Professor Jacques Charles and the Robert brothers…
August 1783 CE
The Robert brothers are skilled engineers with a workshop at the Place des Victoires in Paris, who have worked with Jacques Charles to build the first usable hydrogen balloon in 1783
Charles had conceived the idea that hydrogen would be a suitable lifting agent for balloons because, as a chemist, he has studied the work of his contemporaries Henry Cavendish, Joseph Black and Tiberius Cavallo.
Jacques Charles has designed the hydrogen balloon and the Robert brothers have invented the methodology for constructing the lightweight, airtight gas bag.
They dissolved rubber in a solution of turpentine and varnished the sheets of silk that were stitched together to make the main envelope.
They use alternate strips of red and white silk, but the discoloration of the varnishing/rubberizing process leaves a red and yellow result.
Jacques Charles and the Robert brothers launch their balloon from the Champ-de-Mars (now the site of the Eiffel Tower); Benjamin Franklin is among the crowd of onlookers.
The balloon is comparatively small, a thirty-five cubic-meter sphere of rubberized silk, and only capable of lifting about nine kilograms.
It is filled with hydrogen that had been made by pouring nearly a quarter of a ton of sulfuric acid onto half a ton of scrap iron.
The hydrogen gas is fed into the envelope through lead pipes; but as it is not passed through cold water, great difficulty is experienced in filling the balloon completely (the gas is hot when produced, but as it cools in the balloon, it contracts).
Daily progress bulletins had been issued on the inflation; and the crowd is so great that on the 26th the balloon had been moved secretly by night to the Champ-de-Mars, a distance of four kilometers.
The balloon flies northwards for forty-five minutes, pursued by chasers on horseback, and lands twenty-one kilometers away in the village of Gonesse where the reportedly terrified local peasants attack it with pitchforks or knives and destroy it.
The project has been funded by a subscription organized by Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond.
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