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Updated: June 27, 2025
Louis XVI. refused to consent to the venture, and two men who were condemned to death were the first to attempt the aerial ascent. Pilâtre des Rosiers became indignant at this injustice, and, by means of intrigues, obtained permission to make the experiment.
Aëronauts have been free and accepted members of this order of modern knights-errant, from hot-headed, ill-fated Pilâtre de Rozier down to Gaston Tissandier, the man who still edits La Nature in the lower strata of an ocean into the treacherous upper depths of which he has risen seven miles.
My companion however explained that we were over Paris and must now cross it; therefore raising the fire once more we turned south till we passed the Luxembourg, when, extinguishing the flames, the balloon came down spent and empty. If poor Pilatre played the part of a rather nervous man in this narrative he had the nerve still to go on with his aeronautical experiments to the point of death.
The same feat, attempted a few days later by a professor of physics, M. Pilatre de Rozier, was destined to cost him his life. So many scientific explorations, so many new discoveries of nature's secrets were seconded and celebrated by an analogous movement in literature. Rousseau had led the way to impassioned admiration of the beauties of nature; Bernardin de St.
Sulpice; then the aeronauts increased the fire, ascended, cleared the Boulevard, and descended beyond the Barrière d'Enfer. As it touched the ground, the collapsed, and buried Pilatre des Rosiers beneath its folds." "Unfortunate presage!" said I, interested in these details, which so nearly concerned me. "Presage of his catastrophe," replied the unknown, with sadness.
The first to risk their lives in the air were M. Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis de Arlandes, who ascended over Paris in a hot-air balloon in November, 1783. They rose five hundred feet and traveled a distance of five miles in twenty-five minutes. In the following December Messrs. Charles and Robert, also Frenchmen, ascended ten thousand feet and traveled twenty-seven miles in two hours.
Today two daring Frenchmen, Pilatre de Rozier of the Royal Academy and his friend the Marquis d'Arlandes, would ascend in a balloon freed from the earth the first men in history to adventure thus upon the wind. The crowds gathered to witness the event opened a lane for Franklin to pass through.
We were alone in space, and I in presence of this unknown! "It is useless for you to know whither I am leading you," he said, as he threw the compass among the clouds. "Ah! a fall is a grand thing! You know that but few victims of ballooning are to be reckoned, from Pilâtre des Rosiers to Lieutenant Gale, and that the accidents have always been the result of imprudence.
The Marquis d'Arlandes and M. Pilatre des Roziers were in the gallery. The first intention was to raise the machine and pull it back with ropes, to test it, to find out the exact weight which it could carry, and to see if everything was properly arranged before the actual ascent was attempted.
M. Pilatre de Rosier, accompanied by M. Romain, determined on crossing the Channel from the French side; and, thinking to add to their buoyancy and avoid the risk of falling in the sea, hit on the extraordinary idea of using a fire balloon beneath another filled with hydrogen gas!
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