Wonderful Balloon Ascents; Or, The Conquest of the Skies. Fulgence Marion
hopes, has appeared to the human race to open up so many vistas of enterprise and research, as that for which we are mainly indebted to the Brothers Montgolfier. 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 growth when it burst upon the world, and the ninety years which have since elapsed have witnessed no development of the original idea. The balloon of to-day—the balloon in which Coxwell and Glaisher have made their perilous trips into the remote regions of the air—is in almost every respect the same as the balloon with which “the physician Charles,” following in the footsteps of the Montgolfiers, astonished Paris in 1783. There are few more tantalising stories in the annals of invention than this. So much had been accomplished when Roziers made his first aerial voyage above the astonished capital of France that all the rest seemed easy. The new highway appeared to have been thrown open to the world, and the dullest imagination saw the air thronged with colossal chariots, bearing travellers in perfect safety, and with more than the speed of the eagle, from city to city, from country to country, reckless of all the obstacles—the seas, and rivers, and mountains—which Nature might have placed in the path of the wayfarer. But from that moment to the present the prospect which was thus opened up has remained a vision and nothing more. There are—as those who visited the Crystal Palace two years ago have reason to know—not a few men who still believe in the practicability of journeying by 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 may come when some one more fortunate than the Montgolfiers 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 human enterprise—if for nothing else—because of the daring courage which it has in so many cases brought to light. From the days of Roziers down to those of Coxwell, our aeronauts have fearlessly tempted dangers 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 number have paid the penalty of their rash courage with their lives. All the more is it to be regretted that so little practical good has resulted from their labours and their sacrifices; and that so many of those who have perished in balloon voyages 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 well worth 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 something bitterly suggestive in our knowledge 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 improvements of the steam-engine—a very prosaic affair compared with the gilded globe which Montgolfier had caused to rise from earth amidst the acclamations of a hundred thousand spectators, but one which had before it a somewhat different history to that of the more startling invention. England, when it remembers the story of the steam-engine, has little need to grudge 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 employed that gas to raise a globe in which it was contained from the earth. The Scotch professor, we are told, thought that the discovery which he made when he sent his little tissue-paper balloon from his lecture-table to the ceiling of his classroom, was of no use except as affording the means of making an interesting experiment. Possibly our readers, after they have perused this volume, may think that Dr. Black was not after all so far wrong as people once imagined. Be this as it may, however, in these pages is the history of the balloon, and of the most memorable balloon voyages, 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.
Click on any of the Illustrations
01. Lana’s Flying Machine 02. Laurent de Guzman’s Balloon 03. The Flying Man 04. Inflating Balloon with Hydrogen 05. The Parachute 06. Garnerin’s Descent in a Parachute 07. The Brothers Montgolfier 08. Charles’s Balloon on its way to the Champ de Mars 09. The Ascent of Charles’s Balloon from the Champ de Mars 10. The Destruction of Charles’s Balloon 11. Ascent of the 19th September, 1783, at Versailles 12. Balloon of the Marquis D’Arlandes 13. The Balloon of D’Arlandes crossing Paris 14. The First Aerial Voyage 15. Monsieur Charles and the Duke of Chartres 16. Bagnolet’s Balloon 17. Le Flesselles 18. Blanchard’s Balloon 19. Blanchard’s Ascent, (Caricature) 20. Blanchard’s Descent 21. Ascent from Dijon, 1784 22. Ascent of the Duke of Chartres 23. The “Minerva" 24. The First Attempt to Ascend in England 25. Blanchard 26. Dr. Jeffries 27. Coronation fete at Paris 28. The Wreck of the “Geant" 29. Pilatre des Roziers 30. Employment of a Balloon at the Battle of Fleurus
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 who witnessed 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 admiration—never has the genius of man won a triumph which at first blush seemed more glorious. 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 submission under the keels of their ships; after having caught the lightning of heaven and made it subservient to the ordinary purposes of life, the genius of man undertook to conquer the regions of the air. Imagination, intoxicated with past successes, could descry no limit to human power; the gates of the infinite seemed to be swinging back before man’s advancing 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 men with the greatest 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 men and badauds, great and small, were moved with one universal impulse. In the streets the praises of the balloon were sung; in the libraries models of it abounded; and in the salons the one universal topic was the great “machine.” In anticipation, the poet delighted himself with bird’s-eye views of the scenery of strange countries; the prisoner mused on what might be a new way of escape; the physicist visited the laboratory