CHAPTER XIV
INVASION OF THE SKY
FROM the day when man began to assert his superiority over other animals he began to cast longing eyes at the sky. Fired with ambition and stirred with a spirit of mastery he chafed at the bonds that bound him to earth; but the heavens remained a forbidden kingdom to him. Many a bold adventurer who dared to emulate the birds paid the penalty of his temerity with a broken limb and even with his life. It seemed as if man were destined forever to grovel on the bed of the atmospheric ocean with never a chance to rise except in dreams and fancy.
It was not until near the close of the eighteenth century that a means of rising off the earth was discovered. Two brothers, Stephen and Joseph Montgolfier, of Annonay, France, were sitting before a fire, watching the smoke curl up the chimney, when it occurred to one of them that smoke might serve as a vehicle to carry them up into the air. They belonged to a prominent paper-manufacturing family and naturally turned to that material as the most suitable for trapping and harnessing the smoke. They began their experiments with a large bag of thin paper which they filled with smoke and floated up to the ceiling. The next step was to fasten a dish filled with burning embers to the bag, so that the balloon carried its own smoke generator. The experiment was tried in the open air and the balloon arose to a great height. Larger bags were made of linen and paper and on the fifth clay of June, 1782, a public exhibition was given. A pit was dug in the ground in which a fire was lighted and over this was placed a huge balloon which weighed 300 pounds. Eight men were required to hold it down while it was filling with heated air and, when released, it shot up to an elevation of about 6,000 feet and came to earth about a mile and a half away.
THE FIRST HYDROGEN BALLOON
When the news of this event reached Paris a professor of physics named Charles suggested that hydrogen, being much lighter than air, would raise the balloon without the use of fire. By a popular subscription funds were raised to defray the expenses of securing enough iron filings and sulphuric acid to generate the hydrogen necessary to fill a balloon of 22,000 cubic-foot capacity. On the 27th of August, 1783, a flight was attempted. The big bag arose without mishap and disappeared in the clouds. Three quarters of an hour later it landed in a field fifteen miles away much to the astonishment of the villagers thereabout who gathered around the strange bobbing monster with mingled fear and curiosity. One of the number, more daring than the rest, advanced and shot the balloon, whereupon the crowd closed in and tore it to pieces with their pitchforks.
In November of the same year the Montgolfier brothers built a balloon 48 feet in diameter and 74 feet high, and Jean François Pilatre de Rozier, a professor of natural history, made several ascents with the balloon held captive. Then, in company with the Marquis d’Arlandes, the balloon was cut loose and the balloon voyage was undertaken. Below the car of the balloon was an iron vessel in which a fire was maintained to furnish the heated air. The aeronauts each carried a bundle of fuel to feed the fire and a wet sponge to extinguish sparks that might ignite the bag. Despite this precaution a number of holes were burnt in the envelope, but nevertheless the flight was successful and the daring voyagers came to earth without mishap after a short journey.
M. de Rozier’s career as an aeronaut was a short one. The first man to be carried up in a balloon, he was also the first balloon victim. He undertook to combine the Montgolfier and the Charles systems by building a balloon that employed both the hot air and the hydrogen principles, but the balloon took fire and De Rozier with his companion, the Marquis de Maisonfort, were both killed. Two months after De Rozier’s first balloon ascension a flight was made at Lyons in a huge fire balloon which carried seven passengers. This big bag was 100 feet in diameter and 130 feet high, with a capacity of 590,000 cubic feet. The invasion of the air was now well under way, although for a time it made little real progress. Owing to the danger of fire, hot air eventually gave way to hydrogen and later to coal gas, which, although it did not have half the lifting power of hydrogen, possessed the advantage of being much cheaper.