19 september 1783 experiments Versailles by Etienne Montgolfier balloon aircraft travel wind power transport vehicle airship hot
A balloon is a type of aircraft that remains aloft due to its buoyancy. A balloon travels by moving with the wind. It is distinct from an airship, which is a buoyant aircraft that can be propelled through the air in a controlled manner. The "basket" or capsule that is suspended by cables beneath a balloon and carries people, animals, or automatic equipment (including cameras and telescopes, and flight-control mechanisms) may also be called the gondola. Following Henry Cavendish's 1766 work on hydrogen, Joseph Black proposed that a balloon filled with hydrogen would be able to rise in the air. The first recorded manned flight was made in a hot air balloon built by the Montgolfier brothers on November 21, 1783. The flight started in Paris and reached a height of 500 feet or so. The pilots, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes, covered about 5½ miles in 25 minutes. Only a few days later, on December 1, 1783, Professor Jacques Charles and Nicholas Louis Robert made the first gas balloon flight, also from Paris. Their hydrogen-filled balloon flew to almost 2,000 feet (600 m), stayed aloft for over 2 hours and covered a distance of 27 miles (43 km), landing in the small town of Nesles-la-Vallée. The first aircraft disaster occurred in May 1785 when the town of Tullamore, County Offaly, Ireland was seriously damaged when the crash of a balloon resulted in a fire that burned down about 100 houses, making the town home to the world's first aviation disaster. To this day, the town shield depicts a phoenix rising from the ashes. Balloon landing in Mashgh square, Iran (Persia), at the time of Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar, around 1850. Jean-Pierre Blanchard went on to make the first manned flight of a balloon in America on January 9, 1793, after touring Europe to set the record for the first balloon flight in countries including Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland.
Size: 2565px × 4025px
Photo credit: © SOTK2011 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: -fashioned, 1800, 19th, 2d, academic, age, aged, air, aircraft, airship, ancient, antiquarian, antique, antiquity, art, artistic, attraction, aviation, bag, bags, balloon, basket, black, book, bw, bygone, cables, capsule, century, classical, copy, cut, cut-, drawing, embossed, empire, engineering, engrave, engraved, engraver, engraving, etching, expression, figure, flight, formal, front, frontispiece, gondola, graphic, hand, heritage, historic, historical, history, hobby, hot, hydrogen, illustrated, illustration, image, imperial, invention, inventive, majesty, master, monotone, national, nineteenth, notable, obscure, obsolete, olden, original, paper, passenger, period, pictorial, picture, pilot, portrait, power, pre, press, print, printed, printing, proof, publication, publicity, rare, real, realism, realistic, reference, relief, replica, represent, representation, repro, reproduce, reproduction, retro, romantic, sand, science, scientific, social, standard, steel, studio, study, style, teach, time, title, tool, topic, topical, tourism, tourist, tract, transport, travel, unusual, vehicle, victoria, victorian, vintage, white, wicker, wind
