Adventures of the First Men in the Air

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 31, 5 August 1933, Page 16

Adventures of the First Men in the Air

On Jume 5, 1783, a large crowd of burgesses, country people, the local deputies by invitation —any and everybody whio had nothing better to do — gathered, in the public square of the town of jl Annonay, near Lyons. They had been promised a free treat. Two local inventors had arranged to show them a tusw and surprising experiment. Nobody the experiment to come 03$. But the affair would still remain ia free treat (says\ a writer in the "Mainchester Guardian"). The (gathering at Annonay saw the first authenticated beginnings of human flight. never raised anybody into tho air. The Montgolfier brothers eventunilly did; and this was the first public (demonstration of their invention. The celebrated fire-balloon was 110 ft in circumference. No 'passengers weiv "httachifd to it. A lire of chopped wool and strhw was placed underneath. "Imngine ijhe general astonishment," says tho contemporary account, "when the inventors announced that as soon as it had jbeen filled with gas A (which they had a [ simple means of making) it would rise of itself to the clouds." Tho "gas" jwas only heated air; at the start time Montgolfier brothers believed that tile smoke of the fire itself had some peculiar virtue about it! A later age hats laughed, perhaps unreasonably, at the] alarm of the French peasants of thof day, alarm which later became serioufe enough for the Government to. issue .i. soothing proclamation :— v "Aiiyorfo who' shall see*in tho sky such i\ globe, which resembles the moon in an j eclipse, shall "be aware that, far from jjbeing an alarming phenomenon, it is tmly a machine made of taffetas or light /canvas covered with a paper that cannoit possibly cause any harm and will siome day prove serviceable to the wantTs of society." "Fibre-balloons" became all the rage in Ftance that summer. The Paris savarits explored their working; tho Court) (always on the look-out for a new tioy) took them up; Louis XVI was interested. Indeed, it was at Versaillcij that the Montgolfiers sent up theirj first passenger-carrying craft, on September 10, 1783. The passengers verei not human ones, but a sheep, a cockfc and a cluck. They came down safely. The cock 'had been "slightly injured—it was supposed at" first throingh the "tenuous atmosphere of the (upper regions"; on reflection it wasf decided that the no? unjustifiably ajartmed sheep must have trampled on himi ' Tte way was then clear for an acttial human ascent. The honour of being the first man in the air belongs^ t© jPilatre de Rozier—"the most intrepid philosopher of the age," as a contemporary account calls him—who, on October 15, 1783, was let up eighty fipet iii a balloon at tho end of a ri»pe "amid the loud acclamation of a vbst multitude." The following month, in company with the Marquis d'ArIsrndes, Pilatre do Rozier made the first flight in a free balloon. The two o:f them rose from Paris and came down fire miles away, after twenty minutes' drifting. Benjamin Franklin was a witness of the ascent, «nd signed, with others, a deposition about the trip wjhich states that at a height of "about 2JO feet the intrepid travellers, wavirig their hats, saluted the spectators. Iti was impossible not to feel then,"

the account proceeds, "a sense intermixed of fear and admiration." Hot air, with the necessity of keeping a fire alight in the air, was a dangerous and uncertain lifting medium. Almost simultaneously with the Montgolflers' first ascents the initial experiments were being made in the use of hydrogen, the "inflammable air," as it was called, that had recently been discovered by Cavendish. The first as-, cent in a hydrpgeu-filled balloon was in November of the same year, across the Atlantic at Philadelphia. Three days later the first hydrogen balloon was gent up from Europe. It had on board Professor Charles, an eminent physicist, and M. Robert. "We rose," says tho Professor, "in the midst of a profound silence, occasioned by the emotion and astonishment of both parties"—emotions which, for the party bi tho balloon, "were heightened by tho majestic scene .which, presented itself to our view." While he was "attending to tho barometer" M. Robert "examined the cargo with which our friends had ballasted our chariot, as for a long voyage, of champagne, etc.,, blankets, and furs." The voyage lasted two hours, iv which they covered twenty-seven miles. "Having enough and to spare, M. Robert began with throwing ojut one of tho blankets." The "champagne, etc.," was evidently being held in reserve. At intervals the voices of spectators floated up to-them from the ground. "Arc you not afraid, my friends'? Are you not sick! What a clever tiling it is! God preserve you! Farewell, my friends!" To which' the aeronauts suitably responded with shouts of ''God save tho King!" They landed in a "spacious meadow," and while they wore receiving the congratulations of tho "Due do Chartres, the Due de FitzJames, Mr. Farrar, an English gentleman," and others who had followed them on horseback from Paris, "thirty peasants held down the machine." Little more than a year later an American physician, Dr. Jcffcries, and the Frenchman Blanchard (the inventor of the parachute) made the first crossjjig by air of the English Channel. Although they flung out all their ballast imd finally their clothing, piece by piece, they were nearly wrecked. "Wo put on our cork jackets and were, God knows how, as merry as grigs to think how wo should spatter 'in they w rater." However, they struggled on =to tho French coast, to come down in a wood near Guincs, "not an inch of cord or rope- left, no anchor, or anything else to help us," and "almost as naked as the trees." But a local reception committee was soon organised, and the adventurers were conducted to the nea,rby chateau of a M. de Sandrouin', ■ where they "received every polite attention,"' being led "through a noble suite of apartments to partake of an elegant refreshment." , This/was in January, 1785. Lighter*, than-air travel was now well set on, that path of development which, whatever we may think of its ultimato prospects—rwhether it must still be regarded as one of aviation's cul-de-sacs or not —has at least given us many achievements, enabled M. Piccard to explore the stratosphere, and evolved the world-encircling Graf Zeppelin. It was 124 years after this date before a heavi'er-than-air craft repeated the, feat of Blanchard and Jefieries, in 1909, when Louis Bleriot flew the Channel in his aeroplane. , ,