How it began
Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier were paper manufacturers from Annonay in Ardèche. Joseph was the first to take an interest in aeronautics. The brothers began to experiment with lighter-than-air flight in 1782, using a piece of fabric lifted by a fire of wool and damp straw. One of their demonstrations attracted the attention of the Académie Royale des Sciences, which asked them to repeat the experiment in Paris. On September 19, 1783, they flew a balloon at Versailles before Louis XVI.
How it works
The balloon is an envelope filled with air heated by a fire, which makes it lighter than the surrounding air. The Versailles balloon was made of cotton canvas with paper glued onto both sides. It measured 18.47 meters tall by 13.28 meters wide and weighed 400 kg. It was named Le Réveillon after Jean-Baptiste Réveillon, director of the royal wallpaper manufactory, who designed its sky-blue and gold decoration. A round wicker basket hung below it on a rope.
What changed first
As a precaution, the Versailles flight carried a sheep, a duck, and a cockerel. The balloon rose about 600 meters, traveled 3.5 km, and came down eight minutes later in the Wood of Vaucresson with the animals alive. On November 21, 1783, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes made the first free human flight from the Château de la Muette, flying about 9 km over Paris in 25 minutes.
What lasted
The Château de Versailles describes the 1783 experiment as the first aerostatic flight in history, the moment when people could at last leave the surface of the earth. The hot air balloon type is still called a Montgolfière after the brothers. The Museum of Flight credits them as the inventors of the first practical hot air balloon.
