Wonderful ballon ascents : or, The conquest of the skies A history of balloons and balloon voyages . confinement on the earth than of the freedom ofthe skies. In 1670 Francis Lana constructed the flying-machineshown on the next page. The specific lightness ofheated air and of hydrogen gas not having yet been dis-covered, his only idea for making his globes rise was to takeall the air out of them. But even supposing that the globeswere thus rendered light enough to rise, they must inevitablyhave collapsed under the atmospheric pressure. As for the idea of making use of a sail to direct theballo
Wonderful ballon ascents : or, The conquest of the skies A history of balloons and balloon voyages . confinement on the earth than of the freedom ofthe skies. In 1670 Francis Lana constructed the flying-machineshown on the next page. The specific lightness ofheated air and of hydrogen gas not having yet been dis-covered, his only idea for making his globes rise was to takeall the air out of them. But even supposing that the globeswere thus rendered light enough to rise, they must inevitablyhave collapsed under the atmospheric pressure. As for the idea of making use of a sail to direct theballoon, as one directs a vessel, that also was a delusion;for the whole machine, globes and sails, being freely throwninto the air, would infallibly follow the direction of thewind, whatever that might be. When a ship lies in the sea, *4 WONDERFUL BALLOON ASCENTS. and its sails are inflated with the wind, we must rememberthat there are two forces in operation—the active force ofthe wind and the passive force of the resistance of the water ;and in working these forces the one against the other, the. Laiu-vs Flying-machine. sailor can turn within a point of any direction he when we are subjected wholly to a single force, andhave no point of support by the use of which to turn thatforce to our own purposes, as is the case with the aeronaut,we are entirely at the mercy of that force, and must obey the flying-machine of Lana there was constructed ATTEMPTS TO FLY IN THE AIR. 15 by Galien (who, like the former, was an ecclesiastic) an air-boat, less chimerical in its form, looked at in view of the con-ditions of aerial navigation, but much more singular. Galiendescribes his air-boat, in 1755, in his little work entitled,The Art of Sailing in the Air. His project was a mostextraordinary one, and its boldness is only equalled by theseriousness of the narrative. According to him, theatmosphere is divided into two horizontal layers, the upperof which is much lighter tha
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