We now come to the invention of the
balloon, which was due to Joseph Michel Montgolfier (1740-1810) and
Jacques Etienne Montgolfier (1745-1799), sons of Pierre Montgolfier, a
large and celebrated papermaker at Annonay, a town about 40 m. from
Lyons. The brothers had observed the suspension of clouds in the
atmosphere, and it occurred to them that if they could enclose any
vapour of the nature of a cloud in a large and very light bag, it might
rise and carry the bag with it into the air. Towards the end of 1782
they inflated bags with smoke from a fire placed underneath, and found
that either the smoke or some vapour emitted from the fire did ascend
and carry the bag with it. Being thus assured of the correctness of
their views, they determined to have a public ascent of a balloon on a
large scale. They accordingly invited the States of Vivarais, then
assembled at Annonay, to witness their aerostatic experiment; and on
the 5th of June 1783, in the presence of a considerable concourse of
spectators, a linen globe of 105 ft. in circumference was inflated over
a fire fed with small bundles of chopped straw. When released it
rapidly rose to a great height, and descended, at the expiration of ten
minutes, at the distance of about 1 1/2m. This was the discovery of the
balloon. The brothers Montgolfier imagined that the bag rose because of
the levity of the smoke or other vapour given forth by the burning
straw; and it was not till some time later that it was recognized that
the ascending power was due merely to the lightness of heated air
compared to an equal volume of air at a lower temperature. In this
balloon, no source of heat was taken up, so that the air inside rapidly
cooled, and the balloon soon descended.
Charles'
and Robert's Balloon
27 Aug 1783
The news of the experiment at Annonay
attracted so much attention at Paris that Barthelemi Faujas de
Saint-Fond (1741-1819), afterwards professor of geology at the Musee
d'Histoire Naturelle, set on foot a subscription for paying the expense
of repeating the experiment. The balloon was constructed by two
brothers of the name of Robert, under the superintendence of the
physicist, J. A. C. Charles. The first suggestion was to copy the
process of Montgolfier, but Charles proposed the application of
hydrogen gas, which was adopted. The filling of the balloon, which was
made of thin silk varnished with a solution of elastic gum, and was
about 13 ft. in diameter, was begun on the 23rd of August 1783, in the
Place des Victoires. The hydrogen gas was obtained by the action of
dilute sulphuric acid upon iron filings, and was introduced through
leaden pipes; but as the gas was not passed through cold water, great
difficulty, was experienced in filling the balloon completely; and
altogether about 300 lb. of sulphuric acid and twice that amount of
iron filings were used. Bulletins were issued daily of the
progress of the inflation; and the crowd was so great that on the 26th
the balloon was moved secretly by night to the Champ de Mars, a
distance of 2 m. On the next day an immense concourse of people covered
the Champ de Mars, and every spot from which a view could be obtained
was crowded. About five o'clock a cannon was discharged as the signal
for the ascent, and the balloon when liberated rose to the height of
about 3000 ft. with great rapidity. A shower of rain which began to
fall directly after it had left the earth in no way checked its
progress; and the excitement was so great, that thousands of
well-dressed spectators, many of them ladies, stood exposed, watching
it intently the whole time it was in sight and were drenched to the
skin, The balloon, after remaining in the air for about three-quarters
of an hour, fell in a field near Gonesse, about 15 m. off, and
terrified the peasantry so much that it was torn into shreds by them.
Hydrogen gas was at this time known by the name of inflammable air; and
balloons inflated with gas have ever since been called by the people
air-balloons, the kind invented by the Montgolfiers being designated
fire-balloons. French Writers have also very frequently styled them
after their inventors, Charli�res
and
Montgolfi�res
Montgolfier's Balloon
19 Sep 1783
On the 19th of September 1783 Joseph
Montgolfier repeated the Annonay experiment at Versailles, in the
presence of the king, the queen, the court and an immense number of
spectators. The inflation was begun at one o'clock, and completed in
eleven minutes, when the balloon rose to the height of about 1500 ft.,
and descended after eight minutes, at a distance of about 2 m., in the
wood of Vaucresson. Suspended below the balloon: in a cage, had been
placed a sheep, a cock and a duck, which were thus the first aerial
travellers. They were quite uninjured, except the cock, which had its
right wing hurt in consequence of a kick it had received from the
sheep; but this took place before the ascent. The balloon, which was
painted with ornaments in oil colours, had a very showy appearance.
Francois Pilatre de Rozier (1756-1785),
a native of Metz, who was appointed superintendent of the natural
history collections of Louis XVIII. On the 15th of October 1783, and
following days, he made several ascents (generally alone, but once with
a companion, Girond de Villette) in a captive balloon (i.e. one
attached by ropes to the ground), and demonstrated that there was no
difficulty in taking up fuel and feeding the fire, which was kindled in
a brazier suspended under the balloon, when in the air. The way being
thus prepared for aerial navigation, on the 21st of November 1783,
Pilatre de Rozier and the marquis d'Arlandes first trusted themselves
to a free fire-balloon. The experiment was made from the Jardin du
Chateau de la Muette, in the Bois de Boulogne. A large fire-balloon was
inflated at about two o'clock, rose to a height of about 500 ft., and
passing over the Invalides and the Ecole Mililaire, descended beyond
the Boulevards, about 9000 yds. from the place of ascent, having been
between twenty and twenty-five minutes in the air. Only ten days later,
viz. on the 1st of December 1783, Charles ascended from Paris in a
balloon inflated with hydrogen gas. The balloon, as in the case of the
small one of the same kind previously launched from the Champ de Mars,
was constructed by the brothers Robert, one of whom took part in the
ascent. It was 27 ft. in diameter, and the car was suspended from a
hoop surrounding the middle of the balloon, and fastened to a net,
which covered the upper hemisphere. The balloon ascended very gently
from the Tuileries at a quarter to two o'clock, and after remaining for
some time at an elevation of about 2000 ft., it descended in about two
hours at Nesle, a small town about 27 m. from Paris, when Robert left
the car, and Charles made a second ascent by himself. He had intended
to have replaced the weight of his companion by a nearly equivalent
quantity of ballast; but not having any suitable means of obtaining
such at the place of descent, and it being just upon sunset, he gave
the word to let go, and the balloon being thus so greatly lightened,
ascended very rapidly to a height of about 2 m. After staying in the
air about half an hour, he descended 3 m. from the place of ascent,
although he believed the distance traversed, owing to different
currents, to have been about 9 m. In this second journey he experienced
a violent pain in his right ear and jaw, no doubt produced by the
rapidity of the ascent. He also witnessed the phenomenon of a double
sunset on the same day; for when he ascended, the sun had set in the
valleys, and as he mounted he saw it rise again, and set a second time
as he descended.
All the features of the modern balloon
as now used are more or less due to Charles, who invented the valve at
the top, suspended the car from a hoop, which was itself attached to
the balloon by netting, &c. With regard to his use of hydrogen
gas, there are anticipations that must be noticed. As early as 1766
Henry Cavendish showed that this gas was at least seven times lighter
than ordinary air, and it immediately occurred to Dr Joseph Black, of
Edinburgh, that a thin bag filled with hydrogen gas would rise to the
ceiling of a room. He provided, accordingly, the allantois of a calf,
with the view of showing at a public lecture such a curious experiment;
but for some reason it seems to have failed, and Black did not repeat
it, thus allowing a great discovery, almost within his reach, to escape
him. Several years afterwards a similar idea occurred to Tiberius
Cavallo, who found that bladders, even when carefully scraped, are too
heavy, and that China paper is permeable to the gas. But in 1782, the
year before the invention of the Montgolfiers, he succeeded in
elevating soap-bubbles by inflating them with hydrogen gas. Researches
on the use of gas for inflating balloons seem to have been carried on
at Philadelphia nearly simultaneously with the experiments of the
Montgolfiers; and when the news of the latter reached America, D.
Rittenhouse and F. Hopkinson, members of the Philosophical Society at
Philadelphia; constructed a machine consisting of forty-seven small
hydrogen gas-balloons attached to a car or cage. After several
preliminary experiments, in which animals were let up to a certain
height by a rope, a carpenter, one James Wilcox, was induced to enter
the car for a small sum of money; the ropes were cut, and he remained
in the air about ten minutes, and only then effected his descent by
making incisions in a number of the balloons, through fear of falling
into the river, which he was approaching.
Excerpt from "Aeronautics," 1911 Encyclop�dia
Britannica(source)
See also:
Today in
Science History event description
for day of Montgolfier's firstballoon ascent on 5 Jun 1783.
Today in
Science History event description
for day of Charles' and Robert's first balloon ascent on 27 Aug 1783.
Today in
Science History event description
for day of Montgolfier's balloon ascent on 19 Sep 1783.