Ballooning: A History 1782-1900

by S.L. Kotar and J.E. Gessler

Published by: McFarland Publishing

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The following is a review of this book from the Royal Aeronautical Society.  The review will be published in Aerospace, the monthly magazine sent to the Society’s worldwide membership of over 17,000.

Ballooning: a History 1782-1900. S.L. Kotar and J.E. Gessler. McFarland & Company, Inc., Box 611, Jefferson, NC 28640, USA. 2011. 295pp. Illustrated.  $45.00. ISBN 978-0-7864-4941-5. An informative history of the leading personalities in the development of early ballooning in Europe and America from the first pioneering aerial voyages of 1783 through to the end of the 19th century.

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Preface

We must speak of the ascent once more; It was the most beautiful.  Instead of the struggle and violent sweeps which generally follow on cutting the ropes, its progress upward was calm and slow, and grand.  As it rose the sun shone out, and a broad gleam of light fell upon its “gorgeous blazonry.”  There was scarcely an idea of terror in its grand motion:  it moved as if at the touch of an enchanter, like MILTON’S Place, with its music, and its magic, and its multitude:

“Anon, out of the earth, a fabric huge

Rose like an exhalation, with the sound

Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet.”

In the beginning, we never dreamed how utterly compelling a story on aerostation could be.  The concept started with one article from the early 1800’s that described in vivid detail the ascension of a hot-air balloon.  Curiosity piqued, we began searching the archives for more, never dreaming we would find a pathway to an immense phenomenon that consumed the people of the late 18th and 19th centuries.

Tracing the roots of ballooning back through the pages of old, blurry and at times illegible newspaper print, the story quickly assumed a life of its own.  We became enmeshed in the techniques of how balloons were constructed, the type of gas used; figuratively bumping shoulders with the multitudes assembled to watch the rise of a manmade globe; held our breath as the frail structure was blown against a chimney or carried out to sea.  Seeking more in-depth knowledge, we studied the backgrounds of those who shared from the sky the very earliest glimpses of our world in miniature.

French aeronauts were the first to challenge the realm of gods and winged creatures; in a time span nearly as fast as the flap of a wing, the awe and fascination spread to England, Italy, America and round the globe.  With national prides nearly as great a driving force as wonder and adventure, each country claimed to have the bravest aeronauts, the largest aerostats, the fastest machines.

Mankind literally rose to the challenge as they pushed beyond their limits.  Some succeeded in breaking newer and greater barriers.  Some died horrible and tragic deaths, but others took their places.  It did not take long for balloons to accompany armies in the field, those on the sidelines either lauding the new methods of reconnaissance and dropping incendiary bombs on unsuspecting enemies or decrying the barbarism which quickly brought armed conflict to a new and dangerous level.

Balloons and balloonists were present at peace conferences, performing their aerostatic arts as a respite for the royalty and nobility assembled to rewrite the regulations for post Napoleonic Europe.  And then they were off again, these multi-national aeronauts, performing feats for an ever more fascinated public.

Working our way forward, from the first attempts of the Montgolfier brothers and their paper balloon, we lived the weeks, months, years and finally decades almost as those who had the privilege of being present at the time.  We cheered the advent of the science, watching as primitive fire balloons gave way to gas production from mixtures of vitriol and iron shavings.  But it did not stop there.  Quickly, carbonated hydrogen pumped from factories replaced homemade gas, and just a s quickly coal gas and “smoakies” emerged on the scene.  We raised a fist in the air as de Rosier rose to the heavens, and we suffered his death as the loss of a friend.  We followed the start of the celebrated Blanchard and Garnerin and Sadler;  we participated, in a vicarious way, as Graham came out of nowhere to ascend at the Coronation, and then came near to ruining his career with The Great Balloon Hoax and Riot.

There were successes and failures; lives championed and lives lost.  Stories of men – and women – for uniquely, ballooning was open to anyone with an intrepid spirit and the money to afford an aerostat – who wished to ascend beyond the clouds.  Some became folk heroes and others became objects of derision; many lived to write stirring accounts for an adoring public; a few published explanations of why they never  got off the ground – and for a select group, which included the celebrated and the unknown – their stories were written by strangers, in the form of obituaries and Coroner’s Inquests.

In this book, we have attempted to capture the phenomenon of aerostation as it was witnessed or read about buy those who lived during the rise and fall of the Balloon Era.  From humble beginnings, a quest for scientific and meteorological discoveries eventually took a back seat to showmanship.  Barometers and thermometers gave way to gloriously decorated cars and brightly colored silk envelopes.  Free ascensions were replaced by subscriptions and selling seats for flights.  Next came tethered ascensions, where ten or twenty passengers could go up together in a relatively safe environment for the cost of several dollars, – enough, it was hoped, to compensate the aeronaut for the cost of gas and a little extra to support the family.

In the early years, cities fought over drawing the most famous aeronauts, and it was not uncommon for a single flight to cost $500 or even $1,000.  Soon, no 4th of July celebration was complete without a balloon going up, and children of 1830 dreamed of being the next Charles Durant or James Mills, just as young athletes today fantasize of playing shortstop for the New York Yankees or pitching for the Los Angeles Dodgers.  A number achieved their goals, and the newspapers were filled with paragraphs detailing the local boy from Philadelphia or San Francisco ascending in a balloon named Cloud or America.

When every city had its homegrown aeronaut, the novelty began to wear off, so to collect their 25 cents per head at the ticket gate, aeronauts were forced to develop greater thrills for the paying public.  As part of the evolving entertainment, dogs, and cats were sent down in crude parachutes, then aeronauts ascended on the backs of horses and astride lions or bulls.  Balloon races were arranged, fireworks set off and specialties developed where select aeronauts developed a following by jumping from parachutes.  Trapeze artists followed, performing daring gymnastics from a bar suspended from the balloon by a slender cord five hundred feet above the ground.  As the 19th century wore on, newly expanding traveling circuses gobbled up the aerial performers, exhibiting them alongside the elephants and sword-swallowers.

Balloons went higher and higher until the air became too thin to breathe.  Inventors devised clever and bizarre methods of navigation, always with the notion that the heavens could be conquered.  Everything from fans and screw propellers to gas engines were used.  Headlines written in the 1790’s were repeated in the 1890’s: “A New, Absolutely Sure Way of Navigating the Skies has been perfected!”  Balloon routes from San Francisco to New York or from London to Paris were on the horizon.  And, of course, Lowe or Wise or Donaldson or King or any number of others were sure this time to succeed in crossing Atlantic.

If the Napoleonic or Franco-Prussian wars were not enough, aerostats stalked their claim in the great American bloodletting known as the Civil War.  Whether they succeeded is a matter debate, but their time was short and their contributions often bitterly contested.

Balloons came in all shapes and sizes.  Globes and pear-shaped aerostats ascended beside balloons fashioned after elephants or old ladies.  Early gas-inflated balloons became an instant hit the with children of Paris, and in the United States, they were used as advertising gimmicks to sell suits of clothes.  Balloons adorned the covers of young adult readers, and little montgolfieres were discharged skyward, often landing on hay ricks of thatched roofs and setting them ablaze.

In this work, we have attempted to capture and distill the phenomenon of aerostation as it was witnessed and expressed by those who participated in this great and risky undertaking.  Ballooning was an “experiment” and an “exhibition,” and those ascending were “aeronauts” or “adventurers” and later “professors.”  In a larger sense, they were a combination of scientists, showman, and sports figure, alternatively taking assiduous notes of their barometers and thermometers, while madly waving their flags and rising in wicker baskets covered with silk ribbons.  Successful voyages were greeted by adoring multitudes as the following passage from 1811 reveals:

At half-past nine o’clock, Mr. SADLER and Mr. BURCHAM arrived in a post-chaise and four.  The people greeted them with every demonstration of satisfaction.  The bells rang in the merry peals, and the firing of guns, pistols &c. announced the welcome intelligence.  The populace afterwards drew the carriage with Mr. Sadler, jun. in charge of the balloon, though the principal streets, surrounded by lighted torches.  Ina few minutes the crowd before the residence of Mr. Sadler became so great, that to satisfy their impatient anxiety, the aerial voyages exhibited themselves at the windows during a considerable time.

Reports of their exploits were published in minute detail, often several articles on the ascent and aftermath appearing in each subsequent edition of the newspaper.  This was no different that the sports writing of  today, when a game is typically broken down into a description of the play-by-play, followed by separate articles containing interviews with the athletes, a commentary of what went right and what went wrong, editorial appraisals and a look ahead at the coming schedule.

Every successful ascension was a “win,” and each failure a “loss.”  Just as the contemporary baseball fan can never get enough statistics or quotes from players o his favorite team, subscribing to the numerous publications and watching endless re-runs of significant moments, so too, the fans of ballooning had their favorite aeronauts and pored through the newspapers for even the slightest mention of past, present and future plans.  Their fanaticism, as well as the history, science and raw emotions of the aeronauts and spectators as they participate, either in practice, or vicariously in the “sport” of ballooning, is what we have attempted to capture with this book.

There were many reasons why individuals wished to “rise to the clouds”: for the novelty and excitement, to test their courage, or for the opportunity to be hailed as a “hero,” conquering the bonds of human restraint – all in conjunction, of course, with the aim of earning a lucrative living.  A number went off in private places, but the vast majority published cards and printed fliers announcing “the day of ascension.”

Much like the Mercury and Apollo missions lifting off in glorious clouds of smoke from Cape Canaveral, the earliest aeronauts arose in magnificent spectacle of fire from grand globes of sparkling flame and flashing colors.

Just as millions gathered in Florida in the 1960s to marvel at the audacity of Man and cheer the conquering of space, hundreds of thousands of late 18th and 19th century people covered the towns and surrounding heights for a glimpse of such an unimaginable sight.

Wonder, astonishment, reverence, awe – a universal fear for the safety of the space traveler – and not a bit of skepticism – is the common thread binding the centuries.  Man was challenging the dominion of God – or the gods – lifting off from the earth to soar in regions heretofore reserved for the celestial.  It was truly an age of miracles, encapsulation the scientific advancements of the era, and merging adventure with the pitchman’s flair for the dramatic.

Neil Armstrong’s first step on the moon was a giant leap for mankind, and no one who witnessed this breathtaking achievement will ever forget the chills running down their back, or the tear forming at the corners of their eyes as one human being, representing all of terra firma, first touched alien soil.  Reading the first-hand accounts of eyewitnesses to the Montgolfier brothers raising their paper balloon off the ground, or witnessing Pilatre de Roaiwe’s ascents elicits the same goose bumps, causes the same awe, raises the same cheers with like enthusiasm.  We are with them through the medium of words and the link of a thousand emotions, no different in 1783 than in 1969 or 2010.

French heroes, British heroes, America heroes:  one world, teetering on the edge of the final frontier.  No one said it would be easy.  The 18th and 19th century aeronauts had their causalities.  Men and women challenged the limits of the known and some lost their lives in the attempt; just as their brothers and sisters of the 20th century suffered as grievously, offering the ultimate  sacrifice.  cross the years, we of Earth mourn our heroes, honor their memory, and grow stronger by their example.  They were the pioneers to the clouds, the moon and the stars:  their stories are the legacy of those who cheer and cry and dare perpetuate the Impossible Dream.

The pages turned, the decades passed; by and large balloonists were relegated to chapters of the past.  But their curiosity and indomitable spirit to challenge the limits of this world set the course for those who would follow in bigger and more advanced technologies.  One thing will never change, however: and to them we owe a debt of thanks, a wave of the hand and a lingering glance upward at the stars.

Through the words, the thoughts, speculations and sometimes criticisms of the aerostatic arts and sciences, we have attempted to honor those brave and perhaps foolish men and women of varnished silk, heated air ad carbonated hydrogen gas.

In summarizing the phenomenon of ballooning, we have compressed an immense amount of data, best described by a paragraph from a newspaper in 1888:

Although it is only a hundred years since the first balloons were made, it would take books enough to fill a goo-sized library to record in detail the myriad styles of flying machines and balloons that have been invented, most of them within a comparatively few years.

It is impossible to chronicle all the flights or even mention the hundreds of individuals involved.  What we hoped to achieve was a comprehensive text combining the famous and the not-so-famous, always keeping in mind the human element.  The story is about people, after all, and the “insignificant” flights often held the imagination long after the great had vanished from the scene and the technologies had been forgotten on the dusty shelves of the Patent Office.  We hope this book kindles the imagination and instills the sense of awe and adventure we felt in writing it.