| Joseph Crocé-Spinelli | |
| Birth Name: | Joseph Eustache Crocé-Spinelli |
| Birth Date: | 10 July 1845 |
| Birth Place: | Monbazillac, France |
| Death Place: | Ciron (Indre), France |
| Resting Place: | Père Lachaise Cemetery |
| Nationality: | French |
| Fields: | Aviation, Meteorology |
| Awards: | Grand Prize of Mathematical Sciences (1875) |
Joseph Crocé-Spinelli (French: Joseph Eustache Crocé-Spinelli; 10 July 1845 – 15 April 1875) was a French engineer, aeronaut and inventor, one of the pioneers of aviation. Along with Gaston Tissandier and Théodore Sivel, he achieved a record altitude of in the gas balloon Zénith.
Joseph Crocé-Spinelli was born on July 10, 1845, in the town of Monbazillac, in the French region of New Aquitaine, at the family estate of jeweler Isidore-Achille Crocé-Spinelli and Marie Louise Lacour. He had a brother, Raphael Crocé-Spinelli, and one of his cousins was the French composer Bernard Crocé-Spinelli.[1]
He studied at the lycée Bonaparte in Paris and earned a bachelor's degree in literature and natural sciences. In 1864, he entered the Central School of Arts and Manufactures (French: École centrale des arts et manufactures), where he studied until 1867.
From 1870 to 1871, Crocé-Spinelli actively participated in the Franco-Prussian War and served in the 221st Battalion of the French army.[2]
After the war, he engaged in scientific activities, writing and publishing several scientific articles in the field of mechanics in the French newspaper République Française. Subsequently, he became interested in aviation and joined the newly established French Society of Aerial Navigation (French: Société Française de Navigation Aérienne). He actively participated in the publication of the scientific journal L'Aéronaute.[3]
Between 1873 and 1875, he conducted four high-altitude flights in the balloons Polar Star (French: L'Étoile polaire) and Zenith (French: Le Zénith).
In the spring of 1873, the French Society of Aerial Navigation organized its first scientific expedition in the balloon Polar Star (French: L'Étoile polaire). Five scientists expressed their desire to participate in this expedition, including Joseph Crocé-Spinelli. His companions were Alphonse Penaud, Théodore Sivel, Claude Jobert, and Dr. Félix Petard. The flight took place on April 26, 1873, and Polar Star reached an altitude of before successfully landing near Paris.[4]
During the flight, the scientists conducted a series of meteorological and aeronautical experiments, for which Alphonse Penaud specially developed the instruments. Among them was a differential barometer with a rubber membrane, used for the first time, which could measure the altitude and rate of ascent and descent of the balloon. This device later became popular among aeronauts and was indispensable in many scientific flights.[5]
Another result of the Polar Star expedition was a scientific article by Dr. Félix Petard, published in the journal L'Aéronaute. In this article, Petard described his observations of the physiological and psychological states of the crew members during the flight in detail. He observed changes in mood and behavior in each scientist with altitude and made assumptions about how altitude affected these changes. Regarding Joseph Crocé-Spinelli's behavior and mood during the Polar Star flight, Dr. Petard wrote:
On March 22, 1874, Crocé-Spinelli and Sivel made their second flight in the balloon Polar Star.
In this flight, for the first time, on the advice of physiologist Paul Bert, the scientists took small soft balloons with oxygen supplies. Before the flight, Crocé and Sivel trained in Paul Bert's special barometric chamber. In the chamber, all the oxygen was pumped out for a certain time, and one could breathe only through a special tube connected to the soft balloon. This experiment allowed checking the aeronauts' behavior at altitudes with extreme atmospheric pressure and lack of oxygen in the air.[6]
This unusual way of breathing freely even where there was practically no oxygen allowed the scientists to conduct meteorological research and control the balloon. As a result, the Polar Star rose to a then-record height of .[7]
During their research, Crocé-Spinelli and Sivel measured the air temperature at an altitude of over, which was . They also observed their own physiological reactions to the rarefied atmosphere. Specifically, they noticed a sharp increase in pulse and changes in the color of their face and mucous membranes.[8]
The flight on March 22, 1874, received widespread media coverage, making Joseph Crocé-Spinelli and Théodore Sivel famous in France and Europe. This enabled the scientists to quickly find support and funding for their next aerial expedition.[9]
Joseph Crocé-Spinelli made his third flight on March 23-24, 1875, when the balloon Zénith flew from Paris to Arcachon over 22 hours and 40 minutes. This flight broke all world duration records, surpassing the 18-hour flight by the English aeronaut Charles Green made in 1836.[10] The record of the Zenith was only broken eleven years later, in September 1886, when the Frenchman Henri Hervé made a 24-hour flight from France to England in the balloon Le National.
On March 23, Zenith was prepared for flight at the La Villette gas plant, and at 18:20 in the evening, it successfully took off. On board the balloon were five aeronauts: Théodore Sivel, acting as captain, Joseph Crocé-Spinelli, conducting scientific experiments with a spectrograph, Claude Jobert, a mechanic and experienced balloonist, and the two brothers Gaston and Albert Tissandier, who were conducting their own scientific experiments. Albert Tissandier made drawings of all the landscapes the aeronauts saw during the flight.Gaston Tissandier later described the first hours of the flight:
All night, the aeronauts flew at an altitude of – above the ground, slowly moving towards the ocean coast in southwestern France. They did not forget to conduct their scientific experiments: Crocé-Spinelli, along with Jobert, experimented with Alphonse Penaud's navigation device, the measurements of which allowed them to determine the altitude and speed of the balloon. A post-flight check of this device's data confirmed the ideal accuracy of the obtained numbers.[11]
At dawn, Zenith reached the town of La Rochelle on the ocean coast, and around 10 am began its flight over the Gironde. Gaston Tissandier described this event as follows:
After crossing the Gironde, Zenith flew another 6 hours along the ocean coast, and only around 5 pm did the aeronauts successfully land on a clearing in a pine forest near Arcachon. A few minutes after landing, local shepherds "on stilts and with joyful and amazed shouts" arrived. They helped pack up the equipment and the balloon and transported them to the town.[12]
Inspired by the success of the record flight from Paris to Arcachon, Crocé-Spinelli, Sivel, and Gaston Tissandier immediately began preparing for a new expedition. The goal of the new flight in the Zenith was to reach the highest altitude possible in a balloon. In accordance with this goal, the scientists prepared their equipment.
Three small balloons with a breathing oxygen mixture containing 70 percent oxygen were attached to the balloon's basket's suspension ring. Two aneroid barometers were placed on ropes running from the basket to the ring. One measured pressure up to, the other from to . Next to them were several thermometers, one of which, an "alcohol" thermometer, could record low temperatures down to . Above the thermometers, in a closed box filled with sawdust, was a special barometer for recording the maximum height of the balloon's ascent. This device consisted of 8 mercury barometric tubes and was designed by the French astronomer and scientist Pierre Janssen. Sivel attached a thick mattress stuffed with straw to the basket's bottom to cushion the impact when the balloon landed.On April 15, 1875, at 11:52 am, Zenith with Crocé-Spinelli, Sivel, and Tissandier on board, took off and began its ascent. Gaston Tissandier later recalled that at an altitude of, Théodore Sivel suddenly exclaimed with joy:
At an altitude of, a large volume of hydrogen suddenly escaped from the "appendix" of the balloon, which was directly above the aeronauts' heads. This had no effect on Sivel and Tissandier, but Crocé-Spinelli made the following entry in his diary:
Occupied with their scientific observations, the aeronauts did not pay attention to their own bodies' reactions to the lack of oxygen. However, at an altitude of, the severely rarefied air had already taken its toll, and Tissandier, checking his friends' condition, recorded the following note in his notebook:Around 1 pm, Zenith reached an altitude of and drifted over cirrus clouds, consisting of fine dispersed ice particles. Suffering from lack of air, Tissandier took a few breaths of the oxygen mixture, feeling the beneficial effects of the oxygen. Shivering from the cold, he wrote with a shaky hand:
Later, Tissandier recalled that somewhere at an altitude of, Sivel asked him twice if he should throw off some more ballast, and after receiving the reply "Do what you want" from Tissandier, Sivel cut off several more bags of sand. At this time, Crocé-Spinelli sat at the bottom of the basket, holding the tube from the oxygen cylinder in his hand, looking very depressed. Tissandier describes the subsequent events as follows:
After Crocé-Spinelli threw off some ballast, Zenith slowed its descent and again slowly rose to an altitude of over . At 3:30 pm, Tissandier regained consciousness, feeling dizzy and weak. Opening his eyes, he saw that the balloon was again descending at a terrifying speed. The basket was rocking violently, describing large circles in the air.
Tissandier crawled on his knees to his friends and began to wake them, calling, "Sivel! Crocé! Wake up!" But they lay motionless at the bottom of the basket. Gathering the remnants of his strength, Tissandier tried to lift them, but the faces of the aeronauts had already darkened, their eyes were cloudy, and their mouths were bloody. Tissandier recalled the last moments of the Zenith flight as follows:
Zenith crashed into a field near the town of Ciron (Indre), located from Paris. The data from the special altitude barometer was checked at the Sorbonne physics laboratory and showed that the maximum altitude Zenith reached during its flight was between and . Joseph Crocé-Spinelli and Théodore Sivel died during the flight from asphyxia, while Gaston Tissandier miraculously survived but partially lost his hearing.
After the crash of Zenith near the town of Ciron (Indre), Gaston Tissandier, still in shock, realized that his friends had died during the flight. Local residents began to flock to the crash site, increasing in number. To avoid undue curiosity from the crowd, Tissandier decided to move Crocé-Spinelli and Sivel's bodies to the nearest barn and locked them there. After that, Gaston was taken to the house of one of the farmers of Count de Bondi, on whose land the balloon had crashed. Tissandier was so exhausted that he almost immediately fell asleep and slept until dawn.
In the morning, he wrote a long letter to the president of the French Society of Aerial Navigation Hervé Mangon and sent it to Paris. In the letter, Gaston described in detail everything he remembered about the tragic flight of Zenith. This letter was later reprinted by all leading newspapers in France and Europe.[13]
The tragic news of the crash of Zenith did not reach Paris quickly. The families of the deceased scientists were informed only 18 hours after the crash, and on April 16, the evening newspapers of Paris reported the sad news on their pages. Practically all the major French newspapers immediately sent their reporters to the crash site, and by the morning of April 17, Gaston Tissandier was meeting them and his brother Albert at the local train station.
On April 18, the bodies of Crocé-Spinelli and Sivel were placed in metal coffins, loaded onto a cart, and taken to the local train station for transport to Paris. Gaston Tissandier walked alongside the cart carrying his two friends all the way to the station.[14]
On April 19, a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences was held, at which its president Edmond Frémy gave a special speech. He called Crocé-Spinelli and Sivel "martyrs of science" and added that they were "two brave warriors who fell on the battlefield of science".
The funeral of Sivel and Crocé-Spinelli took place on April 20. Initially, around 500-600 people gathered at the Orléans train station in Paris at 10:30 am, where the bodies of the deceased scientists had arrived. At 11:15 am, Protestant pastor (the deceased were Protestants) Auguste-Scipion Dide gave a short speech, which made a strong impression on those present. The procession then made its way along the Boulevard Contrescarpe, the Place de la Bastille, and the Rue de la Paix to the Père Lachaise Cemetery. All the way to the cemetery, the crowd of people who came to say goodbye to the scientists grew, and at the funeral ceremony, the local police counted about 5000-6000 people. The French newspaper L'Aeronaute reported a different number, claiming that 20,000 people attended the funeral.[15]
It is known that the funeral was attended by many famous French politicians, scientists, writers, and scholars. Among them were Pierre Danfert-Rochereau, Paul Bert, Jean-Baptiste Dumas, Edmond Frémy, Ernest Picard, Henri Giffard, Henri Dupuy de Lôme, and others.[16]
After the funeral of Crocé-Spinelli and Sivel, the French Society of Aerial Navigation and several major newspapers announced a public fundraising campaign to help the families of the deceased and to install a memorial at the crash site of the balloon. This monument, designed by Albert Tissandier, was solemnly unveiled on March 25, 1881. It took the form of a large stone obelisk. On April 4, 2017, it was added to France's historical memory list.[17]
In 1878, a sculptural composition depicting the scientists was ceremoniously installed at the Père Lachaise Cemetery. The composition was created by the French sculptor Alphonse Dumilatre. According to the sculptor's idea, Crocé-Spinelli and Sivel lie side by side, holding hands. This pose was how their bodies were found by local peasants, the first to arrive at the Zenith crash site. This unique sculpture on the scientists' tomb attracts thousands of tourists who visit the Père Lachaise Cemetery every year.The crash of Zenith and the French poet and future Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Sully Prudhomme to write the poem Le Zenith.[18]
The crash of Zenith so moved the French community that in the first years after the tragedy, several operatic compositions were created in honor of Crocé-Spinelli and Sivel, performed during theatrical performances. The most famous of these were: Le Zenith (lyrics: Adolphe Perrot, music: Robert Planquette) and Les martyrs du Zénith (lyrics: Julien Foc, music: Jacob Jules).[19] [20]
In 1983, the French politician and then Minister of Culture Jack Lang decided to design and build a large concert and exhibition hall outside of Paris. The chosen location for the construction was the La Villette Park. Since the Zenith balloon had once taken off from this park, the concert hall was named in its honor, Le Zénith. Later, this name was registered as a trademark, and the concept of building large concert and exhibition halls called Le Zénith was expanded throughout France. As of 2021, 17 such concert halls have been built and are operational across the country.[21]
In the 14th arrondissement of Paris, a street is named in honor of Joseph Crocé-Spinelli.[22] Additionally, a college in the 14th arrondissement of Paris is named after the scientist.[23]