Part 1 (1/2)
Wonderful Balloon Ascents
by Fulgence Marion
PREFACE
”Let posterity know, and knowing be astonished, that on the fifteenth day of September, 1784, Vincent Lunardi of Lucca, in Tuscany, the first aerial traveller in Britain,the regions of the air for two hours and fifteen minutes, on this spot revisited the earth In this rude es be recorded this wondrous enterprise successfully achieved by the powers of chemistry and the fortitude of reat Author of all Knowledge, patronising by his Providence the inventions of raciously perlory”
The stone upon which the above inscription was carved, stands, or stood recently, near Collier's End, in the parish of Standon, Hertfordshi+re; and it will possibly afford the English reader a s hich the world hailed the discovery of the balloon than any incident or illustration drawn fron country
The hichintroduce to our readers does not exaggerate the case when it declares that no discovery of e an amount of enthusiasm, has excited so many hopes, has appeared to the human race to open up so many vistas of enterprise and research, as that for which we are olfier
The discovery or the invention of the balloon, however, was one of those efforts of genius and enterprise which have no infancy It had reached its full grohen it burst upon the world, and the ninety years which have since elapsed have witnessed no developinal idea
The balloon of to-day--the balloon in which coxwell and Glaisher have ions of the air--is in almost every respect the same as the balloon hich ”the physician Charles,” following in the footsteps of the Montgolfiers, astonished Paris in 1783 There are fewstories in the annals of invention than this So much had been accoe above the astonished capital of France that all the rest seehway appeared to have been thrown open to the world, and the dullest ied with colossal chariots, bearing travellers in perfect safety, and with le, from city to city, from country to country, reckless of all the obstacles--the seas, and rivers, and ht have placed in the path of the wayfarer
But from that moment to the present the prospect which was thus opened up has re more There are--as those who visited the Crystal Palace two years ago have reason to know--not a fewby air But, with hardly an exception, those few have abandoned all idea of utilising the balloon for this purpose The graceful ”machine” which astonished the world at its birth remains to this day as beautiful, and as useless for the purposes of travel, as in the first hour of its history The day olfiers may earn the Duke of Sutherland's offered reward by a successful flight from the Mall to the top of Stafford House; but when this comes to pass the balloon will have no share in the honour of the achievement Not the less, however, is the story of this wonderful invention worthy of being recorded It deserves a place in the history of hu courage which it has in so ht From the days of Roziers down to those of coxwell, our aeronauts have fearlessly teers not less terrible than those which face the soldier as he enters the imminent deadly breach; and, as one of the chapters in this volume mournfully proves, not a few of their nue with their lives All the ood has resulted from their labours and their sacrifices; and that so es have done so whilst serving to better end than the amusement of a holiday crowd
There is, however, another aspect which makes at least the earlier history of the balloon orth preserving This is the influence which the invention had upon the generation which witnessed it As these pages show, the people of Europe seem to have been absolutely intoxicated by the success of the Montgolfiers' discovery There is soe of this fact Whilst pensions and honours and popular applause were being showered upon the inventors of the balloon, Watt was labouring unnoticed at his iine--a very prosaic affair coolfier had caused to rise from earth amidst the acclamations of a hundred thousand spectators, but one which had before it a so invention England, when it rerudge France the honour of discovering the balloon
After all, however, Great Britain had its share in that discovery The early observations of Francis Bacon and Bishop Wilkins paved the way for the later achievement, whilst it was our own Cavendish who discovered that hydrogen gas was lighter than air; and Dr Black of Edinburgh, who first elobe in which it was contained froht that the discovery which he made when he sent his little tissue-paper balloon fro of his classroo an interesting experiment Possibly our readers, after they have perused this volu as people once ies is the history of the balloon, and of the es, and we comprehend the story to our readers not the less cordially that it comes from the land where the balloon had its birth
London, January, 1870
BALLOONS AND AIR JOURNEYS
PART I THE CONQUEST OF THE SKIES--1783
Chapter I Introduction
The title of our introduction to aeronautics may appear ambitious to astronomers, and to those who know that the infinite space we call the heavens is for ever inaccessible to travellers from the earth; but it was not so considered by those itnessed the ardent enthusiasm evoked at the ascension of the first balloon No discovery, in the whole range of history, has elicited an equal degree of applause and adenius of lorious The mathematical and physical sciences had in aeronautics achieved apparently their greatest honours, and inaugurated a new era in the progress of knowledge After having subjected the earth to their power; after having made the waves of the sea stoop in subht the lightning of heaven and enius of ination, intoxicated with past successes, could descry no liates of the infinite see step, and the last was believed to be the greatest of his achievements
In order to comprehend the frenzy of the enthusiasm which the first aeronautic triumphs called forth, it is necessary to recall the appearance of Montgolfier at Versailles, on the 19th of September, 1783, before Louis XVI, or of the earliest aeronauts at the Tuileries Paris hailed the first of these reatest acclaim, ”and then, as now,” says a French writer, ”the voice of Paris gave the cue to France, and France to the world!” nobles and artisans, scientific reat and small, were moved with one universal i; in the libraries models of it abounded; and in the salons the one universal topic was the great ”hted hie countries; the prisoner ht be a neay of escape; the physicist visited the laboratory in which the lightning and the eodoeneral discovered the position of the eneed town; the police beheld a new mode in which to carry on the secret service; Hope heralded a new conquest froistered a new chapter in the annals of hueneral,” says Arago, ”even those froe, like those of the coreeted at first with contempt, or at the best with indifference Political events, and the fortunes of armies monopolised almost entirely the attention of the people But to this rule there are two exceptions--the discoveries of America and of aerostatics, the advents of Coluolfier” It is not here our duty to inquire how it happened that the discoveries ether Air-travellingthe belly with the ”east wind” is to the body, while every one knows so of the extent to which the discovery of Columbus has influenced the character, the civilisation, the destinies, in short, of the hu at present of the known and well-attested fact, that the discovery of A space by means of balloons--however they may differ in respect of results to man--rank equally in this, that of all other discoveries these two have attracted the greatest areatest i Let the reader recall the marks of enthusiasm which the discovery of the islands on the east coast of Aon and Castile--let hie, not only to the hero of the enterprise, but even to his commonest sailors, and then let hiree of sensation produced by the discovery of aeronautics in France, which stands in the same relationshi+p to this event as that in which Spain stands to the other The processions of Seville and Barcelona are the exact prototypes of the fetes of Lyons and Paris In France, in 1783, as in Spain two centuries previously, the popular ireatly excited by the deeds perforan to believe in possibilities of the most unlikely description In Spain, the conquestadores and their followers believed that in a few days after they had landed on Aold and precious stones, as were then possessed by the richest European Sovereigns In France, each one following his own notions, made out for himself special benefits to flow from the discovery of balloons Every discovery then appeared to be only the precursor of other and greater discoveries, and nothing after that time seemed to be impossible to him who attempted the conquest of the at embraced it with enthusiasrets When one of the first aeronautic ascents was enarian and an invalid, was conducted to one of the s of the Tuileries, almost by force, for he did not believe in balloons The balloon, s; the physician Charles, seated in the car, gaily saluted the public, and was then majestically launched into space in his air-boat; and at once the old Marechal, beholding this, passed suddenly from unbelief to perfect faith in aerostatics and in the capacity of the human mind, fell on his knees, and, with his eyes bathed in tears, moaned out pitifully the words, ”Yes, it is fixed! It is certain! They will find out the secret of avoiding death; but it will be after I aone!”
If we recall the impressions which the first air-journeyspeople of enthusiastic temperament, it was believed that it was not merely the blue sky above us, not merely the terrestrial ath which the worlds move, that were to become the domain of -place of er be an inaccessible place space no longer contained regions which man could not cross! Indeed, certain expeditions atteht back news of thecomets, the most distant stars--these formed the field which froations of h understand There is in the si so bold and so astonishi+ng, that the human spirit cannot fail to be profoundly stirred by it And if this is the feeling ofbeen witnesses of ascents for the last eighty years, they seecar into the immensities of space, what must have been the astonishment of those who, for the first time since the commencement of the world, beheld one of their fellow-creatures rolling in space, without any other assurance of safety than what his still diave hireat discovery that stirred the spirits of ave rise to hopes of such vast discoveries, should have failed in realising the expectations which seemed so clearly justified by the first experihty-six years since the first aerial journey astonished the world, and yet, in 1870, we are but little e is the most renowned for its discoveries of any that the world has seen Man is borne over the surface of the earth by steam; he is as familiar as the fish with the liquid element; he transmits his words instantaneously from London to New York; he draws pictures without pencil or brush, and has made the sun his slave The air alone reement of balloons has not yet been discovered More than that, it appears that balloons are uneable, and it is to air-vessels, constructed o to find out the secret of aerial navigation At present, as in forhter than the air, and therefore the sport and the prey of te themselves now as the benefactors of ratify a frivolous curiosity, or to croith eclat a public fete
Chapter II Attempts in Ancient Ti the sudden conquest of the aerial kingdom, as accomplished and proclaimed at the end of the last century, it is at once curious and instructive to cast a glance backward, and to exa of ancient traditions, the atteined by man to enfranchise hireater nuical ladder of great length: soht of ti oneself in the air, however, had no actual professors in antiquity, and the discovery of Montgolfier seems to have come into the world, so to speak, spontaneously By this it is to be understood that, unlike Copernicus and Coluolfier could not read in history of any sierm of his own feat At least, we have no proof that the ancient nations practiced the art of aerial navigation to any extent whatever The atte to the history of aerostatics