TWENTY-THREE MILES HIGH.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 706, 23 September 1914, Page 3

TWENTY-THREE MILES HIGH.

At regular intervals simultaneously, in all the large countries, the weather, observers make tests of the upper ail! by means af "ballons condes," or. sounding balloons. These balloons ara usually about six feet in diameter, and are filled with free hydrogen gas. They carry an instrument called a meteorograph, which registers and records the altitude, temperature, humidity, and wind velocity. Since the balloons rise ■with great spoed raid almost in a vertical line, the ascents resemble somewhat the descent of a lead-line from a ship in the ocean, and this resemblance accounts for the name "sounding balloon." Eventually, the balloon reaches a height above which it cannot go. If the gas-bag is of silk it collapses; if it is of india-rubber it explodes. In either case a parachute descends, hringing the recording apparatus with it* A sounding balloon recently sent up at' the Observatory of Pavia, Italy, reached' the tremendous -height of 37,000 meters, or nearly twenty-three miles above the? earth. The greatast height previously attained by one of the balloons was in America, at Huron, South Dakota, on September 1, 1910. That ascent was 30,400 metres, or a little less than nineteen miles. Wherever the' sounding balloons have been used, whether near the equator or in northern latitudes, the records have shown that after six miles above the earth the temperature no longer drops rapidly as the instrument ascends, but at times becomes stationary. The lowest temperature during the recent remarkable flight was seventy and four-tenths degrees below zero, Fahrenheit, at a point 12* miles high.