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The reason for thus associating these two names seems to have been the fraternal friendship which subsisted in an extraordinary degree in the Montgolfier family, rather than any equality of claim which they had to the notice of posterity.
It is needless to add that the amazing account of De Tott's origin is grossly libellous. The amount of public interest excited by the aeronautical exploits of Montgolfier and Blanchard was also playfully satirised.
Although ninety years or so had elapsed since the days of the brothers Montgolfier, aeronautics had really made very little progress. There were no dirigible balloons at all. Dupuy de Lome's first experiments only dated from the siege days, and Renard's dirigible was not devised until the early eighties.
The next noteworthy balloon was one by Stephen Montgolfier, designed to take up passengers, and therefore of rather large dimensions, as these things went then. The capacity was 100,000 cubic feet, the depth being 85 feet, and the exterior was very gaily decorated.
I suppose you have not time to give to such questions minutely, as your reply would lead one to infer that Gossamer proceeded from spiders in general; and if it be meant that all true spiders spin, it is no doubt correct; but the Gossamer which "A Young Inquirer" asks about is the production of a small black spider about the size of a flea, which was a true aeronaut long before Montgolfier or Lunardi, and if "A Young Inquirer" has access to either the "Linnean Transactions" or the first series of Loudon's "Magazine of Natural History," he will find particulars in the latter, showing that a violent controversy raged through the three first volumes between Mr.
To the brothers Montgolfier belongs the honour of having given the name to this type of aircraft, which, in the two succeeding centuries, became so popular. After numerous experiments the public were invited to witness the inflation of a particularly huge balloon, over 30 feet in diameter. This was accomplished over a fire made of wool and straw.
Cavallo came almost nearer, and actually putting the same idea into practice, had succeeded in the spring of 1782 in making soap bubbles blown with hydrogen gas float upwards. But he had accomplished no more when, as related, in the autumn of the same year the brothers Montgolfier conceived the notion of making bodies "levitate" by the simpler expedient of filling them with smoke.
It was on these conditions that Montgolfier commenced his balloon of 126 feet high and 100 feet in diameter, made of a double envelope of cotton cloth, with a lining of paper between. A strength and consistency was given to the structure by means of ribbons and cords. The work was nearly finished when Roziers went up in his fire-balloon from La Muette.
Like the first Montgolfier balloons it was to be inflated with hot air, and the car was well packed with bundles of fuel with which the two aeronauts were to fill the iron brazier when its fires went down.
The car, dragged along by the balloon, broke trees more than half a yard in diameter and overthrew everything that opposed it. Louis Godard made M. Yon leap out of the car to assist Madame Nadar; but a terrible shock threw out MM. Nadar, Louis Godard, and Montgolfier, the two first against the ground, the third into the water.
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