The First Hydrogen Voyage and the Start of Modern Ballooning: 1783

The First Hydrogen Voyage and the Start of Modern Ballooning: 1783

"THE MODERN balloon was born through a curious set of circumstances. The Montgolfier brothers thought they had discovered a new gas when they raised their hot-air spheres with the smoke from a fire of chopped wool and straw. When the news of the first Montgolfière reached Paris in June, 1783, no one there knew anything about the means whereby the brothers had flown their balloon; but its lift seemed to be poor. So the Académie des Sciences commissioned the eminent savant J. A. C. Charles to produce a balloon to be filled with Cavendish's very light "air inflammable" (hydrogen), the generation of the large amount of gas necessary being not the least of his formidable problems. So Charles set to, and made, first a small experimental hydrogen balloon, then a man-carrier; only to find that he had pioneered the practical gas balloon by mistake, since the Annonay aerostat was raised by hot air. Charles provided a valve in the crown, a car suspended by a net, ballast, and a barometer-in all essentials, the balloon of today.

The first man-carrying hydrogen ascent was made by Charles on December 1st, 1783, a fortnight after the first voyage by a Montgolfière, Charles took with him the elder of the craftsman brothers Robert-who had built the balloon and they rose from the Tuileries Gardens at 1.45 p.m. After an uneventful and completely successful journey of 27 miles they landed at the village of Nesle, where Robert dismounted, Charles decided to go up again; and since there was no convenient ballast to compensate for his companion's weight, "sprang up", as he said, "like a bird". This is the stage of the proceedings shown here, with the balloon for artistic purposes gracefully frozen in its precipitate ascent."

C H Gibbs-Smith

One of 12 prints from the Collections of the Royal Aeronautical Society reproduced by the Society to mark its Centenary in 1966 - No. 2