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Updated: June 17, 2025


But to this rule there are two exceptions the discoveries of America and of aerostatics, the advents of Columbus and of Montgolfier." It is not here our duty to inquire how it happened that the discoveries made by these two personages are classed together.

While on a visit to Avignon Joseph Montgolfier procured a silk bag having a small opening at its lower end, and a capacity of about fifty cubic feet. Under the orifice some paper was burnt; the air inside was heated and expanded so as to fill the bag, which, when let go, soared rapidly up to the height of seventy or eighty feet, where it remained until the air cooled and allowed it to descend.

The great desire was to rival Montgolfier, although neither the report nor the letters from Annonay had made mention of the kind of gas used by that experimenter to inflate his balloon.

"The balloon," he says, "which escaped from the hands of M. Montgolfier, rose into the air, and seemed to carry with it the testimony of friendship and regard between that gentleman and myself, while acclamations followed it. Meanwhile, we hastily prepared for departure.

The ice, however, was broken, and bolder attempts quickly followed. The first free and unfettered balloon voyage was performed very soon after the event mentioned at the end of the last chapter. It was a daring attempt, and attended with great danger. A balloon made by Montgolfier was used. It was 75 feet high, 45 feet wide, and spheroidal in form heated air being the motive power.

At any rate the dense crowds that thronged the coast near Boulogne to see the start of the "Charles Montgolfier" as the balloon was named after the originators of the rival systems saw it, after half an hour's drift out to sea, suddenly explode in a burst of flame. De Rozier and a friend who accompanied him were killed.

"The greater number of the arts and sciences can be traced along a chronological ladder of great length: some, indeed, lose themselves in the night of time." The accomplishment of raising oneself in the air, however, had no actual professors in antiquity, and the discovery of Montgolfier seems to have come into the world, so to speak, spontaneously.

We now have two aerial craft competing for popular favour: the Montgolfier hot-air balloon and the "Charlier" or gas-inflated balloon. About four months after the first trial trip of the latter the inventors decided to ascend in a specially-constructed hydrogen-inflated craft. This balloon, which was 27 feet in diameter, contained nearly all the features of the modern balloon.

They were conducted on a wrong principle, the machinery employed being heavier than the air itself But, even before the time of Montgolfier, the principles of aerostation began to be recognised, though nothing was actually done in the way of acting upon them.

All other balloons require a long, long while, and many tubes; and one must take them to a usine de gaz. My father's balloon needs no gas that is, it needs no common illuminating gas." "A montgolfier?" asked Marche, curiously. "Oh, pooh! The idea!

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