The First Aerial Voyage, Paris

The Montgolfier brothers had arrived in Paris and were working hard on their new hot-air balloon which was not ready and demonstrated to the Academy until 12 september. Events then moved fast. On 19 september they succeeded in sending uo another balloon carrying a sheep, duck and cock. All landed safely. then came more experiments and the question of a human ascent. A new balloon was built and the king wanted to send up two criminals for the first flight; but Pilatre de Rozier persuaded his Majesty to allow him to ascend with the Marquis d´Arlandes, which (after some tethered experiments) they did, on 21 November 1.783, to make the first aerial voyage in history - five and half miles in twenty-five minutes from the Chateau de la Muette in the Bois de Boulogne.

This truly portentous event was accompanied by a minimum of thrills, and went off smoothly. There survives a calm and detailed account written by d´Arlandes himself in a letter to M. Faujas de Saint-Fond, the first piece of aerial reporting.

All hot-air balloons came naturally to be called "Montgolfieres" just as the early hydrogen balloons became known as "Charlieres". Balloons of both types had to be hoisted limp between two poles for filling. The Montgolfiere then had a fire lit beneath the "stage" which swelled out the envelope and another fire was attached and carried aloft in a brazier slung in the neck of the balloon. The Charliere merely needed a hose connecting the neck with the hydrogen plant, the gas being made by passing dilute sulphuric acid over iron filings.