Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The first ascent of Mont Blanc

1955; Royal Society; Volume: 11; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1098/rsnr.1955.0011

1743-0178

G. R. de Beer, Max H. Hey,

Philippine History and Culture

When Mount Everest was finally conquered by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norkey on 29 May 1953 the event aroused enormous interest, and all the resources of ancient and modern methods of communication by runner, telegraph, and wireless were available to spread the news rapidly all over the world. It arrived in Great Britain three days later, during the night of 1/2 June and one of its first recipients was the Queen. Conditions were very different when Mont Blanc was first ascended by Dr Michel-Gabriel Paccard and Jacques Balmat on 8 August 1786. The news was carried by messenger from Chamonix to Geneva for the information of H. B. de Saussure who received it on the morning of 10 August. Thereafter the spread of the news was sporadic, uncertain and slow, depending on the private correspondence of de Saussure and his friends and of tourists who chanced to be at Chamonix at the time. It was first published in the Leipziger Zeitung of 23 August 1786, but the first publication in Great Britain appears to have been in The Scots Magazine for November of that year. And yet it also was a great and important event.