Daredevil v. Icebox

SCIENCE

Several Army and Navy officers, a few scientists including Radio Engineer Greenleaf Whittier Pickard, a doctor or two, some newshawks, a dentist, the head of Liquid Carbonic Corp. and a handful of his employes stood in a circle last week in the company's one-story brick building in the malodorous gashouse district of Cambridge, Mass. In the middle of the room was a steel tank big enough to hold a pony. It was lined with i.ooo Ib. of frozen carbon dioxide, popularly called "dry ice." The temperature inside was somewhere between -- 100DEG and -- 110DEG F. The spectators waited to see a black-browed young daredevil risk his life for Science by get ting into that icebox and staying there for half an hour. Daredevil Mark Edward Ridge wanted to test a "stratosphere suit" which he claimed he had invented with the help of someone named Ring. The suit was composed of cotton cloth and thin laminated aluminum in twelve alternating layers. To protect himself from deadly fumes emanating from the ice he also put on a mask connected to a small oxygen tank carried in his hand. He clumped up a stepladder, lifted the box's lid. climbed down inside. A few slow seconds went by. A thick-gloved hand waved feebly. A spectator shouted. There was a quick cluster of men around the box as a dozen hands lifted out a limp figure. A physician named David H. Shulman removed the mask, found Mark Ridge's face cherry-red, said he would have been killed in an other five seconds by fumes which had leaked into the mask. Intrepid Mark Ridge recovered quickly. To a newshawk who appeared two days later, a Liquid Carbonic official snorted: "I am disgusted. ... A cheap publicity stunt. ... I was so disgusted that when they came back next day to complete the experiment I wouldn't let them in. A doctor present at the experiment is quoted as saying that Ridge was only five seconds from death, but I know he was five or ten minutes from death."

If it had come five seconds or five minutes sooner, Death would have cut short an extraordinary career. Daredevil Ridge, 28, has long been willing to risk Death for Science. Three years ago he appeared at a Boston airport, said he wanted to photograph a hotel, hired a cabin plane. In mid-flight the pilot looked back, saw that Ridge had put on a parachute, was ready to jump. He flipped the plane into a wingover that sent the would-be jumper sprawling to the floor, kept him there by repeated wingovers until he got back to port.

The daredevil then wangled a flight in a National Guard plane. He jumped despite the profane imprecations of the pilot, dropped 1,000 ft. before pulling the ripcord, landed unhurt on the frozen Charles River, was arrested by police for leaving an airplane "for a feat of daring." First victim of the Massachusetts law which forbids any but emergency parachute jumps, he was given a three-month sentence which was later suspended.

The Navy heard of him when he applied for permission to enter a decompression chamber. The Navy said no.

London heard of him when he bobbed up there and announced that, with the backing of one famed British and two famed U. S. scientists, he would beat the stratosphere record then held by Auguste Piccard. He entered a tank in which a partial vacuum had been produced equal to the air pressure at 50,000 ft., stepped out declaiming, "History has been made." His father in Massachusetts got a cable: "Success, 50,000 feet, going 60,000 Monday, everything fine, staying weekend with Dr. [J. B. S.] Haldane."

A Manhattan publicity man named Fice Mork and a Boston dentist named Joseph Selib, feeling that Mark Ridge was doing himself more harm than good, took him in hand. Says Dr. Selib: "Lindbergh was thought to be a nut before he flew to Paris. This boy is air-minded, conscientious and daring. He comes from a good family. His education is average. He is willing to try for an altitude record if it will mean scientific progress."

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