AIR CONQUEST.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 18762, 29 December 1930, Page 6

AIR CONQUEST.

FIRST BALLOON ASCENT. PIONEER AERONAUT A FRENCHMAN. The discovery amid the Arctic ice north from Spitzbergen of the bodies of Salomon Andree and his two companions who thirty-three years ago set off in a balloon to cross the Pole, and perished in the frozen wastes, gives added interest to an article in early ballooning which recently appeared in the “Sydney Morning Herald,” from the pen of Flinders Barr. Although through the ages numerous inventors strove to make a conquest of the air, none of their efforts were crowned with any degree of success until the Montgolfiers invented a balloon in 1783, says the writer. In the 13th century Roger Bacon conceived the idea of rising in the air by means of balls of copper exhausted of air, and Dr Black of Edinburgh, appears to have first suggested the lighting of a vessel into the atmosphere by means of inflammable air. in a lecture given in 1767-8. Mr Cavallo is said to have made the first experiments on this subject, but he was unable to find any substance light enough to contain hot ah*, except a strong soap bubble. This was in 1782, in which year Stephen and Jean Montgolfier, paper manufacturers at Annonay, about 30 miles from Lyons, filled a silken bag with rarified air from burning paper (just like the toy balloons in use at the present day), which rose first in a room, and afterwards 70 feet in the open air. Finally, after many experiences, in the ensuing year, 1783, one of

their balloons, about 13 feet in diameter, having below it a fire of chopped straw and wool, rose to a height of 3000 feet in two minutes.

All these were merely attempts in the right direction, and it was not till October 15. 1783, that M. Pilatre de Rosiere made the first ascent and became the world’s first aeronaut. The balloon he ascended it was oval in shape, 74 feet by 48 feet, and had a wickerwork car attached. The lifting power was provided by a brazier, or grate, which burnt straw and jvool, and the weight of the machine was 16001bs. On the first two ascents the balloon was held captive by a rope but on November 21, 1783, the first real flight took place, when M. de Rosiere, accompanied by the Marquis d’Arlanzes, ascended from Paris to a height of about 3000 feet and descended safely at a spot about five miles distant. Wide Interest Aroused. Immediately the account of this successful flight was made public the whole world seems to have gone “balloon mad,’ ’and nowhere did the mania become more acute than in England, for we find Walpole writing to Sir Horace Mann under the date of December 2, 1783: “Balloons occupy senators, philosophers, ladies, everybody. France gave us the ‘ton.’ and yet we have not come up to our model.” The first balloon ascent in England was made by Vincent Lunardi, an Italian, and Secretary to the Neapolitan Embassy from the Artillery Ground, , London, on September 15, 1784, at 1.45 p.m. He descended shortly before 6 p.m., in a field near Ware, in Hertfordshire. After this ascents w r ere made from every part of the country, and in the following month a successful farce, called “Aerostation, or the Templar’s Stratagem,” was brought out at Covent Garden. In the play it is prophesied that in time to come the world wall be afloat in the air, and the playright says:— I make no doubt to entertain you soon With a new theatre in a stage balloon. Another writer, in a poem entitled “The Air Balloon; or Flying Mortal,” draws an enthusiastic picture of life in the air, and concludes in a truly Georgian manner with— Now few the worldly evils now I dread. No more confined this narrow earth to tread! Should fire or water spread destruction drear Or earthquake shake this sublunary sphere In air-balloon to distant realm I fly And leave the creeping world to sink and die. The date may not be quite correct, but it is stated in a contemporary publication that on July 7, 1785, Dr Jeffries and M. Blauchard, a French aeronaut, ascended from the heights of Dover Castle and, having crossed the Channel in safety, descended in the forest of Guines, near Calais, therefore the Channel was first crossed in the air by a Frenchman and an Englishman one hundred and forty-five years ago. Owning to the enthusiasm displayed in France, as early as May, 1784, by a Royal ordinance, Louis XVI. forbade the construction or sending up of “any aerostatic machine” without the express permission of the King. The ordinance states that the Government has no intention of letting “this sublime discovery” fall into neglect. The First Bad Accident.

So far everything had gone well in the air, in spite of the crudity of their apparatus and the very elementary knowledge of the aeronauts, but on June 15, 1785. the first bad accident took place. Two Frenchmen, one Mr A. Romaine, and the other most unfortunately M. F. Pilatre de Rosiere (the first of all aeronauts), ascended from Boulogne in a large balloon, under which, from an idea of thereby being better able to regulate the ascent, they “incautiously suspended a small smoke balloon of ten feet diameter.” Scarcely a quarter of an hour after they had left the ground, and when at an estimated altitude of 5000 feet, their balloon was suddenly seen to burst into flames, and its unhappy occupants were hurled to the ground. They fell near the seashore about four miles from Boulogne; and at the village of Wymill on the road to Calais, close to where they were killed a handsome monument was erected to their ' memory. It consisted of a pedestal about eight feet high, containing three inscriptions on black tablets in gold letters, in Latin, French, and English. The English inscription, according to an account published in 1823, was as follows: “In this tomb are enclosed the remains of F. Pilatre de Rosiere and A. Romaine, who ascended from Boulogne, June 15, 1785, in a balloon; it took fire, and they fell from the height of 5000 feet between Wilmereux and the sea. A monument is erected on the spot where they fell.” This terrible accident made such a great impression upon the British public that, although various ascents were made in the following few months, the craze for ballooning quite lost its hold on the minds of the people, and by the next season had been almost forgotten. Whether the monument to the first of all airmen, survived the terrors of the destruction of the Revolution the writer does not know, but he has written to a friend now living near the sci.ie of the accident, and hopes to hear that it is still in existence.