THE AIR BALLOON.

From the earliest ages, the notion of flying in the air, either by wings

or by supernatural agency, seems to have been in the minds of at least

some of mankind; but the idea of the _balloon_, consisting of an

envelope containing something light enough to make it rise and float in

common air, is comparatively of much later date. It is said that the

first definite notion of the balloon originated with a Jesuit, by the

name of Francis Lana, who in 1670 conceived the idea of raising metal

balls in the atmosphere, which had previously been exhausted of air, but

which should be at the same time so thin, as to weigh less than their

bulk of air. The experiment, however, he never tried, as, in his age, it

was not believed that God would allow an invention to succeed, by means

of which civil government could so easily be disturbed. Later

experiments have proved that strength to resist the external air is

incompatible with the necessary degree of thinness in the material. From

this period, one hundred years elapsed, before the idea of raising a

body in the air, by means of its being lighter than the air whose space

it occupies, was pursued any further. In 1782, an attempt was made to

raise bodies filled with hydrogen gas, a substance which, as is well

known, is lighter than atmospheric air. The experimenter succeeded,

however, in raising nothing heavier than a soap-bubble. In the same

year, the brothers Montgolfier, paper-makers at Lyons, attempted to

raise a paper balloon by means of hydrogen gas. Being unsuccessful in

this, they conceived the idea of applying fire underneath a large

balloon of paper built upon a framework of wood, and containing a

receptacle for fire in the place where, in modern balloons, the car is

suspended. This experiment being so far successful as to show the

correctness of the principle, they next made a balloon of linen cloth,

and kindled under it a fire made and fed by bundles of chopped straw,

apparently with the impression that it was the smoke rather than

rarefied air which had the ascending power. The balloon, thus inflated,

rose about a mile in a direct line, and then described a horizontal line

of about seven thousand feet, after which it gradually sunk. The next

attempt was upon a balloon of lutestring dipped in a solution of India

rubber, and filled with hydrogen gas. The experiment at first failed,

but on the twenty-seventh of August, the same year, at Paris, the

balloon rose beautifully to a great hight, and fell about twelve miles

off. Soon after, animals (sheep, ducks, &c.) were sent up; and on the

fifteenth of October, the first human aeronaut made an ascent of a

hundred feet. The balloon, however, was held by a rope, and connection

with the earth not entirely severed. A month later, on the twenty-first

of November, the daring feat of completely leaving the earth was

performed by two gentlemen, one of whom was M. Rosier, and the other the

Marquis d’Arlandes. The balloon was a _Montgolfier_, or one in which the

elevating power was air rarefied by fire. The signature of Benjamin

Franklin, who at that time was American minister to Paris, is upon the

official paper describing the balloon, its dimensions, &c. It was

seventy feet high, forty-six in diameter, and carried a weight of from

sixteen to seventeen hundred pounds; it rose to the hight of five miles

in twenty-five minutes. When the aeronauts wished to ascend still

higher, they shook a bundle of straw into the flame; when they wished to

sink, they let the fire smolder, or extinguished it with a wet sponge.

The attempt was successful, and the voyagers alighted in safety, after

an absence of a little less than an hour.

[Illustration: THE AIR BALLOON.]

The first trial of a hydrogen balloon was made a week later, from the

garden of the Tuilleries, just after sunset. It ascended two miles with

perfect ease; its occupants here came in sight of the sun, which seemed

to rise again, as at morning, in the east. The balloon and its two

travelers were the only illuminated objects, all the rest of nature

being plunged in shadow. During the next two years, many ascensions were

made by different persons, and successive improvements and inventions

were added. The parachute was invented in 1784, and the first attempt at

steering a balloon was made in this year, but without success. In 1802,

M. Garnerin descended successfully from a great hight by means of a

parachute. In 1806, two aeronauts ascended to such a distance, that they

came into an atmosphere so rarefied as to burst the balloon. The

remnants, however, broke the fall, and they descended in safety. From

the beginning of this century to the present day, but little progress

has been made in an art which seems destined to be of little service to

mankind. No possible means of guiding the balloon have yet been

discovered, or any practicable method of giving it a horizontal motion,

so as to withdraw it from the influence of winds and currents. It has

now become a mere toy, and for any practical or scientific purpose, has

long since ceased to be of the slightest account.

One of the largest balloons ever constructed is that of Mr. Green, a

celebrated English aeronaut, which is called the Continent, and has made

many ascensions from London and Paris. The following account of an

ascent from the Hippodrome at Paris, in 1848, is from a leading French

journal. It is from the pen of Theophile Gautier, an eminent Parisian

romancer and _feuilletonist_.

“Last Sunday, about five o’clock in the afternoon, Green’s balloon

sprung from the inclosure of the Hippodrome into the blue abyss of the

heavens. The ascension of a balloon is certainly not a novelty at the

present day; but an aerostat, like the one belonging to Green, is not of

the ordinary class: its colossal dimensions, the extraordinary care with

which it is constructed, the comfort of its arrangements, make it the

wonder of aerial navigation, and place it in the rank of a vessel of a

hundred guns. To see it swelling its enormous taffeta case under the

net-work of cords which holds the car lined with red velvet, one feels

perfectly at ease as to the dangerous chances of a voyage through the

air. It would seem safer than an excursion in a diligence or upon a

railroad. Admitted into the reserved inclosure, we of course saw the

departure, being near the spot. Nothing could be more quiet or more

gentle. Mr. Green, in a black coat and white cravat, like a gentleman

going out to dine, stepped into his carriage—I should say his

balloon—with confidence and self-possession. A charming young English

girl, accompanied by a friend, had already taken her place in the boat

or car. She was calm and smiling; animation tinged her cheeks slightly,

but it arose rather from embarrassment at seeing so many eyes fixed upon

her, than from any fear whatever. Her intelligent face breathed that

confidence in the inventions of human genius, which characterizes the

English and American races. A Parisian lady would have screamed loudly.

“The balloon held by cords, trembled, and balanced itself, preparing to

take flight. A strong cord still held it to the earth, but soon, upon a

signal from Mr. Green, the cable was cut, and the aerial vessel arose

steadily, with a movement at once easy, powerful, and of exceeding

majesty. As much as the locomotive has an infernal appearance, so has

the balloon a celestial one, without any play upon words. The one

borrows its auxiliaries from iron, coal, fire and boiling water; the

other employs only silk and gas, a thin cloth filled with a light wind.

The engine, with its frightful shrieks, its noisy rattling, and its

black puffs of smoke, runs upon inflexible rails, roars through the

bowels of the earth, and dives into the darkness of tunnels, seeming as

if seeking some evil genius who might have invented it; the balloon,

without noise and without effort, leaves the earth, where the laws of

gravity hold us, and mounts tranquilly up toward heaven. Unhappily, the

balloon, like the fancied inspiration of the poet, goes where the wind

guides it; this every one knows; while the steam-engine, like prose,

goes straight upon its road. Green and his balloon were soon overlooking

Paris and all its horizon; long trails of sand, ballast that he threw

over to raise himself higher, streaked the heavens with their white

tracks, proving, by the time it took them to descend to the earth, the

hight to which the intrepid aeronaut had mounted in a few minutes. He

had disappeared, while the crowd was still looking for him, in the blue

depths of the atmosphere. What a splendid and magnificent spectacle the

triumphal arch, and the giant city with its black ants, illuminated by

the setting sun, must have afforded him! What greatness, and at the same

time what littleness! and how mean, from that distance, must seem the

cares and ambitions of the world!

“While looking with the rest of the crowd, a world of thoughts came

whirling through our brain. The balloon, which it was endeavored to make

perform a useful part in the battle of Fleurus, and at the siege of

Toulon, has only been considered, up to this time, as an amusing

experiment of natural philosophy. It is made to figure in _fetes_ and in

public solemnities; for the crowd, who have more feeling for great

things than academies and wise bodies, feel an interest in balloon

ascensions, which has not diminished since the first attempts of

Montgolfier. It is a profoundly human instinct, which induces us to

follow into the air, until it is lost to the sight, this globe swelled

with smoke, as if it contained the destinies of the future. Man, the

king of creation in intelligence, is, physically, but indifferently

endowed. He has neither the swiftness of the stag, the eye of the eagle,

the scent of a dog, the wing of the bird, nor the fin of the fish; for

everything in man is sacrificed to the brain. All these auxiliaries he

has been forced to furnish himself by the skill of his hand and the

sweat of his brow. The horse, the carriage and the rail-car make up to

him for his want of speed; the telescope and the microscope equal the

eagle’s eye; the compass enables him to follow a track as unerringly as

a dog; the ship, the steamboat and the diving-bell open to him the

dominion of the waters. Nothing remained but the air, where the bird

escaped us, followed only a few hundred feet by the arrow or gun,

ingenious means of bringing distances nearer together. It really seems

as if God should have given us such wings as the painters lend the

angels; but the beauty and grandeur of man consist in his not having

these giant appendages, or being embarrassed by fins. With the power of

thought, and the hand, that admirable tool, he must seek and find, out

of himself, all his physical powers.

“The idea of mounting into the air is not new; it is not to-day that

Phaeton asked to get into Phœbus’s car, and that Dædalus launched into

the air his son Icarus. Their descents were only unaccomplished ascents.

The griffins, the hippogriffs, the Pegasus, the winged shoes of Mercury,

the arrow of Abarys, the carpet of the four Facardins, testify to the

continuance and persistence of this idea. At night, does not the dream

deliver us from the laws of weight? Does it not give us the faculty of

going, of coming, and of flying to the summit of things before

unattainable, or of losing ourselves in the infinite hights? This

general and oft-repeated dream, which expresses the secret desire of

humanity, has it not something prophetic? Perhaps modern skepticism

treats too lightly the meaning of these flights of the soul, temporarily

freed from the more earthly control of reason and sense. With the

astonishing simplicity of the operations of nature, a miracle took place

in the fireplace, without attracting attention, every time that the

smoke carried out of the chimney a piece of burnt paper. It required six

thousand years to take a hint from this simple fact. The balloon floats

in the air as oil floats upon wine, as cork upon water, as the

cannon-ball upon mercury, by relations of weight and of lightness, one

single law everywhere. But unfortunately, the balloon has neither wings,

nor tail, nor neck, nor feet, nothing which can guide it; it is a vessel

without sail or helm, a fish without fins, a bird without feathers; it

floats, that is all; it is immense, and it is nothing. Why do not all

the inventors, wise mechanicians, chemists, poets, occupy themselves by

endeavoring to solve the problem of the guiding of balloons? Is it not

shameful for man to have found the hippogriff which transports him to

the celestial regions, and not to know how to guide it; while every day

the birds go and come on airy wings, as if to instruct and defy us? The

air, although a fluid, offers points of propulsion, since the condor, or

the sparrow, mounts, descends, goes to the right and left, quickly or

slowly, as he pleases; and why should not man be able to do the same?

The time when he shall do this may be near. That will be a great day!

Man will truly become master of his planet, and will have conquered his

atmosphere! No more seas, no more rivers, no more mountains, no more

valleys; that will be the true reign of liberty. Merely by this

knowledge of the direction of balloons, the whole face of the world will

change immediately. Other forms of government, other manners, a new

style of architecture, a different system of fortification, will be

needed; but then men will no longer make war. The custom-house and its

taxes, and the stronghold, will disappear. Visit, if you can, with your

gauge and your yardstick, balloons ten thousand feet in the air; of what

use will be moats, ditches, portcullis and bridges, against an aerial

army? What a fine spectacle it will be to see crossing one another in

the air, at different hights, these swarms of balloons, painted with

brilliant colors, guided during the day by the light, and at night with

their lanterns, having the appearance of stars traversing the firmament!

The ascension of the highest mountains will then be but child’s play. We

shall penetrate into China, and go to Timbuctoo as one goes to St.

Cloud; the deserts of Africa, of Asia and of America, will be forced to

deliver up their secrets. We shall go even to the border of the

atmosphere which surrounds us. We shall visit creation in every nook and

recess. There will be servant balloons and master balloons; and in

speaking of the luxury or extravagance of a person, it will be said, ‘He

is rich; he has a balloon of thirty-four thousand cubic feet of gas;’

which will be equivalent to saying that he has a coach and four. And

when this dream is realized, the execution of another, already dreamed

by the poets, will be attempted. Man, arrived at the outward limits of

his atmosphere, will wish to leave his planet; and will seriously

attempt to reach the moon! And who shall say that at some time he shall

not do it?”

[Illustration: EARLY NAVIGATION.]