The brothers Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier, papermakers of Annonay, near lyons, were led by reading Priestley´s treatise on air to experiment with paper bags held over the kitchen fire. When filled with hot air, they rose to the ceiling. The brothers decided on bigger and better bags until after a lot of experimenting they made a large linen and paper balloon, buttoned together in gores. They lit a fire of wool and straw and sent up their balloon from the market event led to a strange sequence. Paris soon heard of the balloon and the Academy commissioned their Professor Charles to investigate. He was a shrewd man and wasted no time on getting eye-witness accounts. He assumed (as it happened quite wrongly) that the inventor had utilized Cavendish´s discovery of hydrogen in 1.766, which was often known, by the way, as “inflammable air”. He therefore set about designing a hydrogen balloon from scratch, so to speak. This small globe, of thirteen feet diameter, was sent up before an astonished multitude of spectators who had gathered in the rain on the Champ de Mars, 27 August 1.783. A wag asked Benjamin Franklin, who was present, what use a ballon was. The old man, wondering about possible man-carrying craft and what would one day come of it all, turned to him and replied, “And of what use is a new-born baby?”
A still more astonished group of peasants, later, saw a great globe descent out of the clouds and bounce on to their fields. Terrified yet inquisitive, the inhabitants of the little village of Gonesse stood gaping at this strange thing; then they poked it with a pitchfork. Punctured, the poor balloon hissed forth some of its impure hydrogen. The smell was evil, the yokels remembered their Bible, and Professor Charles´s first brain child was set upon and beaten to death, and its remains then tied to the tail of a horse.
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