It all started with an inspiration. On a chilly November evening in 1782, Joseph Montgolfier was sitting in front of a cozy fire in a room at the University of Avignon. As he watched embers and smoke rise with the flames and up the chimney, it suddenly occurred to him that if he could find a way to capture this buoyant heat energy, then he might be able to build a vehicle that could carry people up into the sky. The next day he built his first model balloon, a small silken bag that he held over a fire till it filled with smoke. When he let it go, it zoomed up to the ceiling.
A Marvelous Demonstration
Joseph dashed off a letter to his brother and partner in the family papermaking business, Etienne. They set to work building bigger and better balloons until they were ready for their first public demonstration. On June 4, 1783, a crowd of townspeople and local dignitaries gathered around a smoking fire in the marketplace of Annonay, the Montgolfiers' hometown. They watched as a 10 metre (33 foot) wide linen bag filled with hot air and then, to the astonishment of all present, soared almost two kilometres (more than a mile) up into the air, then came gently down 10 minutes later and 3 kilometres (2 miles) away. Word of this marvel quickly spread to Paris, and the Montgolfier brothers set off for the city in the hopes of getting an audience with the Academie Royale des Sciences and the Court at Versailles.
The Race Is On
The demonstration had shown the promise of hot air balloons, but also their limitations. As soon as the air inside them cooled and lost its buoyancy, they would fall back to earth. To stay afloat, someone had to be onboard fueling a fire, without setting fire to the balloon itself. There was a way around this. In 1766, the English chemist Henry Cavendish had discovered hydrogen, which he called inflammable air. Others had noticed that hydrogen weighed less than 1/10th as much as an equivalent volume of air, which would make it an ideal lifting agent. But hydrogen could easily burst into flames and explode, and making large quantities of it wasn't as simple as lighting a fire. The Montgolfiers were aware of hydrogen, but they did not know that scientists in Paris were already at work on a hydrogen balloon.
A Device Of The Devil
When word of the Montgolfiers' aeronautical demonstration reached the Academie, the scientist in charge of the hydrogen balloon project, Jacques Alexandre Cesar Charles, ramped up his schedule and announced to the world that his balloon would take flight on August 27. His associates the Robert brothers had patented a process of rubberizing silk to make it leak-proof. The hydrogen he needed was made by filling an oak cask with half a tonne of iron filings and pouring a quarter tonne of sulphuric acid over them. Somehow this was done without anyone burning themselves with acid, choking on fumes, or detonating the hydrogen. By nightfall on August 26, the balloon was ready. It was moved through the dark streets of Paris from the workshop to the Champ de Mars, the present day site of the Eiffel Tower.
The next day, a crowd of thousands gathered to watch the spectacle. Ben Franklin and a teenaged John Quincy Adams were there representing America, and the Montgolfiers were there to see what their rival was up to. A cannon sounded, and the balloon went straight up for a thousand metres (3000 feet), then drifted over Paris and the French countryside for 45 minutes before landing 25 kilometres (16 miles) away in the village of Gonesse. The terrified peasants believed that it must be the work of the devil, and they attacked it with pitchforks until the hissing, deflating balloon was torn to pieces.
A Royal Show
Having witnessed what a hydrogen balloon could do, the Montgolfiers worked feverishly to make sure that their balloon would be first to take flight with people onboard. By September 19, they were ready to give a demonstration to King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and the Royal Court at Versailles. The cream of French society, Ben Franklin and other dignitaries from abroad, and 100,000 curious Parisians gathered at the palace around a sheep, duck, and rooster in a wicker basket. After an inspection by the King, a balloon was filled with hot air from a fire, then lifted off with its woolly and feathery passengers. The animal aeronauts landed safely in a forest four kilometres (two and a half miles) away. By that evening, they were on the King's dinner table, and the Montgolfiers were the toast of Paris.
First Flight
Now they were ready to take the final leap. They prepared a magnificent new balloon, 23 metres (75 feet) tall, and lavishly decorated in royal blue and gold. On October 15, Jean Francois Pilatre de Rozier, a physician and popular lecturer in science, climbed into this tethered balloon and rose 26 metres (85 feet) in the air to the end of the ropes. The balloon was moved to the Chateau de la Muette and there, on November 21, de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes prepared for the first free flight. A strong gust of wind caught the balloon and tore its fabric, but helpful women in the waiting crowd stepped forward to sew it back together, and at 1:54 PM the voyagers cast off.
They were so enthralled by the view that they almost fell in to the Seine when the balloon dipped dangerously low as it crossed the river, but some furious stoking of the fire with straw rose them up once more. They alternated between marveling at the view, stoking the fire, and dashing over with wet sponges whenever burning embers set the balloon fabric alight until they landed safely on the outskirts of Paris 25 minutes after takeoff. It was the first human flight in the history of the world, just one year and seventeen days after Joseph Montgolfier's toy balloon had risen to the ceiling of his room at the University of Avignon.
Into The Sunset
Professor Charles had not been idle, and by December 1 he was ready to take to the skies in a new hydrogen balloon. An enormous crowd of 400,000 gathered at the Jardin des Tuileres. Etienne Montgolfier was given the honour of releasing a small green pilot balloon to assess the wind direction and weather conditions. Then Charles stepped in to the gondola with Noel Robert, who had invented the rubberized silk the balloon was made of. They carried thermometers, barometers, and other instruments aboard, as they intended to make the first scientific flight by taking measurements in the atmosphere. T
hey cast off, rose almost vertically, then drifted smoothly for over two hours before landing safely just before sunset 40 kilometres (25 miles) away. The balloon was still full of hydrogen, so Charles took off on a solo flight after Robert left to join the crowd of celebrating spectators. The lighter balloon rose swiftly to almost 3000 metres (nearly 10,000 feet), and his hands got so numb with cold that he could barely hold his instruments, so Charles valved off some hydrogen and descended once more. On the way down, he noted that he had seen the sun set once on the ground, and then once again from his aerial vantage point.
That double sunset, and the glorious view of the city and countryside spread out below the balloon, was a premonition of the views of the Earth from space that the Apollo astronauts would enjoy. It was the aeronauts of 1783 who took the first big step in making that great leap for mankind possible.
Sources:
- Gibbs-Smith, C.H. "Flight Through The Ages" Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York 1974
- Hallion, Richard P. "Taking Flight: Inventing The Aerial Age From Antiquity Through The First World War" Oxford University Press, New York 2003
- Taylor, John W.R. "Aircraft: From Balloons To Jumbo Jets" Bantam Books, New York 1973
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