TAKING FLIGHT
First Hot Air Balloon Flight
Heads in the clouds? The Montgolfier Brothers ~ Joseph and Etienne ~ were two of 16 brothers and sisters. Neither wanted to be a part of their father's paper factory. They wanted to fly.
Just add water. Joseph observed the sky and decided he could make his own clouds... out of paper and steam. Joseph discovered that paper + steam = wet paper.
Paying attentionn! In 1782, Joseph made a shirt rise by holding by the collar over a fire in a chimney. He believed that burning produced a special gas that made things rise. He called it Montgolfier Gas.
Try, try again. That December, the Montgolfiers experimented with making a small globe rise. In April of 1783, they tried a bigger globe and made it rise even higher.
Going public. On June 4 of 1783, the Montgolfiers decided to demonstrate their discovery in front of a crowd in the public square of Annonay, near Lyon, France. They made a balloon 38 feet in diameter, its envelope made of cotton and paper, held together with 2000 buttons and buttonholes.
Up, up and away. They tied it to two poles on the ground, then hung up a gondola with burning straw and wool. When there was enough heat to lift the balloon, they cut the ropes. Their balloon rose more than a mile before the hot air started leaking out the buttonholes. It drifted down and landed in a vineyard over a mile away, ten minutes after take-off.
King Louis XVI
Look Ma! No tethers! King Louis XVI finally allowed a manned flight... but he refused to watch it. The Montgolfier brothers did not fly themselves; they promised their father that they wouldn't. Pilâtre de Rozier was chosen to make the flight, and took along a passenger ~ Mr. D'Arlandes. Mr. D'Arlendes' job? To balance the basket.
Two men and a fire. The basket was divided in three parts. Two side compartments held the passengers. The middle compartment held the burner, which was made with burning straw. The two men could feed the fire with straw to control the altitude of the balloon.
First Aeronauts! And so on November 21,1783, the first recorded manned flight in a hot air balloon took place in Paris. From the center of Paris they rose 500 feet above the roof tops before eventually landing miles away in the vineyards.
It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a flaming balloon! Local farmers were very suspicious of this fiery dragon descending from the sky. The pilots offered champagne to calm them and to celebrate the first human flight, a tradition carried on to this day.
A few problems? These hotair balloons stayed aloft only as long as a fire continued to heat the trapped air, and this made them dangerous. The amount of wood and straw that could be carried aboard limited the length of the flight.
Joseph Montgolfier. Airborne at last. On January 19, 1784, in Lyon, France, the only recorded flight by Joseph Montgolfier was made in one of the largest balloons ever made ~ Le Fleusselles. This balloon is believed to have had a passenger carrying capacity of more than 30. Until recently, it was the largest hot-air balloon ever built.
Who else was watching? On the August 23, 1783 flight, Ben Franklin was in Paris. He was so impressed he immediately wrote to scientists in the United States stressing the military importance of this new invention.
