The Mastery of the Air | Page 7

making an ascent in a hot-air
balloon. Underneath the huge envelope was suspended a brazier, so that
the fabric of the balloon was in great danger of catching fire.
It was at first suggested that two French criminals under sentence of
death should be sent up, and, if they made a safe descent, then the way
would be open for other aeronauts to venture aloft. But everyone
interested in aeronautics in those days saw that the man who first
traversed the unexplored regions of the air would be held in high
honour, and it seemed hardly right that this honour should fall to
criminals. At any rate this was the view of M. Pilatre de Rozier, a
French gentleman, and he determined himself to make the pioneer
ascent.
De Rozier had no false notion of the risks he was prepared to run, and
he superintended with the greatest care the construction of his balloon.
It was of enormous size, with a cage slung underneath the brazier for
heating the air. Befors making his free ascent De Rozier made a trial
ascent with the balloon held captive by a long rope.
At length, in November, 1783, accompanied by the Marquis d'Arlandes
as a passenger, he determined to venture. The experiment aroused
immense excitement all over France, and a large concourse of people
were gathered together on the outskirts of Paris to witness the risky feat.
The balloon made a perfect ascent, and quickly reached a height of
about half a mile above sea-level. A strong current of air in the upper
regions caused the balloon to take an opposite direction from that
intended, and the aeronauts drifted right over Paris. It would have gone
hard with them if they had been forced to descend in the city, but the
craft was driven by the wind to some distance beyond the suburbs and
they alighted quite safely about six miles from their starting-point, after
having been up in the air for about half an hour.
Their voyage, however, had by no means been free from anxiety. We
are told that the fabric of the balloon repeatedly caught fire, which it
took the aeronauts all their time to extinguish. At times, too, they came
down perilously near to the Seine, or to the housetops of Paris, but after
the most exciting half-hour of their lives they found themselves once

more on Mother Earth.
Here we must make a slight digression and speak of the invention of
the hydrogen, or gas, balloon. In a previous chapter we read of the
discovery of hydrogen gas by Henry Cavendish, and the subsequent
experiments with this gas by Dr. Black, of Glasgow. It was soon
decided to try to inflate a balloon with this "inflammable air"--as the
newly-discovered gas was called--and with this end in view a large
public subscription was raised in France to meet the heavy expenses
entailed in the venture. The work was entrusted to a French scientist,
Professor Charles, and two brothers named Robert.
It was quickly seen that paper, such as was used by the Montgolfiers,
was of little use in the construction of a gas balloon, for the gas escaped.
Accordingly the fabric was made of silk and varnished with a solution
of india-rubber and turpentine. The first hydrogen balloon was only
about 13 feet in diameter, for in those early days the method of
preparing hydrogen was very laborious and costly, and the constructors
thought it advisable not to spend too much money over the initial
experiments, in case they should be a failure.
In August, 1783--an eventful year in the history of aeronautics-- the
first gas-inflated balloon was sent up, of course unaccompanied by a
passenger. It shot up high in the air much more rapidly than
Montgolfier's hot-air balloon had done, and was soon beyond the
clouds. After a voyage of nearly an hour's duration it descended in a
field some 15 miles away. We are told that some peasants at work near
by fled in the greatest alarm at this strange monster which settled in
their midst. An old print shows them cautiously approaching the
balloon as it lay heaving on the ground, stabbing it with pitchforks, and
beating it with flails and sticks. The story goes that one of the alarmed
farmers poured a charge of shot into it with his gun, no doubt thinking
that he had effectually silenced the panting demon contained therein.
To prevent such unseemly occurrences in the future the French
Government found it necessary to warn the people by proclamation that
balloons were perfectly harmless objects, and that the experiments
would be repeated.

We now have two aerial craft competing for popular favour: the
Montgolfier hot-air balloon and the "Charlier" or gas-inflated balloon.
About four months after the first trial trip of the