Читать книгу Aviation in Peace and War - Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes - Страница 7

Table of Contents

It was in 1783 that Montgolfier conceived the idea of utilizing the lifting power of hot air and invited the Assembly of Vivarais to watch an exhibition of his invention, when a balloon, 10 feet in circumference, rose to a height of 6,000 feet in under ten minutes. This was followed by a demonstration before Louis XVI at Versailles, when a balloon carrying a sheep, a cock, and a duck, rose 1,500 feet and descended safely. And on November 21st of the same year Pilatre de Rozier, accompanied by the Marquis d'Arlande, made the first human ascent, in the "Reveillon," travelling 5 miles over Paris in twenty minutes.

England, it is not surprising to learn, was behind with the invention, but on November 25th, 1783, Count Francesco Zambeccari sent up from Moorfields a small oilskin hydrogen balloon which fell at Petworth; and in August of 1784 James Tytler ascended at Edinburgh in a fire balloon, thus achieving the first ascent in Great Britain. In the same year Lunardi came to London and ballooning became the rage. It was an Englishman, Dr. Jefferies, who accompanied Blanchard in the first cross-Channel flight on January 7th, 1785. Fashionable society soon turned to pursuits other than watching balloon ascents, however, and the joys of the air were confined to a few adventurous spirits, such as Green and Holland, who first substituted coal gas for hydrogen and in 1836 made a voyage of 500 miles from Vauxhall Gardens to Weilburg in Nassau, and James Glaisher, who in the middle of the century began to make meteorological observations from balloons, claiming on one occasion, in 1862, to have reached the great height of 7 miles.