For balloons formed on a large scale, and of rarefied air, we must direct our attention to France, where the two brothers, Stephen and Joseph Montgolfier, paper manufacturers at Annonay, about thirty-six miles from Lyons, distinguished themselves by exhibiting the first of those ærostatic machines which have since excited so much attention and astonishment. The first idea of such a machine was suggested to them by the natural ascent of the smoke and clouds of the atmosphere, and the first experiment was made at Avignon, by Stephen, towards the middle of November, 1782. Having prepared a bag of fine silk in the shape of a parallelpiped and in the capacity of about forty cubic feet, he applied to its aperture burning paper, which rarefied the air, and caused it to ascend rapidly.
Other experiments, with still greater success, soon followed, and at length inflammable air, or hydrogen gas, was used, to the complete satisfaction of the experimenters. From this time, numerous balloons were sent up; but the first person who made an ascension was M. Pilatre de Rosier, from a garden in the Fauxbourg St. Antoine, Paris.
Though several experiments on the ascensive power of balloons had been made in England, during the course of the year after their discovery, the first ærial voyage, which was undertaken by Vincent Lunardi, an Italian, did not take place till September, 1784. His balloon was thirty-three feet in diameter, and shaped like a pear. It was made of oiled silk, with alternate stripes of blue and red, having the car suspended from a hoop below the balloon, by forty-five cords.
In January, 1785, an ærial voyage across the English channel, the most adventurous that had hitherto been projected, was made by Mr. Blanchard and Dr. Jeffries. They left Dover castle on the 7th of that month, at one o’clock. The balloon for some time rising majestically in the air, they passed over several ships, and enjoyed a grand prospect of the numerous objects below them. They soon, however, found themselves beginning to descend, and were under the necessity of throwing out half of their ballast, when they were about one third of the way from Dover. When half way across the channel, the balloon again descended; upon which they threw out all their ballast, and also some books, which they had carried along with them. At half an hour after two they were obliged to throw away every part of the apparatus that could possibly be spared: but still the balloon was descending, in spite of all their efforts. The anchors and cords were then thrown out; and, as the last expedient in their power, the æronauts stripped themselves of their own clothes. This, to their infinite satisfaction, changed the sinking tendency of the balloon; and reaching the French coast, they passed over the highlands between cape Blanc and Calais, and landed in the forest of Guiennes.
Encouraged by the successful issue of this enterprise, M. Pilatre de Rosier and M. Romaine ascended from Boulogne, in July, with the intention of crossing the English channel. To insure the power of ascent and descent at pleasure, they availed themselves of the combined effect of two balloons; one filled with inflammable air, about thirty-seven feet in diameter, and another with rarefied air, whose ascensive power was about sixty pounds. The latter was suspended below the other, at such a distance as precluded all apprehension of danger from the fire which was under it. They had not, however, been long in the air, before the spectators perceived the balloon swelling very quickly; and when they had attained the height of nearly three quarters of a mile, the whole apparatus was observed to be in flames. This disaster was attended with fatal consequences to the unfortunate adventurers. They were precipitated from their car and dashed to pieces upon the ground.
The fatal accidents to which the æronaut might sometimes be exposed, induced philosophers to devise expedients for diminishing the danger. So early as the year 1783, M. le Normand made the experiment of leaping from the height of a first story with a parachute, thirty inches in diameter, in his hand; and so much did it break the force of the fall, that he was hardly sensible of any shock upon reaching the ground. He thence calculated that a parachute, fourteen feet in diameter, attached to a man, might protect him against all possible injury, though falling from the regions of the clouds. During M. Blanchard’s ascent from Strasburg, 26th August, 1787, he dropped a dog, connected with a parachute, from the height of six thousand feet. A whirlwind, however, interrupted its descent, and bore it above the clouds. M. Blanchard afterwards met the parachute, when the dog, recognising his master, began to bark; and just as M. Blanchard was going to seize it, another whirlwind suddenly carried it beyond his reach. Having passed vertically over Zell, he terminated his voyage; the parachute, still waving in the air, came down twelve minutes afterwards. He also sent up several small balloons, containing parachutes to which dogs were attached, and constructed them in such a manner as to burst on arriving to any great height. When the balloons were burst, the parachutes were necessarily set at liberty, and conveyed the animals in perfect security to the ground. In a daring experiment, however, which he had the courage to make on himself, he was less successful; for on hazarding a descent by a parachute at Basle, he unfortunately broke his leg.
On the 7th April, 1806, M. Mosment, an experienced æronaut, undertook an ærial voyage from Lisle. He ascended at noon, waving a flag decorated with the imperial eagle of France, amidst the shouts of the assembled spectators. The commencement of his career was so rapid, as to bear him in a very short time beyond the vision of the crowd. During his ascent he dropped an animal attached to a parachute, which came safely to the ground. About one o’clock something was observed slowly descending through the atmosphere, which proved on its fall to be the flag which M. Mosment had carried along with him. Very soon afterwards, a murmur circulated through the crowd, and the body of the unfortunate æronaut was discovered in one of the fosses of the city, lifeless, and covered with blood. The balloon reached the ground on the same day, at the distance of twenty-five leagues from Lisle; the car containing nothing except an unloaded pistol, a little bread, and a piece of flesh. M. Garnerin ascribes this melancholy disaster to the extreme shallowness of the car, and the too great distance between the cords which attached it to the balloon; and is of opinion that M. Mosment, when leaning over the car to drop the animal, had lost his balance, and was precipitated to the earth.
Of all the voyages which the history of æronautics presents to our notice, the nocturnal ærial excursions of M. Garnerin must be ranked among the most enterprising and adventurous. At eleven o’clock in the evening of the 4th August, 1807, he ascended from Tivoli, at Paris, under the Russian flag, as a token of the peace that subsisted between France and Russia. His balloon was illuminated by twenty lamps; and to obviate all danger of communication between these and the hydrogen gas, which it might be necessary to discharge in the course of the voyage, the nearest of the lamps was fourteen feet distant from the balloon, and conductors were provided to carry the gas away in an opposite direction. After his ascent, rockets, which had been let off at Tivoli, seemed to him scarcely to rise above the earth, and Paris, with all its lamps, appeared a plain studded with luminous spots. In forty minutes he found himself at an elevation of thirteen thousand two hundred feet, when, in consequence of the dilation of the balloon, he was under the necessity of discharging part of the inflammable air. About twelve o’clock, when three thousand six hundred feet from the earth, he heard the barking of dogs; about two, he saw several meteors flying around him, but none of them so near as to create apprehension. At half past three he beheld the sun emerging in brilliant majesty above an ocean of clouds, and the air being therefore expanded, the balloon soon rose fifteen thousand feet above the earth, where he felt the cold exceedingly intense. In seven hours and a half from his departure, M. Garnerin descended near Loges, forty-five leagues distant from Paris.
The same intrepid æronaut undertook a second nocturnal voyage, on the 21st of September, 1807, in the course of which he was exposed to the most imminent danger. M. Garnerin, prognosticating an approaching storm, from the state of the atmosphere, refused to be accompanied by M. de Chassenton, who earnestly requested it. He ascended therefore alone from Tivoli, at ten o’clock, and was carried up with unexampled rapidity to an immense height above the clouds.
The balloon was then dilated to an alarming degree, and M. Garnerin, having been prevented by the turbulence of the mob, before his ascent, from regulating those parts of his apparatus which were meant to conduct the gas away from the lamps on its escape, was totally incapable of managing his balloon. He had no alternative left, therefore, but with one hand to make an opening two feet in diameter, through which the inflammable air was discharged in great quantities; and, with the other, to extinguish as many of the lamps as he could possibly reach. The æronaut was now without a regulating valve, and the balloon, subject to every caprice of the whirlwind, was tossed about from current to current. When the storm impelled him downwards, he was forced to throw out his ballast, to restore the ascending tendency; and at last, every resource being exhausted, no expedient was left him to provide against future exigencies. In this forlorn condition, the balloon rose through thick clouds, and afterwards sunk; and the car, having struck against the ground, with a violent impulse rebounded from it to a considerable altitude. The fury of the storm dashed him against the mountains, and, after many rude agitations and severe shocks, he was reduced to a state of temporary insensibility. On recovering from his perilous situation he reached Mont Tonnerre, in a storm of thunder. A very short time after his anchor hooked in a tree; and, in seven hours and a half, after a voyage which had nearly proved fatal to him, he landed at the distance of three hundred miles from Paris.