The brothers Montgolfier, pioneers of human flight,…
December 1782 CE
The brothers Montgolfier, pioneers of human flight, were born into a family of paper manufacturers in Annonay, in Ardèche, France.
Their parents were Pierre Montgolfier (1700–1793) and his wife, Anne Duret (1701–1760), who had sixteen children.
Pierre established his eldest son, Raymond Montgolfier, later Raymond de Montgolfier (1730–1772), as his successor.
Joseph, the twelfth child, possessed a typical inventor's temperament—a maverick and dreamer, and impractical in terms of business and personal affairs.
Étienne had a much more even and businesslike temperament.
As the fifteenth child, and particularly troublesome to his elder siblings, he had been sent to Paris to train as an architect.
However, after the sudden and unexpected death of Raymond in 1772, he had been recalled to Annonay to run the family business.
In the subsequent ten years, Étienne has applied his talent for technical innovation to the family business; paper making is a high-tech industry in the eighteeenth century.
He has succeeded in incorporating the latest Dutch innovations of the day into the family mills.
His work leads to recognition by the government of France as well as the awarding of a government grant to establish the Montgolfier factory as a model for other French paper makers.
Of the two brothers, it is Joseph who had first contemplated building machines.
Charles Gillispie puts it as early as 1777 when Joseph observed laundry drying over a fire incidentally form pockets that billowed upwards. (Charles Gillispie (1983). The Montgolfier Brothers, and the Invention of Aviation. Princeton University Press)
Joseph makes his first definitive experiments in November 1782 while living in the city of Avignon.
He will report, some years later, that he was watching a fire one evening while contemplating one of the great military issues of the day—an assault on the fortress of Gibraltar, which had proved impregnable from both sea and land.
Joseph had mused on the possibility of an air assault using troops lifted by the same force that was lifting the embers from the fire.
He believed that contained within the smoke was a special gas, which he called Montgolfier Gas, with a special property he called levity.
As a result of these musings, Joseph sets about building a box-like chamber 1×1×1.3 m (3 ft by 3 ft (0.91 m) by 4 ft) out of very thin wood and covering the sides and top with lightweight taffeta cloth.
He crumples and lights some paper under the bottom of the box.
The contraption quickly lifts off its stand and collides with the ceiling.
Joseph then recruits his brother to balloon building by writing the prophetic words, "Get in a supply of taffeta and of cordage, quickly, and you will see one of the most astonishing sights in the world."
The two brothers then set about building a similar device, scaled up by three (so twenty-seven times greater in volume).
The lifting force is so great that they loss control of their craft on its very first test flight on 14 December 1782.
The device floats nearly two kilometers (about one point two miles).
It is destroyed after landing by the "indiscretion" of passersby.
Locations
People
Regions
West Europe
View →Subregions
