And as long as we’re on the subject of my youth in Switzerland (well, as long as I am), Expo 64 is one of my fondest memories. It was a Swiss National Fair that, because Switzerland is a kind of miniature world in itself, was also a kind of miniature World’s Fair, with monorails, then much in vogue, and cable cars, a vital part of Swiss culture, and art displays, and hands-on science exhibits; but, being run by the Swiss, it was as charming and lovely and well-maintained as Switzerland itself. The fair’s big draw was the Mésoscaphe, a passenger submarine built by the great Swiss diver and explorer Jacques Piccard (who died recently at age 82) in which I and my parents, and some 33,000 others over the six months of the fair, were transported 66 meters (about 220 feet) into the murky depths of Lake Geneva, on the world’s first commercial submarine ride.
It was a great thrill, although all I can recall seeing was the lake’s muddy bottom and a few fish and a shard of this, a lump of that. Never mind; I was and am an ardent admirer of Hergé’s Tintin, as a previous post on this blog will attest, and Piccard’s Mésoscaphe was an invention straight out of Tintin, worthy of Professor Calculus (who was in fact based on Piccard’s father Auguste, an acquaintance of Hergé’s in Brussels). The Mésoscaphe, showing its age, now sits in dry dock at the Swiss Transport Museum in Lucerne. Cleaning off the rust is said to have taken years.
