A Year: Day to Day Men: 4th of June
Modern Man in the Ancient Wood
On June 4, 1783, a hot-air balloon was demonstrated by Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier.
The Montgolfier brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne were born into a family of paper manufacturers founded in 1534 in Annonay, France. Of the two brothers, it was Joseph who was first interested in aeronautics: as early as 1775 he was building and experimenting with parachutes. He first contemplated building machines when he observed laundry drying over a fire incidentally form pockets that billowed upwards.
While living in Avignon in November of 1782 he made his first definitive experiments. Joseph Montgolfier built a box-like chamber out of very thin wood, and covering the sides and top with lightweight taffeta cloth. He crumpled and lit some paper under the bottom of the box. The contraption quickly lifted off its stand and collided with the ceiling.
Joseph recruited his brother Jacques to balloon building. They built a similar device, however scaled up to three times the dimensions of the original, making it 27 times greater in volume. They did their first test flight on December 14, 1782, lighting wool and hay underneath. The lifting power was so great, that they lost control of the craft. The device floated nearly two kilometers and was destroyed, after landing, by a passerby.
To make a public demonstration and to claim its invention the brothers constructed a globe-shaped balloon of sackcloth tightened with three thin layers of paper inside. The envelope could contain nearly 28,000 cubic feet of air and weighed 500 pounds. It was constructed of four pieces (the dome and three lateral bands) and held together by 1,800 buttons. A reinforcing fish net of cord covered the outside of the envelope.
The Montgolfier brothers flew the balloon at Annonay on June 4, 1783 in front of a group of dignitaries. The flight covered 2 km (1.2 mi), lasted 10 minutes, and had an estimated altitude of 5,200-6,600 feet. Word of their success quickly reached Paris. Étienne went to the capital to make further demonstrations and to solidify the brothers’ claim to the invention of flight.
On September 19, 1783, the Montgolfiers’ new balloon Aerostat Revelillon was flown with the first living beings in a basket attached to the balloon: a sheep called Montauciel, a duck and a rooster. The flight covered two miles at an altitude of 1500 feet and lasted eight minutes: it landed safely with all aboard surviving. Since the animals survived, King Louis XVI, who had witnessed the flight, allowed flights to proceed with human passengers.