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Updated: July 17, 2025
In 1783, the sons of Pierre Montgolfier, a rich papermaker at Annonay department of Ardeche, were already in the prime of life, and it is related of them that their principal occupation was experimenting in the physical sciences.
Thus equipped, he abandoned himself to the winds, which carried him, as by chance, sometimes to the earth, sometimes on trees or houses, and sometimes into the river, without any harm happening to him." Is not this the idea of our parachutes? We are accustomed to rank the brothers Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier as equally distinguished in the field of science.
The debate became animated. The four voyagers cried to cut the ropes. The director of the Academy, to whom application was made in this emergency, admiring the resolution and the courage of the four gentlemen, wished to satisfy them in their desire. Accordingly the ropes were cut; but at that moment M. Montgolfier and Roziers threw themselves into the gallery.
"Your attendance proves the sincerity of your interest " I spread out the notes under his eyes. He blinked, but resolutely lifted his voice. "The spectacle of a solitary voyager " "Two hundred!" I called up. "The spectacle of two hundred solitary voyagers cradled in the brain of a Montgolfier and a Charles O, stop it! I'm no public speaker! How the deuce ?"
Of these Blanchard was one of the first; but this mechanician was anxious to incorporate his own invention with that of Montgolfier, and he arranged that on the 2nd of March, 1784, he should make an ascent in what he still called his "flying vessel," which he furnished with four wings.
This they did, but instead of applying the Montgolfier motive power heated air they used hydrogen gas, procured by the action of diluted sulphuric acid upon iron filings. Their balloon, which was made of thin silk, varnished with a solution of elastic gum, was a much nearer approach to the balloon of modern days than that of Montgolfier.
He consented, however, to a proposal that animals might be sent up in the first instance, by way of experiment, suspended in an osier cage attached to the neck of the balloon. Montgolfier at once began a new balloon.
The process was slow, as the gas had to be generated in large quantities by means of diluted sulphuric acid and iron filings put into wooden casks disposed round a large cistern, from which it was conveyed through water in long leaden pipes. To keep the impatient populace quiet, therefore, during the tedious operation, Montgolfier sent up one of his fire-balloons.
The Royal Academy of Sciences invited Joseph Montgolfier to repeat his experiments, and another balloon was prepared by him of coarse linen with a paper lining, which, however, was destroyed by incessant and violent rain before it could be tried. Undeterred by this, another was constructed by him, which ascended from Versailles on the 19th of September 1783.
"Precisely, Madame the coiffure Montgolfier," Germain at once replied, for he had looked into hat fashions lately. "Please describe it to me after dinner. All the world is speaking of it." "To the devil with coiffures!" Grancey whispered to the Canoness, and struck up a pæan of praise on the lean hound Aréthuse who led the hunt the previous day.
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