Eighteenth Century Ballooning :: European Europe History

Eighteenth Century Ballooning In a duration where the skies are full of aircraft, it is hard to imagine a time when air travel was nothing but a dream. That was just the sequel during the early eighteenth century. The dream of flight was so concentrated on winged flight that inflateing was actually and accidental discovery. The shift to vary opportunities to fly occurred in 1766 with the discovery of hydrogen. Henry Cavendish discovered the gas he coined the inflamm fit gas. At that time this meant that the gas was highly combustible, unlike directlys interpretation of inflammable. What made this gas so important was the item that the gas was much lighter than the atmosphere. The lighter gas would give the balloon lift in the surrounding atmosphere, hopefully taking a benevolent along with it. The new discovery brought a lot of excitement to the hunting of air travel. The discovery began to move forward in 1774 with Joseph Priestlys publication of Experime nts and Observations with Different Types of Air. This paper explored uses of the gas and hike explained its properties for future experimentation. In 1777, the paper was translated into French and read by Joseph Montgolfier. The paper inspired Montgolfier to further explore the possibilities of the gas. Montgolfier and his brother Etienne began experimenting with the gas in hopes of coming up with a device to give them flight. This became a reality in 1786 when the two brothers were able to fly small cloth and paper hot air modify balloons. This was the small and modest beginning to hot air balloon flight. The brothers had more or less complication to work out with the first flights being experimental. They used dimmed smoke from burning chopped wool or damp still hunt to lift the balloon. The smoke idea most likely came from a conceit left over from the medieval times. They believed that smoke had more of a faithfulness of lightness, and lighter meant t hat the balloon had a better chance of flight. Another hypothesis is that the brothers believed that the dense smoke would simply be better contained in the balloon. whatsoever individuals even believe that the brothers used thick smoke to conceal their ideas.