Balloons, Airships, and Flying Machines

by Gertrude Bacon

One November night in the year 1782, so the story runs, two brothers sat over their winter fire in the little French town of Annonay, watching the grey smoke-wreaths from the hearth curl up the wide chimney. Their names were Stephen and Joseph Montgolfier, they were papermakers by trade, and were noted as possessing thoughtful minds and a deep interest in all scientific knowledge and new discovery. Before that night—a memorable night, as it was to prove—hundreds of millions of people had watched the rising smoke-wreaths of their fires without drawing any special inspiration from the fact; but on this particular occasion, as Stephen, the younger of the brothers, sat and gazed at the familiar sight, the question flashed across his mind, “What is the hidden power that makes those curling smoke-wreaths rise upwards, and could I not employ it to make other things rise also?”

Medallion showing Brothers Montgolfier.

Then and there the brothers resolved on an experiment. They made themselves a small fire of some light fuel in a little tin tray or chafing-dish, and over the smoke of it they held a large paper-bag. And to their delight they saw the bag fill out and make a feeble attempt to rise. They were surely on the eve of some great invention; and yet, try as they would, their experiment would not quite succeed, because the smoke in the bag always became too cool before there was enough in it to raise it from the table. But presently, while they were thus engaged, a neighbour of theirs, a widow lady, alarmed by seeing smoke issuing from their window, entered the room, and after watching their fruitless efforts for some while, suggested that they should fasten the tray on to the bottom of the bag. This was done, with the happy result that the bag immediately rose up to the ceiling; and in this humble fashion the first of all balloons sailed aloft.

That night of 1782, therefore, marks the first great step ever made towards the conquest of the sky. But to better understand the history of “Aeronautics”—a word that means “the sailing of the air”—we must go back far beyond the days of the Montgolfier brothers. For in all times and in all ages men have wanted to fly. David wished for the wings of a dove to fly away and be at rest, and since his time, and before it, how many have not longed to take flight and sail away in the boundless, glorious realms above, to explore the fleecy clouds, and to float free in the blue vault of heaven.

And since birds achieve this feat by means of wings, man’s first idea was to provide himself with wings also. But here he was at once doomed to disappointment. It is very certain that by his own natural strength alone a man will never propel himself through the air with wings like a bird, because he is made quite differently. A bird’s body is very light compared with its size. The largest birds in existence weigh under thirty pounds. A man’s body, on the contrary, is very heavy and solid. The muscles that work a bird’s wing are wonderfully powerful and strong, far stronger in proportion than the muscles of a man’s arm. To sustain his great weight in the air, a man of eleven stone would require a pair of wings nearly twenty feet in span. But the possession of such mighty wings alone is not enough. He must also possess bodily strength to keep them in sufficient motion to prevent him from falling, and for this he would require at least the strength of a horse.

Such strength a man has never possessed, or can ever hope to; but even as it is, by long practice and great effort, men have succeeded at different times, not exactly in flying, but in helping themselves along considerably by means of wings. A man is said to have flown in this way in Rome in the days of Nero. A monk in the Middle Ages, named Elmerus, it is stated, flew about a furlong from the top of a tower in Spain, another from St. Mark’s steeple in Venice, and another from Nuremburg. But the most successful attempt ever made in this direction was accomplished about 200 years ago by a French locksmith of the name of Besnier. He had made for himself a pair of light wooden oars, shaped like the double paddle of a canoe, with cup-like blades at either end. These he placed over his shoulders, and attached also to his feet, and then casting himself off from some high place, and violently working his arms and legs so as to buffet the air downwards with his paddles, he was able to raise himself by short stages from one height to another, or skim lightly over a field or river. It is said that subsequently Besnier sold his oars to a mountebank, who performed most successfully with them at fairs and festivals.

Besnier and his Oars.

But it was soon clear that the art of human flight was not to be achieved by such means; and when men found that they were unable to soar upwards by their own bodily strength alone, they set about devising some apparatus or machine which should carry them aloft. Many ancient philosophers bent their minds to the inventing of a machine for this purpose. One suggested that strong flying birds, such as eagles or vultures, might be harnessed to a car, and trained to carry it into the sky. Another gravely proposed the employment of “a little imp”—for in those days the existence of imps and demons was most firmly believed in. A third even went so far as to give an actual recipe for flying, declaring that “if the eggs of the larger description of swans, or leather balls stitched with fine thongs, be filled with nitre, the purest sulphur, quicksilver, or kindred materials which rarefy by their caloric energy, and if they externally resemble pigeons, they will easily be mistaken for flying animals.” (!)