Balloonists
Peter Quennell
The Montgolfier Brothers and the Invention of Aviation Charles Coulston Gillispie (Princeton University Press £30.20)
Nothing, wrote the first great astronaut Alexandre Charles in December 1783; would ever equal the rapturous 'moment of hilarity' that he experienced when he knew, that he had left the earth. Over his bean towered an immense balloon, striped yellow-and-ochre and filled with hydrogen — previous balloonists had relied on hot air; and he and his companion Robert oc- cupied a small, fantastic gondola that, among its other rococo embellishments, in; eluded golden wings, a royal crown and fleurs de lis. While the adventurers raised glasses of champagne to the huge admiring crowd below, and flourished white and red flags, the balloon shot up into the air above the Gardens of the Tuileries and floated off westwards across the open country. TheY were chased on horseback at breakneck speed, by the duc de Chartres and the due de FitzJames (grandson of the Ow Pretender) and, when they began to des- cend and had nearly touched the 'ground, having covered about 40 kilometres from Paris, by peasants who ran through the fields 'like children pursuing a butterflY'• Charles now decided on a second ascent, abandoned Robert in order to lighten the load, and this time, according to his owa eloquent narrative, rose some two miles above the surface of the globe: The cold was sharp and dry, but not at all unbearable. I could then amine ... my sensations in complete tranquillity. I listened to myself liv" gillog.o.l.a, and lost myself the middle of th
nd e
yself in the spectacle offered by the immensity of the horizon;• He enjoyed, he tells us, a sense of almost mystical happiness, of 'inexpressible, delight', and 'ecstasy of contemplation that he had never known before: No living being, I reflected, has Yet penetrated these solitudes; man's voice has never been heard here, and I struck the air with a few sounds as if to stir that The tremendous silence all around me, 1. calm, thegathering darkness, that im- mensity in the midst of which I Was floating, all this gripped my soul • •d Charles, it is fair to add, had already h2 two predecessors. That same year, on hu, November, Pilatre de Rozier and the Mar quis d'Arlandes, using a balloon propelled by hot air, had made the first free flight in
t° the skies; but it had lasted less than half an hour. Altogether;it had been a much more frivolous occasion. Both of them welcomed the glare of publicity; and the marquis so repeatedly waved his handkerchief to the audience that he forgot to stoke the fire beneath the gondola from which the stream of hot air flowed, until his colleague ex- cl and aimed 'Eh bien, mon cher ami, de feu!' he quickly dropped some fuel. A grand Parade followed their successful descent — the marquis refused to join it because he found that he had torn his coat; but that evening they visited Benjamin Franklin, then the hero of Parisian society; and the old sage signed the compterendu in which their adventure was officially recorded.
The Montgolfier Brothers, written by an American professor of European history, is a beautifully illustrated and remarkably in- formative volume, where besides chronicl- ing the extraordinary achievements of the first astronauts, he describes the gifted scientific family, successful paper-makers froth a remote province, who did the neces- sary groundwork and produced the delicate material — a blend of paper and taffeta that sheathed the earliest balloons. Joseph Montgolfier, portrayed by Professor Gillispie as the 'type of the inventor' a man with little head for practical affairs, and Etienne, a busy entrepreneur, were the leading spirits of the clan; and between them they introduced a resplendent mon- tgolfiere, 70 feet high and richly decorated, to the Court at Versailles. 'The story that Louis XVI personally forbade a married flight' and insisted that animals alone should be the passengers — Joseph thereupon suggested a stalwart cow — Pro- fessor Gillispie thinks is apochryphal.
Once man had mounted into the air, and Charles received his vision of humanity in space, the balloon became a portent. Some observers still professed to regard it as an amusing scientific toy. Of what use was a balloon such a critic demanded, Of what use was a baby Benjamin Franklin replied. Did it not represent the future? And Franklin's prophetic instinct, while he wat- ched Rozier and d'Arlandes sailing above Paris, seems today particularly sound.
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