HYDROGEN BALLOON

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 58, 18 September 1928, Page 13

HYDROGEN BALLOON

KINGSFORD SMITH'S FORERUNNERS (Written by S. Saunders.) Mr. Kingsford Smith lias been so busy making history during recent years that he can have liatl little time for reading it, and probably he is uuaware of the fact that his flight across Cook Strait very appropriately marked the one hundred and fortyfourth anniversary of the first balloon ascent in the British Empire. Several small balloons had been sent aloft from the various parts of England before this notable adventure; but they had carried nc human passenger, and it was not until loth September, 1784. that Vincent Lunardi, a youthful attache of the Neopolitan Embassy, who previously had made ascents in Italy I and France, demonstrated in some measure the possibilities to which the Kingsford Smiths of to-day have given form and significance. Lunardi originally intended to ascend from the garden of the Chelsea Hospital, having obtained the necessary permission from the authorities; but subsequently the permission, was withdrawn on account of a riot occasioned by the appearance on the scene of a French balloonist, who managed to get away with a considerable sum of money without giving an 'xhibition of his prowess in the air. Ultimately Lunardi was given the use of the artillery ground at Moorfields, where the members of the City Artillery Company were marshalled under arms to protect the property of the city and the State. According to a veracious chronicler of the time the crowd that gathered to watch the ascent was the largest seen in London up to that date. "As the morning hours woro away," the same authority has left on record, "silent expectation was followed by impatient clamour, soon succeeded by yells of angry threatenings, to bo in a moment changed to loud acclamations of applause, as the balloon roso majestically into tho air." Lunardi first touched earth in a field at North Minims; but after lightening his balloon he again took to the air and finally descended at Waro in Hertfordshire. ANOTHER PIONEER. A contributor to that storehouse of history and anecdote, "The Book of Days," challenges the claim that Lunardi was the first. successful balloonist in Britain. "A very poor man, named James Tytler, who then lived in Edinburgh, supporting himself and his family in the humblest stylo of garret or cottage life by the exorcise of his pen," says this dissentient, "had this honour. Ho had effected an ascent in Edinburgh on the 27th of August, 1784, just nineteen days previous to Lunardi 's feat. Tytler's ascent, however, was almost a failure, by his employing the dangerous and unmanageable Montgolfier principle. After several ineffectual attempts, Tytler, finding that ,he could not carry up his fire stove with him, determined, in the maddening desperation of disappointment, to go without this, his solo sustaining power. Jumping into his car, which was no other than a common crate used for packing earthenware, he and the balloon ascended from Comely Green, and immediately afterwards fell in the Rostalrig road. For a wonder, Tytler was uninjured, and though he did not reach a greater altitude than three hundred feet, nor traverse a greater distance than half a mile, yet his name must ever be mentioned as that of tho first. Briton who ascended with a balloon and the first man who ascended in Britain." Tytler, the reader is further told, was tho son of a clergyman of the Church of Scotland and a qualified surgeon, but being of an eccentric and erratic genius ho adopted literature as a profession and became the principal editor of tho first "Encyclopaedia Britanniea." Obviously, Mr. Tytler was a' gentleman of rare resource and high courage, from whom no Britisher would wish to withhold any part of his due; but to describe his escapade with a Montgolfier balloon as a conquest of the air would be to load him with an achievement ho certainly would not have claimed for himself. FURTHER CONQUESTS. Though his . manners and bearing seem to have left Lunardi anything but a favourite with literary England, the mass of the people and many of those iv high places exalted him to tho very highest pinnacle of fame. "The adventurer came down from the clouds to find himself the hero of the day,".one writer proclaims. "He was presented at court, and at once became the fashion. Wigs, coats, hats, and bonnets were named after him, and a very popular bow of bright scarlet ribbons, that had previously been called Gibraltar, from the heroic defence of that fortress, was now termed the Lunardi. By exhibiting his balloon at the Pantheon he soon gained a large sum of money, and the popular applause might readily have turned the head of a less vain person than the impulsive Italian." Even the King, so it is stated, adjourned a meeting of the Cabinet Council, engaged on most important State deliberations, in order that he and the rest of tho Royal Family might pay their respects to the intrepid voyager. In the summer of the following year Lunardi made several ascents in Scotland, all without mishap and with considerable advantage to his purse. Ballooning had quite a vogue throughout Europe at that time, and was turned to some account by Napoleon in his earlier wars, though there appears to be no allusion to this development of the art in any of the modern school books. Lunardi's immunity from serious accidents during his English -and Scottish ascents has been attributed, doubtless rightly, to the advice given the Italian by Dr. George Fordyce, a celebrated English chemist, who insisted upon his substituting hydrogen gas for the hot-air appliance he had brought with him from his own country. This practically'was the only improvement made iv air exploitation between 1784 and the close of last century. A BALLOON DUEL. Among the scraps and cuttings ref wring to ballooning lying at one's elbow is an account of a duel in the air fought in Paris over the garden of tho Tuileries, in 1808, nearly a quarter of a century after tho exploits of Lunardi in England and Scotland. "M. do Granpro and M. le Pique had a quarrel arising out of jealousy concerning a lady engaged at the Imperial opera," it runs. "They agreed to fight a duel to settle their respective claims, and in order that the heat of angry passion should not interfero with the polished elegance of the proceedings, they postponed the duel for a month, the lady agreeing to.bestow her smiles on the survivor.of the two. . ; The duellists were to fight in the air. Two balloons were constructed precisely alike. On the day denoted Do Grandpre and his second entered the car of one balloon, Le Pique and his second the car of the other. . . There was an immense concourse of spectators. The gentlemen were to fire/not at each other, but at each other's balloons, in order to bring them down by the escape of gas, and as pistols might hardly have served for this purpose, each aeronaut took a blunderbus to his car. "When about half a mile above tho surface of Ihc earth a- preconceived signal for firing was given. M. le Pique fired, and missed; M. do Grandpro fired and sent a ball through his rival's balloon. Tho balloon collapsed, tho ear descended j with frightful rapidity, and Le Pique I

and his second woro dashed to pieces." One cannot help feeling sorry for the unfortunate second, whose identity' remains hidden to posterity; but one can imagine how Kingsford Smith would havo enjoyed such an adventure had the goal been a national service iustead of the one for which the infatuated Frenchmen contended.