Falling Upwards. Richard Holmes

Falling Upwards - Richard  Holmes


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      RICHARD HOLMES

      Falling Upwards

       How We Took to the Air

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      Copyright

      William Collins

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       WilliamCollinsBooks.com

      This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2013

      Copyright © Richard Holmes 2013

      Richard Holmes asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780007476510

      Ebook Edition © April 2013 ISBN: 9780007467259

      Version: 2019-10-24

      To Eleanor Tremain and John Lightbody

      with love and balloons

      Contents

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Voices Overhead

       1. The Falling Dream

       2. Fiery Prospects

       3. Airy Kingdoms

       4. Angel’s Eye

       5. Wild West Wind

       6. Spies in the Sky

       7. Gigantic Voyages

       8. Vertical Explorations

       9. Mariners of the Upper Atmosphere

       10. Paris Airborne

       11. Extreme Balloons

       Epilogue

       Classic Balloon Accounts

       Illustrations

       Picture Section

       Footnotes

       References

       Bibliography

       Index

       Acknowledgements

       By the same author

       About the Publisher

      Voices Overhead

      ‘A Cloud in a paper bag’

      JOSEPH MONTGOLFIER, 1782

      ‘Someone asked me – what’s the use of a balloon?

      I replied – what’s the use of a new-born baby

      BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, 1783

      ‘Practical flying we may leave to our rivals the French.

      Theoretical flying we may claim for ourselves’

      SIR JOSEPH BANKS, 1784

      ‘I would make it death for a man to be convicted of flying, the moment he could be caught’

      WILLIAM COWPER, 1794

      ‘O Thou who plumed with strong desire

      Would float above the Earth – beware!

      A shadow tracks thy flight of fire –

      Night is coming!’

      P.B. SHELLEY, 1818

      ‘There’s something in a flying horse,

      There’s something in a huge balloon’

      WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 1819

      ‘No man can have a just estimation of the insignificance of his species, unless he has been up in an air-balloon’

      BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON, 1825

      ‘Your balloon voyage so occupied my mind that I dreamt of it!’

      J.M.W. TURNER, 1836

      ‘Beautiful invention, mounting heavenward – so beautifully, so unguidably! Emblem of our Age, of Hope itself’

      THOMAS CARLYLE, 1837

      ‘How should I manage all my business if I were obliged to marry – I never should know French, or go to America, or go up in a Balloon’

      CHARLES DARWIN, 1838

      ‘To look down upon the whole of London as the birds of the air look down upon it, and see it dwindled into a mere rubbish heap’

      HENRY MAYHEW, 1852

      ‘Chance people on the bridges peering over the parapets, into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in misty clouds’

      CHARLES DICKENS, 1852

      ‘The


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