Early Message of Record Height Merely Hoax Vienna, Aug. 19.
The stratosphere balloon piloted by Professor Max Cosyns and MIN. Neree Van. der Elst, Belgian scien tists, landed. st 9 o'clock last "night near the village of Ober-Petrovac, Yugoslavia.
Earlier reports that the stratosphere ists had seta new altitude. record Japparently were the result of a hoax' Jby' some perverted practical joker, in view of Mr. Van der Elst's statement that the greatest height reached was 16,000 meters.
Radio stations of the Belgian network reported having picked up the following message signed by Professor "Reached 22,000 metres. Suffering {from cold, so descended to 18,000 metres. We are now over Czecho-Slovakia but do not know the exact scientific organization backing the fight Issued a statement from the Belgian capital indicating that the message might have been put on the air by some hoaxer, as it did not Jeontain the code word' which had been pre-arranged with Professor Cosyns to prevent just such tampering with the Aight.
"There were many other wild reports of this nature.
"The siratospherists were in the air almost fifteen hours, having taken ott Hour Havenne Belgium, Jat 639 o'clock yesterday morning, expecting to land in Bavaria about 6 pam. yesterday.
The maximum altitude of 16,000] metre reported by M. Van der Elst follo far short of the official record of 61237 feet (li. miles) set by LieutenantCommander Thomas G.
Settle, U. 8. N., now commander of the gunboat Palos on the Yangtze River, and the unotticial record of 19,000 metres (11.8 miles) reached by the Soviet stratostat on September 30, 1993, in the metal gondola, attached to the same balloon which carried Prof. Cosyns aloft with Prof. Auguste Piccard in the. first satosphere Recent in. 1991, are parachutes for the instruments and the pilots, The Falioon it ballasted. with §,000\Kilogrammes of sand and 250 of water.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.