During the course of the year subsequent
to the Montgolfiers' discovery, several experiments on the ascending
power of balloons had been made in England; but the first person who
there ventured on an aerial voyage was Vincent Lunardi, an Italian, who
ascended from London, 21 September 1784. In the succeeding year, he gratified
the inhabitants of Glasgow and Edinburgh with the spectacle of an aerial
excursion, which they had never witnessed before. The first aerial voyage
across the sea was made by M. Blanchard, in company with Dr. Jeffries,
an American physician,, who was then residing in England. On the 07 January
1785, a beautiful frosty winter day, they ascended about one o'clock
from Dover, with the design of crossing the Channel between England and
France, a distance of about twenty-three miles, and, at great personal
risk, accomplished their purpose in two hours and a half. The balloon
at first rose slowly and majestically into the air, but it soon began
to descend, and, before they had crossed the Channel, they were obliged
to reduce the weight, by throwing out all their ballast, several books,
their apparatus, cords, grapples, bottles, and were even proceeding to
cast their clothes into the sea, when the balloon, which had then nearly
reached the French coast, began to ascend, and rose to a considerable
height, relieving them from the necessity of dispensing with much of
their apparel. They landed in safety at the edge of the forest of Guiennes,
not far beyond Calais, and were treated by the magistrates o that town
with the utmost kindness and hospitality. M. Blanchard had the honor
of being presented with 12'000 livres by the King of France.
Emboldened by this daring feat, Pilâtre
de Rozier, already mentioned, and M. Romain prepared to pay back the
compliment of M. Blanchard and Dr. Jeffries, by crossing the Channel
from France to England. To avoid the difficulty of keeping up the balloon,
which had perplexed and endangered Blanchard and his companion during
nearly their whole course, Rozier had recourse to the expedient of placing
underneath the hydrogen balloon a fire balloon of smaller dimensions,
which was intended to regulate the rising and falling of the whole machine.
This promised to unite the advantages of both kinds of balloons, but
it unhappily terminated in the melancholy death of the two adventurers.
They ascended from Boulogne on 15 June 1785, but scarcely had a quarter
of an hour elapsed from the time of their ascent, when at the height
of 1000 m the whole machine was discovered to be in flames. Its scattered
fragments, with the mangled bodies of the unfortunate aeronauts, who
were probably killed by the explosion of the hydrogen gas, were found
near the sea-shore, about six km from Boulogne. This was the first fatal
accident which took place in balloon navigation, though several hundred
ascensions had by this time been made.
In the early practices of aerial voyages,
the chief danger apprehended was from accidental and rapid descents.
To countervail this danger, and enable the adventurer, in cases of alarm,
to desert his balloon, and descend to the ground uninjured, Blanchard
invented the parachute, or guard for falling, as the word signifies in
French, an apparatus very much resembling an umbrella, but of much larger
dimensions. The design is to break the fall; and, to effect this, it
is necessary that the parachute present a surface sufficiently large
to experience from the air such resistance as will cause it to descend
with a velocity not exceeding that with which a person can fall to the
ground unhurt. During an aerial excursion which Blanchard took from Lisle
in August 1785, when he traversed a distance of not less than 500 km,
he dropped a parachute with a basked fastened to it, containing a dog,
from a great elevation, and it fell gently through the air, letting down
the animal to the ground in safety. The practice and management of the
parachute were subsequently carried much farther by other aeronauts,
and particularly by M. Garnerin, an ingenious and spirited Frenchman,
who, during the course of his numerous ascents, repeatedly descended
from the region of the clouds with that very slender machine. On one
occasion, however, he suffered considerable injury in his descent. The
stays of the parachute having unfortunately given way, its proper balance
was disturbed, and, on reaching the ground, it struck against it with
such violence, as to throw him on his face, by which he received some
severe cuts. To let down a man of ordinary size form any height, a parachute
of a hemispherical form, eight meters in diameter is required. But although
the construction of a parachute is very simple, and the resistance it
will meet with from the air in its descent, its size and load being given,
can be exactly determined on scientific principles, few have ventured
to try it; which may be owing partly to ignorance or inattention to the
scientific principles by which it is governed, and partly to a growing
opinion among aeronauts, that it is unnecessary, the balloon itself,
in case of its bursting, forming a parachute; as Mr. Wise, the celebrated
American aeronaut, experienced on two different occasions, as he narrates
in his interesting work on Aeronautics, lately published in Philadelphia--a
work to which we have been indebted in drawing up this article.
In the early part of the French revolutionary
war, the savants of France, ambitious of bringing to the aid of the Republic
al the resources of science, strongly recommended the introduction of
balloons, as an effectual means of reconnoitering the armies of their
enemies. From the advantages it seemed to promise, the recommendation
was instantly acted upon by the government, which established an aeronautic
school at Meudon, near Paris. The management of this institution, which
was conducted with systematic precision, and concealed with the utmost
care from the allied powers, was committed to the most eminent philosophers
of Paris. Gyton Morveau, a celebrated French chemist, and M. Contel superintended
the operations. Fifty military students were admitted for training. A
practicing balloon of ten meters in diameter was constructed, of the
most durable materials, and inflated with hydrogen gas. It was kept constantly
full, so as to be at all times ready for exercise; and, to make it stationary
at any given altitude, it was attached to windlass machinery. Balloons
were speedily prepared by M. Contel for the different branches of the
French army; the Entreprenant for the army of the north, the Celeste
for that of the Sambre and Meuse, the Hercule for that of Rhine
and Moselle, and the Intrepide for the memorable army of Egypt.
The victory which the French achieved over the Austrians, on the plains
of Fleurus in June 1794, is ascribed to the observations made by two
of their aeronauts. Immediately before the battle, M. Contel and an adjuntant-general
ascended twice in the war-balloon Entreprenant, to reconnoiter
the Austrian army, and though, during their second aerial reconnaissance
they were discovered by the enemy, who sent up after them a brisk cannonade,
they quickly rose above the reach of danger, and, on descending, communicated
such information to their general as enabled him to gain a speedy and
decisive victory over the Austrians. . . . .
Ballooning is a sport which has captured the imagination since
the late 18th century. Back in 1783 the Montgolfier brothers of Annonay,
France, launched a large paper bag filled with smoke from a straw fire
2000 meters into the air. It may sound rather prosaic to us, weaned on
Apollo missions into outer space, but back then it was nothing short
of miraculous. The first unofficial manned balloon flight took place
a few months later when the Marquis D'Arlandes and Jean-Francois Pilâtre
de Rozier stood in the wicker basket, heaving straw into a large fire
in the neck of the balloon. De Rozier has given his name to the type
of balloon used in the Cable & Wireless model, but thankfully modern
designs have dispensed with the hay-fuelled fire. A short while later
de Rozier and Francois Laurent made the first official manned flight,
rising some 150 m over Paris, only to land in vineyards, where they placated
stunned farmers with champagne - a tradition which continues today. But
tragedy would soon strike when Pilâtre de Rozier was killed in
1785 in an attempted Channel crossing when his balloon caught fire. It
wasn't until the 1960s that ballooning as a sport literally took off.
1783 Premier voyage en montgolfière
Pilâtre de Rozier et le marquis
d'Arlandes s'envolent à bord d'une montgolfière. Ils sont les
premiers hommes qui échappent à la pesanteur terrestre. Les
deux aéronautes s'élèvent jusqu'à 1000 mètres au-dessus des
Tuileries. Après un vol de vingt minutes, ils atterrissent sur
la Butte aux Cailles. L'idée d'utiliser un ballon rempli d'air
chaud pour s'affranchir des lois de la pesanteur a été étudiée
à partir de 1782 par les frères Etienne et Joseph Montgolfier,
papetiers à Annonay. Joseph Montgolfier s'essaie d'abord à faire
monter jusqu'au plafond des ballons de taffetas remplis d'air
chaud. Puis, devant les notables d'Annonay, il lâche un ballon
en toile et papier de 11 mètres de diamètre, préalablement rempli
d'air chaud au-dessus d'un feu de paille. L'engin s'élève à
2000 mètres avant de rapidement retomber. Le 19 septembre 1783,
les choses se corsent. Etienne Montgolfier fait voler un ballon
à Paris, chez le fabricant de papiers peints Réveillon. La nacelle
emporte un canard, un coq et un mouton sous le regard bienveillant
de Louis XVI et de la cour. Les animaux survivront à l'aventure
après une chute dans la forêt de Vaucresson. Les frères Montgolfier
seront prêts pour renouveler l'expérience avec des cobbayes
humains. Ce sera chose faite le 21 novembre. Mais malgré leur
succès, les montgolfières ne serviront qu'au divertissement
et, plus tard, au repérage des positions militaires. L'une d'elles
fera sensation à la [[!!bad link!!>>] bataille
de Fleurus en 1794. |
1783
First manned hot air balloon flight 
French
physician Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent, the marquis
d' Arlandes, make the first untethered hot-air balloon flight, flying9
kilometers over Paris in about 25 minutes. Their cloth balloon was crafted
by French papermaking brothers Jacques-Étienne and Joseph-Michel Montgolfier,
inventors of the world's first successful hot-air balloons. 
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