Montgolfier brothers

And what became of this Prussian charlatan when an influenza epidemic broke out — an epidemic that Dr. Bato s Remedy could do nothing to curtail For a time he was publicly ridiculed — and he was even lampooned as Dr. Caterpillar in a play appropriately titled None Are So Blind as Those Who Won t See. But he did not relinquish his own theatrical ambitions. Instead he waited for some new scientific phenomenon that he could incorporate into his act. Finally, the Montgolfier brothers introduced the hot air balloon, and Katterfelto had his new demo. During his show he launched what he called fire balloons and explained to the audience the workings of this new scientific marvel. At least until one of the balloons drifted off and ignited a haystack in a farmer s field. 

In 1783, Jacques Charles was the first to fly in a balloon filled with hydrogen gas—two weeks earlier the Montgolfier brothers were responsible for the first balloon flight using hot air. One of Charles s first flights over the French countryside lasted about 45 minutes and took him 15 miles to a small village where the people were so terrified they tore the balloon into shreds. 

On the other hand the well-known radical politician James Fox, a friend of Joseph Priestley, criticised Beddoes s lectures, admittedly at second hand. Beddoes also had problems with his demonstrations , which may have prompted him to hire James Sadler (1751-1828) who had given demonstrations of philosophical fireworks at the town hall in 1789 and 1790. Sadler, who had originally trained as a pastry cook under his father who was a confectioner in the High Street. Sadler is now best known as the first British person to ascend in a balloon. He made his first ascent on 4 October 1784 in a hot-air balloon of his own manufacture, similar to the one used by the Montgolfier brothers, almost a year after the first French ascents and three weeks after Vincenzo Lunardi s flight in London. He travelled six miles. Five weeks later, he made a second ascent in a hydrogen-filled balloon that travelled fourteen miles in a flight that was said to have lasted only twenty minutes. Beddoes described... 

Gillispie, Charles Coulston. The Montgolfier Brothers and the Invention of Aviation, 1783-1784 With a Word on the Importance of Ballooning for the Science of Heat and the Art of Building Railroads Princeton, N. J. Princeton University Press, 1983-... 

On September 18, 1783, living creatures other than birds or insects became airborne for the very first time, carried aloft in a balloon of paper-covered canvas. Suspended beneath the balloon, the brainchild of brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-fitienne Montgolfier, was a wicker basket sturdy enough to carry three passengers a sheep, a duck, and a rooster. 

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