Capturing one of humanity’s first voyages into the heavens

It’s said that National Geographic’s first staff artist, Hashime Murayama, once counted the scales on a fish to ensure he would depict it accurately. Evidence of Murayama’s legendary attention to detail can be seen in his work on an illustration that eventually ran in our March 1933 issue. Written in the margins next to his painting are the record-breaking heights—down to the decimal point, in one instance—achieved by Swiss balloonist Auguste Piccard during humanity’s first voyages into the stratosphere. The artwork compares Piccard’s feat to, among other things, Everest’s elevation and the then loftiest airplane flights.

But one feature in the painting didn’t appear in the magazine. A few months after the illustration was published, an American balloonist outsoared Piccard, and the ever meticulous Murayama returned to his watercolor to paint in a fourth balloon, at the top, dutifully noting its elevation.