The Dominion of the Air | Page 8

Doctor would
have won the invention of the balloon for his own country. Cavallo
came almost nearer, and actually putting the same idea into practice,
had succeeded in the spring of 1782 in making soap bubbles blown
with hydrogen gas float upwards. But he had accomplished no more
when, as related, in the autumn of the same year the brothers
Montgolfier conceived the notion of making bodies "levitate" by the
simpler expedient of filling them with smoke.
This was the crude idea, the application of which in their hands was
soon marked with notable success. Their own trade supplied ready and
suitable materials for a first experiment, and, making an oblong bag of
thin paper a few feet in length, they proceeded to introduce a cloud of
smoke into it by holding crumpled paper kindled in a chafing dish
beneath the open mouth. What a subject is there here for an imaginative
painter! As the smoky cloud formed within, the bag distended itself,
became buoyant, and presently floated to the ceiling. The simple trial
proved a complete success, due, as it appeared to them, to the ascensive
power of a cloud of smoke.
An interesting and more detailed version of the story is extant. While
the experiment was in progress a neighbour, the widow of a tradesman
who had been connected in business with the firm, seeing smoke
escaping into the room, entered and stood watching the proceedings,

which were not unattended with difficulties. The bag, half inflated, was
not easy to hold in position over the chafing dish, and rapidly cooled
and collapsed on being removed from it. The widow noting this, as also
the perplexity of the young men, suggested that they should try the
result of tying the dish on at the bottom of the bag. This was the one
thing wanted to secure success, and that good lady, whose very name is
unhappily lost, deserves an honoured place in history. It was
unquestionably the adoption of her idea which launched the first
balloon into space.
The same experiment repeated in the open air proving a yet more
pronounced success, more elaborate trials were quickly developed, and
the infant balloon grew fast. One worthy of the name, spherical in
shape and of some 600 cubic feet capacity, was now made and treated
as before, with the result that ere it was fully inflated it broke the
strings that held it and sailed away hundreds of feet into the air. The
infant was fast becoming a prodigy. Encouraged by their fresh success,
the inventors at once set about preparations for the construction of a
much larger balloon some thirty-five feet diameter (that is, of about
23,000 cubic feet capacity), to be made of linen lined with paper and
this machine, launched on a favourable day in the following spring,
rose with great swiftness to fully a thousand feet, and travelled nearly a
mile from its starting ground.
Enough; the time was already ripe for a public demonstration of the
new invention, and accordingly the 5th of the following June witnessed
the ascent of the same balloon with due ceremony and advertisement.
Special pains were taken with the inflation, which was conducted over
a pit above which the balloon envelope was slung; and in accordance
with the view that smoke was the chief lifting power, the fuel was
composed of straw largely mixed with wool. It is recorded that the
management of the furnace needed the attention of two men only, while
eight men could hardly hold the impatient balloon in restraint. The
inflation, in spite of the fact that the fuel chosen was scarcely the best
for the purpose, was conducted remarkable expedition, and on being
released, the craft travelled one and a half miles into the air, attaining a
height estimated at over 6,000 feet.

From this time the tide of events in the aeronautical world rolls on in
full flood, almost every half-year marking a fresh epoch, until a new
departure in the infant art of ballooning was already on the point of
being reached. It had been erroneously supposed that the ascent of the
Montgolfier balloon had been due, not to the rarefaction of the air
within it--which was its true cause--but to the evolution of some light
gas disengaged by the nature of the fuel used. It followed, therefore,
almost as a matter of course, that chemists, who, as stated in the last
chapter, were already acquainted with so-called "inflammable air," or
hydrogen gas, grasped the fact that this gas would serve better than any
other for the purposes of a balloon. And no sooner had the news of the
Montgolfiers' success reached Paris than a subscription was raised, and
M. Charles, Professor of Experimental Philosophy, was appointed, with
the assistance of M. Roberts, to superintend