Eighteenth Century Ballooning :: European Europe History

Eighteenth Century Ballooning       In a time where the skies are full of aircraft, it is hard to    imagine a time when air travel was nothing but a dream. That was    just the case during the early eighteenth century. The dream of flight    was so concentrated on winged flight that ballooning was actually and    accidental discovery. The shift to alternate opportunities to fly    occurred in 1766 with the discovery of hydrogen. Henry Cavendish    discovered the gas he coined the â€Å"inflammable gas.† At that time this    meant that the gas was highly combustible, unlike today’s    interpretation of inflammable. What made this gas so important was    the fact that the gas was much lighter than the atmosphere. The    lighter gas would give the balloon lift in the surrounding atmosphere,    hopefully taking a human along with it. The new discovery brought a    lot of excitement to the pursuit of air travel. The discovery began to    move forward in 1774 with Joseph Priestly’s publication of    â€Å"Experiments and Observations with Different Types of Air.† This    paper explored uses of the gas and further explained its properties for    future experimentation. In 1777, the paper was translated into    French and read by Joseph Montgolfier. The paper inspired    Montgolfier to further explore the possibilities of the gas. Montgolfier    and his brother Etienne began experimenting with the gas in hopes of    coming up with a device to give them flight. This became a reality in    1786 when the two brothers were able to fly small cloth and paper hot    air filled balloons. This was the small and modest beginning to hot air    balloon flight.    The brothers had some complication to work out with the first    flights being experimental. They used dense smoke from burning    chopped wool or damp straw to lift the balloon. The smoke idea most    likely came from a concept left over from the medieval times. They    believed that smoke had more of a virtue of lightness, and lighter    meant that the balloon had a better chance of flight. Another    possibility is that the brothers believed that the dense smoke would    simply be better contained in the balloon. Some individuals even    believe that the brothers used thick smoke to conceal their ideas.