The wonders of the world

by John Loraine Abbott

THE AIR BALLOON.

From the earliest ages, the notion of flying in the air, either by wings or by supernatural agency, seems to have been in the minds of at least some of mankind; but the idea of the balloon, consisting of an envelope containing something light enough to make it rise and float in common air, is comparatively of much later date. It is said that the first definite notion of the balloon originated with a Jesuit, by the name of Francis Lana, who in 1670 conceived the idea of raising metal balls in the atmosphere, which had previously been exhausted of air, but which should be at the same time so thin, as to weigh less than their bulk of air. The experiment, however, he never tried, as, in his age, it was not believed that God would allow an invention to succeed, by means of which civil government could so easily be disturbed. Later experiments have proved that strength to resist the external air is incompatible with the necessary degree of thinness in the material. From this period, one hundred years elapsed, before the idea of raising a body in the air, by means of its being lighter than the air whose space it occupies, was pursued any further. In 1782, an attempt was made to raise bodies filled with hydrogen gas, a substance which, as is well known, is lighter than atmospheric air. The experimenter succeeded, however, in raising nothing heavier than a soap-bubble. In the same year, the brothers Montgolfier, paper-makers at Lyons, attempted to raise a paper balloon by means of hydrogen gas. Being unsuccessful in this, they conceived the idea of applying fire underneath a large balloon of paper built upon a framework of wood, and containing a receptacle for fire in the place where, in modern balloons, the car is suspended. This experiment being so far successful as to show the correctness of the principle, they next made a balloon of linen cloth, and kindled under it a fire made and fed by bundles of chopped straw, apparently with the impression that it was the smoke rather than rarefied air which had the ascending power. The balloon, thus inflated, rose about a mile in a direct line, and then described a horizontal line of about seven thousand feet, after which it gradually sunk. The next attempt was upon a balloon of lutestring dipped in a solution of India rubber, and filled with hydrogen gas. The experiment at first failed, but on the twenty-seventh of August, the same year, at Paris, the balloon rose beautifully to a great hight, and fell about twelve miles off. Soon after, animals (sheep, ducks, &c.) were sent up; and on the fifteenth of October, the first human aeronaut made an ascent of a hundred feet. The balloon, however, was held by a rope, and connection with the earth not entirely severed. A month later, on the twenty-first of November, the daring feat of completely leaving the earth was performed by two gentlemen, one of whom was M. Rosier, and the other the Marquis d’Arlandes. The balloon was a Montgolfier, or one in which the elevating power was air rarefied by fire. The signature of Benjamin Franklin, who at that time was American minister to Paris, is upon the official paper describing the balloon, its dimensions, &c. It was seventy feet high, forty-six in diameter, and carried a weight of from sixteen to seventeen hundred pounds; it rose to the hight of five miles in twenty-five minutes. When the aeronauts wished to ascend still higher, they shook a bundle of straw into the flame; when they wished to sink, they let the fire smolder, or extinguished it with a wet sponge. The attempt was successful, and the voyagers alighted in safety, after an absence of a little less than an hour.

THE AIR BALLOON.

The first trial of a hydrogen balloon was made a week later, from the garden of the Tuilleries, just after sunset. It ascended two miles with perfect ease; its occupants here came in sight of the sun, which seemed to rise again, as at morning, in the east. The balloon and its two travelers were the only illuminated objects, all the rest of nature being plunged in shadow. During the next two years, many ascensions were made by different persons, and successive improvements and inventions were added. The parachute was invented in 1784, and the first attempt at steering a balloon was made in this year, but without success. In 1802, M. Garnerin descended successfully from a great hight by means of a parachute. In 1806, two aeronauts ascended to such a distance, that they came into an atmosphere so rarefied as to burst the balloon. The remnants, however, broke the fall, and they descended in safety. From the beginning of this century to the present day, but little progress has been made in an art which seems destined to be of little service to mankind. No possible means of guiding the balloon have yet been discovered, or any practicable method of giving it a horizontal motion, so as to withdraw it from the influence of winds and currents. It has now become a mere toy, and for any practical or scientific purpose, has long since ceased to be of the slightest account.

One of the largest balloons ever constructed is that of Mr. Green, a celebrated English aeronaut, which is called the Continent, and has made many ascensions from London and Paris. The following account of an ascent from the Hippodrome at Paris, in 1848, is from a leading French journal. It is from the pen of Theophile Gautier, an eminent Parisian romancer and feuilletonist.

“Last Sunday, about five o’clock in the afternoon, Green’s balloon sprung from the inclosure of the Hippodrome into the blue abyss of the heavens. The ascension of a balloon is certainly not a novelty at the present day; but an aerostat, like the one belonging to Green, is not of the ordinary class: its colossal dimensions, the extraordinary care with which it is constructed, the comfort of its arrangements, make it the wonder of aerial navigation, and place it in the rank of a vessel of a hundred guns. To see it swelling its enormous taffeta case under the net-work of cords which holds the car lined with red velvet, one feels perfectly at ease as to the dangerous chances of a voyage through the air. It would seem safer than an excursion in a diligence or upon a railroad. Admitted into the reserved inclosure, we of course saw the departure, being near the spot. Nothing could be more quiet or more gentle. Mr. Green, in a black coat and white cravat, like a gentleman going out to dine, stepped into his carriage—I should say his balloon—with confidence and self-possession. A charming young English girl, accompanied by a friend, had already taken her place in the boat or car. She was calm and smiling; animation tinged her cheeks slightly, but it arose rather from embarrassment at seeing so many eyes fixed upon her, than from any fear whatever. Her intelligent face breathed that confidence in the inventions of human genius, which characterizes the English and American races. A Parisian lady would have screamed loudly.

“The balloon held by cords, trembled, and balanced itself, preparing to take flight. A strong cord still held it to the earth, but soon, upon a signal from Mr. Green, the cable was cut, and the aerial vessel arose steadily, with a movement at once easy, powerful, and of exceeding majesty. As much as the locomotive has an infernal appearance, so has the balloon a celestial one, without any play upon words. The one borrows its auxiliaries from iron, coal, fire and boiling water; the other employs only silk and gas, a thin cloth filled with a light wind. The engine, with its frightful shrieks, its noisy rattling, and its black puffs of smoke, runs upon inflexible rails, roars through the bowels of the earth, and dives into the darkness of tunnels, seeming as if seeking some evil genius who might have invented it; the balloon, without noise and without effort, leaves the earth, where the laws of gravity hold us, and mounts tranquilly up toward heaven. Unhappily, the balloon, like the fancied inspiration of the poet, goes where the wind guides it; this every one knows; while the steam-engine, like prose, goes straight upon its road. Green and his balloon were soon overlooking Paris and all its horizon; long trails of sand, ballast that he threw over to raise himself higher, streaked the heavens with their white tracks, proving, by the time it took them to descend to the earth, the hight to which the intrepid aeronaut had mounted in a few minutes. He had disappeared, while the crowd was still looking for him, in the blue depths of the atmosphere. What a splendid and magnificent spectacle the triumphal arch, and the giant city with its black ants, illuminated by the setting sun, must have afforded him! What greatness, and at the same time what littleness! and how mean, from that distance, must seem the cares and ambitions of the world!

“While looking with the rest of the crowd, a world of thoughts came whirling through our brain. The balloon, which it was endeavored to make perform a useful part in the battle of Fleurus, and at the siege of Toulon, has only been considered, up to this time, as an amusing experiment of natural philosophy. It is made to figure in fetes and in public solemnities; for the crowd, who have more feeling for great things than academies and wise bodies, feel an interest in balloon ascensions, which has not diminished since the first attempts of Montgolfier. It is a profoundly human instinct, which induces us to follow into the air, until it is lost to the sight, this globe swelled with smoke, as if it contained the destinies of the future. Man, the king of creation in intelligence, is, physically, but indifferently endowed. He has neither the swiftness of the stag, the eye of the eagle, the scent of a dog, the wing of the bird, nor the fin of the fish; for everything in man is sacrificed to the brain. All these auxiliaries he has been forced to furnish himself by the skill of his hand and the sweat of his brow. The horse, the carriage and the rail-car make up to him for his want of speed; the telescope and the microscope equal the eagle’s eye; the compass enables him to follow a track as unerringly as a dog; the ship, the steamboat and the diving-bell open to him the dominion of the waters. Nothing remained but the air, where the bird escaped us, followed only a few hundred feet by the arrow or gun, ingenious means of bringing distances nearer together. It really seems as if God should have given us such wings as the painters lend the angels; but the beauty and grandeur of man consist in his not having these giant appendages, or being embarrassed by fins. With the power of thought, and the hand, that admirable tool, he must seek and find, out of himself, all his physical powers.

“The idea of mounting into the air is not new; it is not to-day that Phaeton asked to get into Phœbus’s car, and that Dædalus launched into the air his son Icarus. Their descents were only unaccomplished ascents. The griffins, the hippogriffs, the Pegasus, the winged shoes of Mercury, the arrow of Abarys, the carpet of the four Facardins, testify to the continuance and persistence of this idea. At night, does not the dream deliver us from the laws of weight? Does it not give us the faculty of going, of coming, and of flying to the summit of things before unattainable, or of losing ourselves in the infinite hights? This general and oft-repeated dream, which expresses the secret desire of humanity, has it not something prophetic? Perhaps modern skepticism treats too lightly the meaning of these flights of the soul, temporarily freed from the more earthly control of reason and sense. With the astonishing simplicity of the operations of nature, a miracle took place in the fireplace, without attracting attention, every time that the smoke carried out of the chimney a piece of burnt paper. It required six thousand years to take a hint from this simple fact. The balloon floats in the air as oil floats upon wine, as cork upon water, as the cannon-ball upon mercury, by relations of weight and of lightness, one single law everywhere. But unfortunately, the balloon has neither wings, nor tail, nor neck, nor feet, nothing which can guide it; it is a vessel without sail or helm, a fish without fins, a bird without feathers; it floats, that is all; it is immense, and it is nothing. Why do not all the inventors, wise mechanicians, chemists, poets, occupy themselves by endeavoring to solve the problem of the guiding of balloons? Is it not shameful for man to have found the hippogriff which transports him to the celestial regions, and not to know how to guide it; while every day the birds go and come on airy wings, as if to instruct and defy us? The air, although a fluid, offers points of propulsion, since the condor, or the sparrow, mounts, descends, goes to the right and left, quickly or slowly, as he pleases; and why should not man be able to do the same? The time when he shall do this may be near. That will be a great day! Man will truly become master of his planet, and will have conquered his atmosphere! No more seas, no more rivers, no more mountains, no more valleys; that will be the true reign of liberty. Merely by this knowledge of the direction of balloons, the whole face of the world will change immediately. Other forms of government, other manners, a new style of architecture, a different system of fortification, will be needed; but then men will no longer make war. The custom-house and its taxes, and the stronghold, will disappear. Visit, if you can, with your gauge and your yardstick, balloons ten thousand feet in the air; of what use will be moats, ditches, portcullis and bridges, against an aerial army? What a fine spectacle it will be to see crossing one another in the air, at different hights, these swarms of balloons, painted with brilliant colors, guided during the day by the light, and at night with their lanterns, having the appearance of stars traversing the firmament! The ascension of the highest mountains will then be but child’s play. We shall penetrate into China, and go to Timbuctoo as one goes to St. Cloud; the deserts of Africa, of Asia and of America, will be forced to deliver up their secrets. We shall go even to the border of the atmosphere which surrounds us. We shall visit creation in every nook and recess. There will be servant balloons and master balloons; and in speaking of the luxury or extravagance of a person, it will be said, ‘He is rich; he has a balloon of thirty-four thousand cubic feet of gas;’ which will be equivalent to saying that he has a coach and four. And when this dream is realized, the execution of another, already dreamed by the poets, will be attempted. Man, arrived at the outward limits of his atmosphere, will wish to leave his planet; and will seriously attempt to reach the moon! And who shall say that at some time he shall not do it?”

EARLY NAVIGATION.