Fergie's Tech Blog

Man-Made Tech: 60th Anniversary of the Launch of the Kon-Tiki

Thor Heyerdahl, who died in 2002, rocked.

This man had a vision, and achieved it.

I had the privilege of visiting the Norwegian Maritime Museum in Oslo during the 45th IETF (1999) meeting.

What an amazing accomplishment.

Via Wikipedia.

Kon-Tiki was the raft used by Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl in his 1947 expedition. It was named after the Inca sun god, Viracocha, for whom "Kon-Tiki" was said to be an old name. Kon-Tiki is also the name of the popular book that Heyerdahl wrote about his adventures.

Heyerdahl believed that people from South America could have settled Polynesia in the south Pacific in Pre-Columbian times. His aim in mounting the Kon-Tiki expedition was to show, by using only the materials and technologies available to them at the time, that there were no technical reasons to prevent them from having done so.

Heyerdahl and a small team went to Peru, where they constucted a balsa wood raft out of balsa logs and other native materials in an indigenous style (as recorded in illustrations by Spanish conquistadores). This trip began on April 28, 1947. Accompanied by five companions, Heyerdahl sailed it for 101 days over 4,300 miles across the Pacific Ocean before smashing into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands on August 7, 1947. The only modern equipment they had was a radio.

The book Kon-Tiki was a best-seller, and a documentary motion picture of the expedition won an Academy Award in 1951.

The original Kon-Tiki is now on display in the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo.

posted by Fergie @ 4/28/2007 12:01:00 AM