public subscriptions were opened to defray the cost of a new and greater balloon. By this time it was known that hydrogen gas, or "inflammable air" as it was then called, was lighter than air. But its manufacture was then expensive and public aid was needed for the new experiment which would call at the outset for a thousand pounds of iron filings and 498 pounds of sulphuric acid wherewith to manufacture the gas.
The first experiment had been made in the provinces. This one was set for Paris, and in an era when the French capital was intellectually more alert, more eager for novelty, more interested in the advancement of physical science and in new inventions than ever in its long history of hospitality to the new idea. They began to fill the bag August 23, 1783 in the Place des Victoires, but the populace so thronged that square that two days later it was moved half filled to Paris's most historic point, the Champ de Mars. The transfer was made at midnight through the narrow dark streets of mediæval Paris. Eyewitnesses have left descriptions of the scene. Torch-bearers lighted on its way the cortège the central feature of which was the great bag, half filled with gas, flabby, shapeless, monstrous, mysterious, borne along by men clutching at its formless bulk. The state had recognized the importance of the new device and cuirassiers in glittering breastplates on horseback, and halbardiers in buff leather on foot guarded it in its transit through the sleeping city. But Paris was not all asleep. An escort of the sensation-loving rabble kept pace with the guards. The cries of the quarters rose above the tramp of the armed men. Observers have recorded that the passing cab drivers were so affected by wonder that they clambered down from their boxes and with doffed hats knelt in the highway while the procession passed.
The ascension, which occurred two days later, was another moving spectacle. In the centre of the great square which has seen so many historic pageants, rose the swaying, quivering balloon, now filled to its full capacity of twenty-two thousand feet. Whether from the art instinct indigenous to the French, or some superstitious idea like that which impels the Chinese to paint eyes on their junks, the balloon was lavishly decorated in water colours, with views of rising suns, whirling planets, and other solar bodies amongst which it was expected to mingle.
Ranks of soldiers kept the populace at a distance, while within the sacred precincts strolled the King and the ladies and cavaliers of his court treading all unconsciously on the brink of that red terror soon to engulf the monarchy. The gas in the reeling bag was no more inflammable than the air of Paris in those days just before the Revolution. With a salvo of cannon the guy-ropes were released and the balloon vanished in the clouds.
Benjamin Franklin, at the moment representing in France the American colonies then struggling for liberty, witnessed this ascension! "Of what use is a new-born child?" he remarked sententiously as the balloon vanished. 'Twas a saying worthy of a cautious philosopher. Had Franklin been in Paris in 1914 he would have found the child, grown to lusty manhood, a strong factor in the city's defence. It is worth noting by the way that so alert was the American mind at that period that when the news of the Montgolfiers' achievement reached Philadelphia it found David Rittenhouse and other members of the Philosophical Society already experimenting with balloons.
A curious sequel attended the descent of the Montgolfier craft which took place in a field fifteen miles from Paris. Long before the days of newspapers, the peasants had never heard of balloons, and this mysterious object, dropping from high heaven into their peaceful carrot patch affrighted them. Some fled. Others approached timidly, armed with the normal bucolic weapons – scythes and pitchforks. Attacked with these the fainting monster, which many took for a dragon, responded with loud hisses and emitted a gas of unfamiliar but most pestiferous odour. It suggested brimstone, which to the devout in turn implied the presence of Satan. With guns, flails, and all obtainable weapons they fell upon the emissary of the Evil One, beat him to the ground, crushed out of him the vile-smelling breath of his nostrils, and finally hitched horses to him and dragged him about the fields until torn to tatters and shreds.
When the public-spirited M. Charles who had contributed largely to the cost of this experiment came in a day or two to seek his balloon he found nothing but some shreds of cloth, and some lively legends of the prowess of the peasants in demolishing the devil's own dragon.
The government, far-sightedly, recognizing that there would be more balloons and useful ones, thereupon issued this proclamation for the discouragement of such bucolic valour:
A discovery has been made which the government deems it wise to make known so that alarm may not be occasioned to the people. On calculating the different weights of inflammable and common air it has been found that a balloon filled with inflammable air will rise toward heaven until it is in equilibrium with the surrounding air; which may not happen till it has attained to a great height. Anyone who should see such a globe, resembling the moon in an eclipse, should be aware that far from being an alarming phenomenon it is only a machine made of taffetas, or light canvas covered with paper, that cannot possibly cause any harm and which will some day prove serviceable to the wants of society.
Came now the next great step in the progress of aeronautics. It had been demonstrated that balloons could lift themselves. They had even been made to lift dumb animals and restore them to earth unhurt. But if the conquest of the air was to amount to anything, men must go aloft in these new machines. Lives must be risked to demonstrate a theory, or to justify a calculation. Aeronautics is no science for laboratory or library prosecution. Its battles must be fought in the sky, and its devotees must be willing to offer their lives to the cause. In that respect the science of aviation has been different from almost any subject of inquiry that has ever engaged the restless intellect of man, unless perhaps submarine navigation, or the invention of explosives. It cannot be prosecuted except with a perfect willingness to risk life. No doubt this is one of the reasons why practical results seemed so long in the coming. Nor have men been niggardly in this enforced sacrifice. Though no records of assured accuracy are available, the names of forty-eight aeronauts who gave up their lives in the century following the Montgolfiers' invention are recorded. That record ended in 1890. How many have since perished, particularly on the battlefields of Europe where aircraft are as commonplace as cannon, it is too early yet to estimate.
After the success of the ascension from the Champ de Mars, the demand at once arose for an ascension by a human being. It was a case of calling for volunteers. The experiments already made showed clearly enough that the balloon would rise high in air. Who would risk his life soaring one thousand feet or more above the earth, in a flimsy bag, filled with hot air, or inflammable gas, without means of directing its course or bringing it with certainty and safety back to a landing place? It was a hard question, and it is interesting to note that it was answered not by a soldier or sailor, not by an adventurer, or devil-may-care spirit, but by a grave and learned professor of physical science, Pilatre de Rozier. Presently he was joined in his enterprise by a young man of the fashionable world and sporting tastes, the Marquis d'Arlandes. Aristocratic Paris took up aviation in the last days of the eighteenth century, precisely as the American leisure class is taking it up in the first days of the twentieth.
The balloon for this adventure was bigger than its predecessors and for the first time a departure was taken from the spherical variety – the gas bag being seventy-four feet high, and forty-eight feet in diameter. Like the first Montgolfier balloons it was to be inflated with hot air, and the car was well packed with bundles of fuel with which the two aeronauts were to fill the iron brazier when its fires went down. The instinct for art and decoration, so strong in the French mind, had been given full play by the constructors of this balloon and it was painted with something of the gorgeousness of a circus poster.
A tremendous crowd packed the park near Paris whence the ascent was made. Always the spectacle of human lives in danger has a morbid attraction for curiosity seekers, and we have seen in our own days throngs attracted to aviation congresses quite as much in the expectation of witnessing some fatal disaster, as to observe the progress made in man's latest conquest over nature. But in this instance the occasion justified the widest interest. It was an historic moment – more epoch-making than those who gathered in that field in the environs of Paris could have possibly imagined. For in the
