The Montgolfier brothers, born in
Annonay, France, were the inventors of the first practical balloon. The first
demonstrated flight of a hot air balloon took place on June 4, 1783, in
Annonay, France.
Montgolfiere
Balloon
Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier,
paper mill owners, were trying to float bags made of paper and fabric. When the
brothers held a flame near the opening at the bottom, the bag (called a balon)
expanded with hot air and floated upward. The Montgolfier brothers built a
larger paper-lined silk balloon and demonstrated it on June 4, 1783, in the
marketplace at Annonay. Their balloon (called a Montgolfiere) lifted 6,562 feet
into the air.
First
Passengers
On September 19, 1783, in
Versailles, a Montgolfiere hot air balloon carrying a sheep, a rooster, and a
duck flew for eight minutes in front of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and the
French court.
First
Manned Flight
On October 15, 1783, Pilatre de
Rozier and Marquis d'Arlandes were the first human passengers on a Montgolfiere
balloon. The balloon was in free flight, meaning it was not tethered.
On January 19, 1784, a huge
Montgolfiere hot air balloon carried seven passengers to a height of 3,000 feet
over the city of Lyons.
Montgolfier
Gas
At the time, the Montgolfiers
believed they had discovered a new gas (they called Montgolfier gas) that was
lighter than air and caused the inflated balloons to rise. In fact, the gas was
merely air, which became more buoyant as it was heated.
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| Montgolfiere Balloon |
Hydrogen Balloon
Frenchman, Jacques Charles invented
the first hydrogen balloon in 1783.
Less than two weeks after the
ground-breaking Montgolfier flight, the French physicist Jacques Charles (1746-1823)
and Nicolas Robert (1758-1820) made the first untethered ascension with a gas
hydrogen balloon on December 1, 1783. Jacques Charles combined his expertise in
making hydrogen with Nicolas Robert's new method of coating silk with rubber.
Charlière
Hydrogen Balloon
The Charlière hydrogen balloon
exceeded the earlier Montgolfier hot air balloon in time in the air and
distance traveled. With its wicker gondola, netting, and valve-and-ballast
system, it became the definitive form of the hydrogen balloon for the next 200
years. The audience in the Tuileries Gardens was reported as 400,000, half the
population of Paris.
The limitation of using hot air was
balloons was that when the air in the balloon cooled, the balloon was forced to
descend. If a fire was kept burning to warm the air constantly, sparks were
likely to reach the bag and set it afire. Hydrogen overcame this obstacle.
First
Ballooning Fatalities
On June 15,
1785, Pierre Romain and Pilatre de Rozier were the first persons to die in a
balloon. Pilatre de Rozier was both the first to fly and to die in a balloon.
Using a dangerous combination of hot-air and hydrogen proved fatal to the pair,
whose dramatic crash before a large crowd only temporarily dampened the balloon
mania sweeping France in the late eighteenth century.
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| Hydrogen balloon |
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