Wonderfull Balloon Ascents
F >>
Fulgence Marion >> Wonderfull Balloon Ascents
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 This etext was prepared by Metra Kay Christofferson:
metra@theonramp.net.
Wonderful Balloon Ascents: or, the Conquest of the Skies
A History of Balloons and Balloon Voyages.
from the French of F. Marion
1870
PREFACE
"Let posterity know, and knowing be astonished, that on the
fifteenth day of September, 1784, Vincent Lunardi of Lucca, in
Tuscany, the first aerial traveller in Britain, mounting from the
Artillery Ground in London, and traversing the regions of the air
for two hours and fifteen minutes, on this spot revisited the
earth. In this rude monument for ages be recorded this wondrous
enterprise successfully achieved by the powers of chemistry and
the fortitude of man, this improvement in science which the great
Author of all Knowledge, patronising by his Providence the
inventions of mankind, hath graciously permitted, to their
benefit and his own eternal glory."
The stone upon which the above inscription was carved, stands, or
stood recently, near Collier's End, in the parish of Standon,
Hertfordshire; and it will possibly afford the English reader a
more accurate idea of the feelings with which the world hailed
the discovery of the balloon than any incident or illustration
drawn from the annals of a foreign country.
The work which we now introduce to our readers does not
exaggerate the case when it declares that no discovery of modern
times has aroused so large an amount of enthusiasm, has excited
so many hopes, has appeared to the human race to open up so many
vistas of enterprise and research, as that for which we are
mainly indebted to the Brothers Montgolfier. The discovery or
the invention of the balloon, however, was one of those efforts
of genius and enterprise which have no infancy. It had reached
its full growth when it burst upon the world, and the ninety
years which have since elapsed have witnessed no development of
the original idea. The balloon of to-day--the balloon in which
Coxwell and Glaisher have made their perilous trips into the
remote regions of the air--is in almost every respect the same as
the balloon with which "the physician Charles," following in the
footsteps of the Montgolfiers, astonished Paris in 1783. There
are few more tantalising stories in the annals of invention than
this. So much had been accomplished when Roziers made his first
aerial voyage above the astonished capital of France that all the
rest seemed easy. The new highway appeared to have been thrown
open to the world, and the dullest imagination saw the air
thronged with colossal chariots, bearing travellers in perfect
safety, and with more than the speed of the eagle, from city to
city, from country to country, reckless of all the obstacles--the
seas, and rivers, and mountains--which Nature might have placed
in the path of the wayfarer. But from that moment to the present
the prospect which was thus opened up has remained a vision and
nothing more. There are--as those who visited the Crystal Palace
two years ago have reason to know--not a few men who still
believe in the practicability of journeying by air. But, with
hardly an exception, those few have abandoned all idea of
utilising the balloon for this purpose. The graceful "machine"
which astonished the world at its birth remains to this day as
beautiful, and as useless for the purposes of travel, as in the
first hour of its history. The day may come when some one more
fortunate than the Montgolfiers may earn the Duke of Sutherland's
offered reward by a successful flight from the Mall to the top of
Stafford House; but when this comes to pass the balloon will have
no share in the honour of the achievement. Not the less,
however, is the story of this wonderful invention worthy of being
recorded. It deserves a place in the history of human
enterprise--if for nothing else--because of the daring courage
which it has in so many cases brought to light. From the days of
Roziers down to those of Coxwell, our aeronauts have fearlessly
tempted dangers not less terrible than those which face the
soldier as he enters the imminent deadly breach; and, as one of
the chapters in this volume mournfully proves, not a few of their
number have paid the penalty of their rash courage with their
lives. All the more is it to be regretted that so little
practical good has resulted from their labours and their
sacrifices; and that so many of those who have perished in
balloon voyages have done so whilst serving to better end than
the amusement of a holiday crowd. There is, however, another
aspect which makes at least the earlier history of the balloon
well worth preserving. This is the influence which the invention
had upon the generation which witnessed it. As these pages
show, the people of Europe seem to have been absolutely
intoxicated by the success of the Montgolfiers' discovery. There
is something bitterly suggestive in our knowledge of this fact.
Whilst pensions and honours and popular applause were being
showered upon the inventors of the balloon, Watt was labouring
unnoticed at his improvements of the steam-engine--a very prosaic
affair compared with the gilded globe which Montgolfier had
caused to rise from earth amidst the acclamations of a hundred
thousand spectators, but one which had before it a somewhat
different history to that of the more startling invention.
England, when it remembers the story of the steam-engine, has
little need to grudge France the honour of discovering the
balloon. After all, however, Great Britain had its share in that
discovery. The early observations of Francis Bacon and Bishop
Wilkins paved the way for the later achievement, whilst it was
our own Cavendish who discovered that hydrogen gas was lighter
than air; and Dr. Black of Edinburgh, who first employed that gas
to raise a globe in which it was contained from the earth. The
Scotch professor, we are told, thought that the discovery which
he made when he sent his little tissue-paper balloon from his
lecture-table to the ceiling of his classroom, was of no use
except as affording the means of making an interesting
experiment. Possibly our readers, after they have perused this
volume, may think that Dr Black was not after all so far wrong as
people once imagined. Be this as it may, however, in these pages
is the history of the balloon, and of the most memorable balloon
voyages, and we comprehend the story to our readers not the less
cordially that it comes from the land where the balloon had its
birth.
London, January, 1870.
BALLOONS AND AIR JOURNEYS.
PART I. THE CONQUEST OF THE SKIES.--1783.
Chapter I. Introduction.
The title of our introduction to aeronautics may appear ambitious
to astronomers, and to those who know that the infinite space we
call the heavens is for ever inaccessible to travellers from the
earth; but it was not so considered by those who witnessed the
ardent enthusiasm evoked at the ascension of the first balloon.
No discovery, in the whole range of history, has elicited an
equal degree of applause and admiration--never has the genius of
man won a triumph which at first blush seemed more glorious. The
mathematical and physical sciences had in aeronautics achieved
apparently their greatest honours, and inaugurated a new era in
the progress of knowledge. After having subjected the earth to
their power; after having made the waves of the sea stoop in
submission under the keels of their ships; after having caught
the lightning of heaven and made it subservient to the ordinary
purposes of life, the genius of man undertook to conquer the
regions of the air. Imagination, intoxicated with past
successes, could descry no limit to human power; the gates of the
infinite seemed to be swinging back before man's advancing step,
and the last was believed to be the greatest of his achievements.
In order to comprehend the frenzy of the enthusiasm which the
first aeronautic triumphs called forth, it is necessary to recall
the appearance of Montgolfier at Versailles, on the 19th of
September, 1783, before Louis XVI, or of the earliest aeronauts
at the Tuileries. Paris hailed the first of these men with the
greatest acclaim, "and then, as now," says a French writer, "the
voice of Paris gave the cue to France, and France to the world!"
Nobles and artisans, scientific men and badauds, great and small,
were moved with one universal impulse. In the streets the
praises of the balloon were sung; in the libraries models of it
abounded; and in the salons the one universal topic was the great
"machine." In anticipation, the poet delighted himself with
bird's-eye views of the scenery of strange countries; the
prisoner mused on what might be a new way of escape; the
physicist visited the laboratory in which the lightning and the
meteors were manufactured; the geometrician beheld the plans of
cities and the outlines of kingdoms; the general discovered the
position of the enemy or rained shells on the besieged town; the
police beheld a new mode in which to carry on the secret service;
Hope heralded a new conquest from the domain of nature, and the
historian registered a new chapter in the annals of human
knowledge.
"Scientific discoveries in general," says Arago, "even those from
which men expect the most advantage, like those of the compass
and the steam-engine, were greeted at first with contempt, or at
the best with indifference. Political events, and the fortunes
of armies monopolised almost entirely the attention of the
people. But to this rule there are two exceptions--the
discoveries of America and of aerostatics, the advents of
Columbus and of Montgolfier." It is not here our duty to inquire
how it happened that the discoveries made by these two personages
are classed together. Air-travelling may be as unproductive of
actual good to society as filling the belly with the east wind"
is to the body, while every one knows something of the extent to
which the discovery of Columbus has influenced the character, the
civilisation, the destinies, in short, of the human race. We are
speaking at present of the known and well-attested fact, that the
discovery of America and the discovery of the method of
traversing space by means of balloons--however they may differ in
respect of results to man--rank equally in this, that of all
other discoveries these two have attracted the greatest amount of
attention, and given, in their respective eras, the greatest
impulse to popular feeling. Let the reader recall the marks of
enthusiasm which the discovery of the islands on the east coast
of America excited in Andalusia, in Catalonia, in Aragon and
Castile--let him read the narrative of the honours paid by town
and village, not only to the hero of the enterprise, but even to
his commonest sailors, and then let him search the records of the
epoch for the degree of sensation produced by the discovery of
aeronautics in France, which stands in the same relationship to
this event as that in which Spain stands to the other. The
processions of Seville and Barcelona are the exact prototypes of
the fetes of Lyons and Paris. In France, in 1783, as in Spain
two centuries previously, the popular imagination was so greatly
excited by the deeds performed, that it began to believe in
possibilities of the most unlikely description. In Spain, the
conquestadores and their followers believed that in a few days
after they had landed on American soil, they would have gathered
as much gold and precious stones, as were then possessed by the
richest European Sovereigns. In France, each one following his
own notions, made out for himself special benefits to flow from
the discovery of balloons. Every discovery then appeared to be
only the precursor of other and greater discoveries, and nothing
after that time seemed to be impossible to him who attempted the
conquest of the atmosphere. This idea clothed itself in every
form. The young embraced it with enthusiasm, the old made it the
subject of endless regrets. When one of the first aeronautic
ascents was made, the old Marechal Villeroi, an octogenarian and
an invalid, was conducted to one of the windows of the Tuileries,
almost by force, for he did not believe in balloons. The
balloon, meanwhile, detached itself from its moorings; the
physician Charles, seated in the car, gaily saluted the public,
and was then majestically launched into space in his air-boat;
and at once the old Marechal, beholding this, passed suddenly
from unbelief to perfect faith in aerostatics and in the capacity
of the human mind, fell on his knees, and, with his eyes bathed
in tears, moaned out pitifully the words, "Yes, it is fixed! It
is certain! They will find out the secret of avoiding death; but
it will be after I am gone!"
If we recall the impressions which the first air-journeys made,
we shall find that, among people of enthusiastic temperament, it
was believed that it was not merely the blue sky above us, not
merely the terrestrial atmosphere, but the vast spaces through
which the worlds move, that were to become the domain of man--the
sea of the balloon. The moon, the mysterious dwelling-place of
men unknown, would no longer be an inaccessible place. Space no
longer contained regions which man could not cross! Indeed,
certain expeditions attempted the crossing of the heavens, and
brought back news of the moon. The planets that revolve round
the sun, the far-flying comets, the most distant stars--these
formed the field which from that time was to lie open to the
investigations of man.
This enthusiasm one can well enough understand. There is in the
simple fact of an aerial ascent something so bold and so
astonishing, that the human spirit cannot fail to be profoundly
stirred by it. And if this is the feeling of men at the present
day, when, after having been witnesses of ascents for the last
eighty years, they see men confiding themselves in a swinging car
into the immensities of space, what must have been the
astonishment of those who, for the first time since the
commencement of the world, beheld one of their fellow-creatures
rolling in space, without any other assurance of safety than what
his still dim perception of the laws of nature gave him?
Why should we be obliged here to state that the great discovery
that stirred the spirits of men from the one end of Europe to the
other, and gave rise to hopes of such vast discoveries, should
have failed in realising the expectations which seemed so clearly
justified by the first experiments? It is now eighty-six years
since the first aerial journey astonished the world, and yet, in
1870, we are but little more advanced in the science than we were
in 1783. Our age is the most renowned for its discoveries of any
that the world has seen. Man is borne over the surface of the
earth by steam; he is as familiar as the fish with the liquid
element; he transmits his words instantaneously from London to
New York; he draws pictures without pencil or brush, and has made
the sun his slave. The air alone remains to him unsubdued. The
proper management of balloons has not yet been discovered. More
than that, it appears that balloons are unmanageable, and it is
to air-vessels, constructed more nearly upon the model of birds,
that we must go to find out the secret of aerial navigation. At
present, as in former times, we are at the mercy of
balloons--globes lighter than the air, and therefore the sport
and the prey of tempests and currents. And aeronauts, instead of
showing themselves now as the benefactors of mankind, exhibit
themselves mainly to gratify a frivolous curiosity, or to crown
with eclat a public fete.
Chapter II. Attempts in Ancient Times to Fly in the Air.
Before contemplating the sudden conquest of the aerial kingdom,
as accomplished and proclaimed at the end of the last century, it
is at once curious and instructive to cast a glance backward, and
to examine, by the glimmering of ancient traditions, the attempts
which have been made or imagined by man to enfranchise himself
from the attraction of the earth
The greater number of the arts and sciences can be traced along a
chronological ladder of great length: some, indeed, lose
themselves in the night of time." The accomplishment of raising
oneself in the air, however, had no actual professors in
antiquity, and the discovery of Montgolfier seems to have come
into the world, so to speak, spontaneously. By this it is to be
understood that, unlike Copernicus and Columbus, Montgolfier
could not read in history of any similar discovery, containing
the germ of his own feat. At least, we have no proof that the
ancient nations practiced the art of aerial navigation to any
extent whatever. The attempts which we are about to cite do not
strictly belong to the history of aerostatics.
Classic mythology tells us of Daedalus, who, escaping with his
son Icarus from the anger of Minos, in the Isle of Crete, saved
himself from the immediate evil by the aid of wings, which he
made for himself and his son, and by means of which they were
enabled to fly in the air. The wings, it appears, were soldered
with wax, and Icarus, flying too high, was struck by a ray of the
sun, which melted the wax. The youth fell into the sea, which
from him derived its name of Icarian. It is possible that this
fable only symbolisms the introduction of sails in navigation.
Coming down through ancient history, we note a certain Archytas,
of Tarentum, who, in the fourth century B. C., is said to have
launched into the air the first "flying stag," and who, according
to the Greek writers, "made a pigeon of wood, which flew, but
which could not raise itself again after having fallen." Its
flight, it is said, "was accomplished by means of a mechanical
contrivance, by the vibrations of which it was sustained in the
air."
In the year 66 A.D., in the time of Nero, Simon, the
magician--who called himself "the mechanician"--made certain
experiments at Rome of flying at a certain height. In the eyes
of the early Christians this power was attributed to the devil,
and St. Peter, the namesake of this flying man, is said to have
prayed fervently while Simon was amusing himself in space. It
was possibly in answer to his prayers that the magician failed in
his flight, fell upon the Forum, and broke his neck on the spot.
From the summit of the tower of the hippodrome at Constantinople,
a certain Saracen met the same fate as Simon, in the reign of the
Emperor Comnenus. His experiments were conducted on the
principle of the inclined plane. He descended in an oblique
course, using the resistance of the air as a support. His robe,
very long and very large, and of which the flaps were extended on
an osier frame, preserved him from suddenly falling.
The inclined plane probably suggested to Milton the flight of the
angel Uriel, in "Paradise Lost," who descended in the morning
from heaven to earth upon a ray of the sun, and ascended in the
evening from earth to heaven by the same means. But we cannot
quote here the fancies of pure imagination, and we will not speak
of Medeus the magician, of the enchantress Armida, of the witches
of the Brocken, of the hippogriff of Zephyrus with the rosy
wings, or of the diabolical inventions of the middle ages, for
many of which the stake was the only reward.
Roger Bacon, in the thirteenth century, inaugurated a more
scientific era. In his "Treaty of the Admirable Power of Art and
Nature," he puts forth the idea that it is possible "to make
flying-machines in which the man, being seated or suspended in
the middle, might turn some winch or crank, which would put in
motion a suit of wings made to strike the air like those of a
bird." In the same treatise he sketches a flying-machine, to
which that of Blanchard, who lived in the eighteenth century,
bears a certain resemblance. The monk, Roger Bacon, was worthy
of entering the temple of fame before his great namesake the Lord
Chancellor, who in the seventeenth century inaugurated the era of
experimental science.
Jean Baptiste Dante, a mathematician of Perugia, who lived in the
latter part of the fifteenth century, constructed artificial
wings, by means of which, when applied to thin bodies, men might
raise themselves off the ground into the air. It is recorded
that on many occasions he experimented with his wings on the Lake
Thrasymenus. These experiments, however, had a sad end. At a
fete, given for the celebration of the marriage of Bartholomew
d'Alvani, Dante, who must not be confounded with the poet, whose
flights were of quite another kind--offered to exhibit the wonder
of his wings to the people of Perugia. He managed to raise
himself to a great height, and flew above the square; but the
iron with which he moved one of his wings having been bent, he
fell upon the church of the Virgin, and broke his thigh.
A similar accident befell a learned English Benedictine Oliver of
Malmesbury. This ecclesiastic was considered gifted with the
power of foretelling events; but, like other similarly
circumstanced, he does not seem to have beer able to divine the
fate which awaited himself. He constructed wings after the model
of those which according to Ovid, Daedalus made use of. These he
attached to his arms and his feet, and, thus furnished, he threw
himself from the height of a tower. But the wings bore him up
for little more than a distance of 120 paces. He fell at the foot
of the tower, broke his legs, and from that moment led a
languishing life. He consoled himself, however, in his
misfortune by saying that his attempt must certainly have
succeeded had he only provided himself with a tail.
Before going further, let us take notice that the seventeenth
century is, par excellence, the century distinguished for
narratives of imaginary travels. It was then that astronomy
opened up its world of marvels. The knowledge of observers was
vastly increased, and from that time it became possible to
distinguish the surface of the moon and of other celestial
bodies. Thus a new world, as it were, was revealed for human
thought and speculation. We learned that our globe was not, as
we had supposed, the centre of the universe. It was assigned its
place far from that centre, and was known to be no more than a
mere atom, lost amid an incalculable number of other globes. The
revelations of the telescope proved that those who formerly were
considered wise actually knew nothing. Quickly following these
discoveries, extraordinary narratives of excursions through space
began to be given to the world.
Those scientific romances were simply wild exaggerations, based
upon the thinnest foundation of scientific facts. In order,
however, to describe a journey among the stars, it was necessary
to invent some mode of locomotion in these distant regions. In
former times Lucian had been content with a ship which ascended
to the rising moon upon a waterspout; but it was now necessary to
improve upon this very primitive mode, as people began to know
something more of the forces of nature. One of the first of
these travellers in imagination to the moon in modern times was
Godwin (1638), and his plan was more ingenious than that of
Lucian. He trained a great number of the wild swans of St.
Helena to fly constantly upward toward a white object, and,
having succeeded in thus training them, one fine night he threw
himself off the Peak of Teneriffe, poised upon a piece of board,
which was borne upward to the white moon by a great team of the
gigantic swans. At the end of twelve days he arrived, according
to his story, at his destination. A little later another writer
of this peculiar kind of fiction, Wilkins, an Englishman,
professed to have made the same ascent, borne up by an eagle.
Alexandre Dumas, who recently wrote a short romance upon the same
subject, only made a translation of an English work by that
author. Wilkins' work is entitled, "The Discovery of a New
World." One chapter of the book bears the title, "That 'tis
possible for some of our posterity to find out a conveyance to
this other world; and, if there be inhabitants there, to have
commerce with them." It is thus that the right reverend
philosopher reasons:--
"If it be here inquired what means there may be conjectured for
our ascending beyond the sphere of the earth's mathematical
vigour, I answer.--1. 'Tis not possible that a man may be able to
fly by the application of wings to his own body, as angels are
pictured, as Mercury and Daedalus are feigned, and as hath been
attempted by divers, particularly by a Turk in Constantinople, a
Busbequius relates. 2. If there be such a great duck in
Madagascar as Marcus Polus, the Venetian, mentions, the feathers
of whose wings are twelve feet long, which can scoop up a horse
and his rider, or an elephant, as our kites do a mouse; why,
then, 'Tis but teaching one of these to carry a man, and he may
ride up thither, as Ganymede does upon an eagle. 3. Or if
neither of these ways will serve yet I do seriously, and upon
good grounds, affirm it is possible to make a flying chariot, in
which a man may sit and give such a motion to it as shall convey
him through the air. And this, perhaps, might be made large
enough to carry divers men at the same time, together with food
for their viaticum, and commodities for traffic. It is not the
bigness of anything in this kind that can hinder its motion if
the motive faculty be answerable "hereunto. We see that; great
ship swims as well as a small cork, and an eagle flies in the air
as well as a little gnat. This engine may be contrived from the
same principles by which Archytas made a wooden dove, and
Regiomontanus a wooden eagle. I conceive it were no difficult
matter (if a man had leisure) to show more particularly the means
of composing it. The perfecting of such an invention would be of
such excellent use that it were enough, not only to make a man
famous but the age wherein he lives. For, besides the strange
discoveries that it might occasion in this other world, it would
be also of inconceivable advantage for travelling, above any
other conveyance that is now in use. So that, notwithstanding
all these seeming impossibilities, it is likely enough that there
may be a means invented of journeying to the moon; and how happy
shall they be that are first successful in this attempt!"
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12