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Updated: July 17, 2025
"But have we hydrogen enough to inflate a balloon?" asked the count. "Hot air will be all that we shall require," the lieutenant answered; "we are only contemplating about an hour's journey." "Ah, a fire-balloon! A montgolfier!" cried Servadac. "But what are you going to do for a casing?" "I have thought of that.
It reached the ground in safety; and this first attempt, crowned with such decisive success, secured for ever to the brothers Montgolfier the glory of one of the most astonishing discoveries.
"I wish to describe as well as I can the first journey which men have attempted through an element which, prior to the discovery of MM. Montgolfier, seemed so little fitted to support them. "We went up on the 21st of October, 1783, at near two o'clock, M. Roziers on the west side of the balloon, I on the east. The wind was nearly north-west.
A night ascent, which reads as yet more sensational and extraordinary, is reported to have been made a year or two previously, and when it is considered that the balloon used was of the Montgolfier type the account as it is handed down will be allowed to be without parallel. It runs thus: Count Zambeccari, Dr.
The car, which renders the management easy, had not then been invented, and a circular gallery was placed around the lower and contracted part of the Montgolfier balloon. The two aeronauts must then remain motionless at each extremity of this gallery, for the moist straw which filled it forbade them all motion.
Pilâtre des Rosiers set out with Romain of Boulogne, on the 13th of June, 1785. To his gas balloon he had affixed a Montgolfier apparatus of hot air, so as to dispense, no doubt, with the necessity of losing gas or throwing out ballast. It was putting a torch under a powder-barrel. When they had ascended four hundred yards, and were taken by opposing winds, they were driven over the open sea.
Inflammable gas has been found to be far superior for this purpose; but as we have no such thing in stock, we should have to proceed on the old original plan that employed by the brothers Montgolfier the first inventors of the balloon."
In place of making use of a gallery like that employed by Montgolfier, as much to manage the fire as to carry the traveller and the fuel, he substituted a wide basket, suspended by cords to the edge of the opening of the balloon, at such a distance that fuel could be thrown on with the hand without being inconvenienced by the heat.
Within a year after the experiments of the Montgolfier brothers, the suggestion was made that the explosion of small quantities of gun-cotton and the expulsion of the resulting gases might be utilized in some fashion to operate propelling machinery.
Etienne Montgolfier has left us a description of this first balloon. "The aerostatic machine," he says, "was constructed of cloth lined with paper, fastened together on a network of strings fixed to the cloth. It was spherical; its circumference was 110 feet, and a wooden frame sixteen feet square held it fixed at the bottom.
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