and of aerial photography
.
area in Switzerland as Eduard Schweizer. His father, Sigmund Schweizer, was an innkeeper. When he was eight years old, the family reportedly moved to northern Italy, to a place near the Swiss-Italian border in the province of Como
. Eduard is said to have followed the schools in Lugano
. At the age of eighteen, Eduard allegedly went first to Milan and then to Paris to be trained as an opera singer. During this time, he's also said to have chosen the fancier name "Spelterini" instead of the plain "Schweizer". According to his biographers, his singing career was cut short, though, by a severe case of pneumonia.
In any case, Spelterini turned up in the mid-1870s in Paris
, and in 1877 he was licensed by the Académie d'Aérostation météorologique de France as a ballon pilot.
who would perform acrobatic acts suspended under the basket of Spelterini's balloon during the flights. The spectacle, but also Spelterini's often taking journalists for a ride for free ensured them favourable publicity. Together, they toured eastwards through Europe until Moscow, where they parted. Spelterini turned southwards, making ascents in Bucharest, Saloniki, and Athens, before moving to Cairo. After his ascents in spring 1890 over the pyramids of Gizah he continued touring, first to Naples, then to Istanbul.
In 1891, Spelterini returned to Switzerland. By that time, he was famous for his ballooning adventures. On July 26, 1891, Spelterini made his first ascent in Switzerland, starting at the Heimplatz in Zurich. The initial skepticism of the people vanished quickly, and his starts soon attracted crowds wherever he turned up: Zurich, Winterthur, St. Gall, Interlaken, Vevey, ... His endeavours also caught the attention of scientists. On various occasions, Spelterini made ascents with scientists solely for the purpose of conducting experiments: with physicists to study the atmosphere, with physicians to study human blood cells at low atmospheric pressure, with geologists to study the earth from above.
Geologist Albert Heim
had once proposed to Spelterini to try crossing the Alps by balloon. But he needed a larger balloon for such an endeavour. With the help of sponsors, he was able to buy the "Wega", twice as large as "Urania" with a volume of 3,260 cubic meters. With it, Heim and Spelterini planned to travel from Sion
in the Valais
across Uri into the Grisons. But the winds decided otherwise. Despite unfavourable wind conditions, they started on October 3, 1898. The winds drove the balloon across Les Diablerets and then further westwards, across Lake Neuchatel
and the Jura Mountains
, until they descended near Besançon
in France. Much of the trip was made at altitudes between 5000 to 6000 meters above sea level.
In the following years, Spelterini crossed the Alps numerous times with his balloons, in all directions. In 1904, he spent several months in Egypt, and in 1911, he even travelled to South Africa, yet he returned each time to Switzerland.
The outbreak of World War I
put an end to Spelterini's travels. Borders were closed, and Spelterini's balloons remained grounded. He retired as an independent gentleman to Coppet
near Geneva
with his wife Emma (née Karpf), whom he had married on January 28, 1914 in the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields
in London. But although he was well off financially, his savings diminished in the war years, and what was left of it was eaten up by the post-war inflation. The airplane had surpassed ballooning, nobody cared anymore about his pre-war exploits, and Spelterini was all but forgotten. In 1922, he hired out as a showman at the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen
, posing for photos and taking people for short rides in a captive balloon. He detested it. Disappointed, he retired to Zipf near Vöcklabruck in Austria, where he had bought a small house and lived from the sale of the eggs of his 300 chickens. In 1926, he tried a last time to revive his old ballooning adventures. With the financial help of some friends, he started from Zurich in a rented balloon. But he fell unconscious during the voyage; his passengers just barely managed to crash-land the balloon in Vorarlberg
. Spelterini returned to Zipf, where he died impoverished and largely unknown in 1931.
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
pioneer of balloon
Balloon
A balloon is an inflatable flexible bag filled with a gas, such as helium, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, oxygen, or air. Modern balloons can be made from materials such as rubber, latex, polychloroprene, or a nylon fabric, while some early balloons were made of dried animal bladders, such as the pig...
ing and of aerial photography
Aerial photography
Aerial photography is the taking of photographs of the ground from an elevated position. The term usually refers to images in which the camera is not supported by a ground-based structure. Cameras may be hand held or mounted, and photographs may be taken by a photographer, triggered remotely or...
.
Early life
Spelterini was born in Bazenheid in the ToggenburgToggenburg
Toggenburg is the name given to the upper valley of the Thur River, in the Swiss Canton of St. Gallen. Currently, it is one of the eight constituencies into which the canton is divided....
area in Switzerland as Eduard Schweizer. His father, Sigmund Schweizer, was an innkeeper. When he was eight years old, the family reportedly moved to northern Italy, to a place near the Swiss-Italian border in the province of Como
Como
Como is a city and comune in Lombardy, Italy.It is the administrative capital of the Province of Como....
. Eduard is said to have followed the schools in Lugano
Lugano
Lugano is a city of inhabitants in the city proper and a total of over 145,000 people in the agglomeration/city region, in the south of Switzerland, in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino, which borders Italy...
. At the age of eighteen, Eduard allegedly went first to Milan and then to Paris to be trained as an opera singer. During this time, he's also said to have chosen the fancier name "Spelterini" instead of the plain "Schweizer". According to his biographers, his singing career was cut short, though, by a severe case of pneumonia.
In any case, Spelterini turned up in the mid-1870s in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, and in 1877 he was licensed by the Académie d'Aérostation météorologique de France as a ballon pilot.
Ascents around the world
In the 1880s, after having successfully made 17 ascents by himself, Spelterini began to offer commercial rides with passengers. In 1887, he had his first own balloon made by the Surcouf company in Paris, a gas balloon with a volume of 1,500 cubic meters, which he named "Urania". The first voyage with this ballon was on October 5, 1887, starting in Vienna. Subsequently, Spelterini moved to the United Kingdom, where he performed together with an American aerial acrobat going by the name of Leona DareLeona Dare
Leona Dare was an American trapeze artist and aerial acrobat, billed often as the "Queen of the Antilles" or the "Pride of Madrid". She was famous for her stunts on trapezes suspended from ascending balloons....
who would perform acrobatic acts suspended under the basket of Spelterini's balloon during the flights. The spectacle, but also Spelterini's often taking journalists for a ride for free ensured them favourable publicity. Together, they toured eastwards through Europe until Moscow, where they parted. Spelterini turned southwards, making ascents in Bucharest, Saloniki, and Athens, before moving to Cairo. After his ascents in spring 1890 over the pyramids of Gizah he continued touring, first to Naples, then to Istanbul.
In 1891, Spelterini returned to Switzerland. By that time, he was famous for his ballooning adventures. On July 26, 1891, Spelterini made his first ascent in Switzerland, starting at the Heimplatz in Zurich. The initial skepticism of the people vanished quickly, and his starts soon attracted crowds wherever he turned up: Zurich, Winterthur, St. Gall, Interlaken, Vevey, ... His endeavours also caught the attention of scientists. On various occasions, Spelterini made ascents with scientists solely for the purpose of conducting experiments: with physicists to study the atmosphere, with physicians to study human blood cells at low atmospheric pressure, with geologists to study the earth from above.
Albert Heim
Albert Heim was a Swiss geologist, noted for his three-volume Geologie der Schweiz.Born at Zürich, he was educated at Zürich and Berlin universities. Very early in life he became interested in the physical features of the Alps, and at the age of sixteen he made a model of the Tödi group...
had once proposed to Spelterini to try crossing the Alps by balloon. But he needed a larger balloon for such an endeavour. With the help of sponsors, he was able to buy the "Wega", twice as large as "Urania" with a volume of 3,260 cubic meters. With it, Heim and Spelterini planned to travel from Sion
Sion, Switzerland
Sion is the capital of the Swiss canton of Valais. it had a population of .Landmarks include the Basilique de Valère and Château de Tourbillon. Sion has an airfield for civilian and military use, which, because of its location in a valley, causes a reasonable amount of noise pollution. FC Sion...
in the Valais
Valais
The Valais is one of the 26 cantons of Switzerland in the southwestern part of the country, around the valley of the Rhône from its headwaters to Lake Geneva, separating the Pennine Alps from the Bernese Alps. The canton is one of the drier parts of Switzerland in its central Rhône valley...
across Uri into the Grisons. But the winds decided otherwise. Despite unfavourable wind conditions, they started on October 3, 1898. The winds drove the balloon across Les Diablerets and then further westwards, across Lake Neuchatel
Lake Neuchâtel
Lake Neuchâtel is a lake in Romandy, Switzerland . The lake lies mainly in the canton of Neuchâtel, but is also shared by the cantons of Vaud, of Fribourg, and of Bern....
and the Jura Mountains
Jura mountains
The Jura Mountains are a small mountain range located north of the Alps, separating the Rhine and Rhone rivers and forming part of the watershed of each...
, until they descended near Besançon
Besançon
Besançon , is the capital and principal city of the Franche-Comté region in eastern France. It had a population of about 237,000 inhabitants in the metropolitan area in 2008...
in France. Much of the trip was made at altitudes between 5000 to 6000 meters above sea level.
In the following years, Spelterini crossed the Alps numerous times with his balloons, in all directions. In 1904, he spent several months in Egypt, and in 1911, he even travelled to South Africa, yet he returned each time to Switzerland.
Aerial photography
Around 1893, Spelterini had begun to take a camera aboard his balloon and started to take pictures on his flights. It was certainly not easy to photograph with this equipment, weighing between 40 and 60 kilograms, and with a minimum exposure time of 1/30th of a second. But Spelterini brought back stunning photographs of the landscape seen from above that won awards repeatedly at aeronautical expositions in Milan, Paris, Brussels, or Frankfurt. For Albert Heim his photos provided whole new insights about the relief of the Alps. Spelterini presented his photos in slide shows wherever he went, from Stockholm to Cape Town, fascinating his audiences and winning the general acclaim of the press, who reviewed his presentations favorably.Decline of ballooning
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
put an end to Spelterini's travels. Borders were closed, and Spelterini's balloons remained grounded. He retired as an independent gentleman to Coppet
Coppet
Coppet is a municipality in the district of Nyon in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland.-History:Coppet is first mentioned in 1294 as Copetum. In 1347 it was mentioned as Copet.-Geography:...
near Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
with his wife Emma (née Karpf), whom he had married on January 28, 1914 in the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields
St Martin-in-the-Fields
St Martin-in-the-Fields is an Anglican church at the north-east corner of Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, London. Its patron is Saint Martin of Tours.-Roman era:Excavations at the site in 2006 led to the discovery of a grave dated about 410...
in London. But although he was well off financially, his savings diminished in the war years, and what was left of it was eaten up by the post-war inflation. The airplane had surpassed ballooning, nobody cared anymore about his pre-war exploits, and Spelterini was all but forgotten. In 1922, he hired out as a showman at the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
, posing for photos and taking people for short rides in a captive balloon. He detested it. Disappointed, he retired to Zipf near Vöcklabruck in Austria, where he had bought a small house and lived from the sale of the eggs of his 300 chickens. In 1926, he tried a last time to revive his old ballooning adventures. With the financial help of some friends, he started from Zurich in a rented balloon. But he fell unconscious during the voyage; his passengers just barely managed to crash-land the balloon in Vorarlberg
Vorarlberg
Vorarlberg is the westernmost federal-state of Austria. Although it is the second smallest in terms of area and population , it borders three countries: Germany , Switzerland and Liechtenstein...
. Spelterini returned to Zipf, where he died impoverished and largely unknown in 1931.
Further reading
- Capus, A.: "Geschenke des Himmels", p. 36-50 in Das Magazin 38/2007. In German.
- Degen, H.R.: "Eduard Spelterini (1852–1931)", p. 39-57 in Schweizer Flugtechniker und Ballonpioniere, Verein für wirtschaftshistorische Studien, Meilen. ISBN 3-909059-10-4. In German.
- Heim, A.Albert HeimAlbert Heim was a Swiss geologist, noted for his three-volume Geologie der Schweiz.Born at Zürich, he was educated at Zürich and Berlin universities. Very early in life he became interested in the physical features of the Alps, and at the age of sixteen he made a model of the Tödi group...
: Die Fahrt der "Wega" über Alpen und Jura am 3. Oktober 1898, Verlag B. Schwabe, Basel 1899. In German. - Kramer, Th., Stadler, H. (eds.): Edurad Spelterini – Fotografien des Ballonpioniers, Scheidegger & Spiess, 2007. ISBN 3-85881-188-2. In German & English.
- Spelterini, E.: Über den Wolken/Par dessus les nuages, Brunner & Co, Zürich 1928, with an introduction by A. Heim. In German & French.