He built his first diving bell from a barrel of gas: No idea was too crazy for Hannes Keller, a math teacher from Winterthur ZH. He immediately carried out the experiment himself. In 1959, at the age of 25, he had dragged himself 122 meters into Lake Zurich to prove that the new gas mixture did not cause dangerous intoxication of the deep. On December 1, Keller died in Zurich at the age of 88. He was a universal genius.
“Deep sea diver, computer pioneer, pianist, inventor, explorer, philosopher, scientist, good living, human”. With these words, the family bids farewell to an inexhaustible creative spirit in the obituary. Keller gained worldwide fame by becoming the first person to dive to a depth of 300 meters in 1962. During the spectacular dive off the California coast, tragedy struck and Keller passed out in the deep. It could have been saved, two divers died.
It revolutionized diving
The Atlantis mission was not in vain though, a year later the Shell company bought Keller’s calculations. Thanks to the helium, nitrogen and oxygen formulas, commercial divers can safely operate at great depths to date. One of his companions at the time was Peter Stirnemann (85): “He had crazy ideas, and as soon as I wrote one, a new one was coming.” As crazy as his experiments were, he was responsible: “Everything was meticulously thought out and planned.” The two were also joking: they were the ones who allowed “Nessie” to rise from Lake Uri in the summer of 1976. The ten-meter-long “sea monster” became the most spectacular joke of TV presenter Kurt Felix (1941-2012).
In the 1970s, Keller pioneered computers as a retailer, then developed one of the first writing programs, the Witchpen software. For this, he had hundreds of housewives copy the Düden dictionary and sold this idea to the USA for good money.
pianist and politician
He also made his mark on politics. In the 1990s, he and the Solidarity Party became Blocher’s rivals: Back then, Keller advocated a basic state income that still exists today. However, his creative spirit wasn’t just fond of technology: Keller was an avid pianist and sat at his grand piano until his old age. However, he was never quite sure if the audience was just coming to his concerts because, as he said about himself, “he was a thumbs-up who could also play the piano a bit”.