Age of the Aeronaut

Inspired by watching clothes billow over an open fire and mindful of the British chemist Henry Cavendish’s discovery of hydrogen, the Montgolfier brothers experimented with fabric bags filled with heated air. Shortly after their successful ascensions with animal aeronauts, namely a sheep, a duck, and a rooster, Jacques-Étienne became the first person to take flight on the 15th of October, 1783 in a tethered balloon.

That same year, the first free-flight with humans took place on November 21st. Physics teacher and soon-to-be first victim of balloon travel Pilâtre de Rozier, and the French military officer François Laurent d'Arlandes ascended in a magnificent balloon from the park Bois de Boulogne.  The historical event was witnessed by Louis XVI and thousands of enthralled onlookers, including Faujas de St. Fond, who documented the early history of ballooning.

No longer earthbound, the human spirit and imagination took flight. The age of the aeronaut was born. The new world of aeronautics became a seemingly endless frontier where adventure-bound aeronauts continuously made discoveries and pushed the boundaries of what seemed possible.

Scientific observation, adventure, and entertainment were all part of the story of ballooning. Thomas Baldwin’s introduction to ballooning included the first aerial views of earth. Baldwin’s subsequent account of his balloon travels, Airopaidia, was intended as an introductory manual to ballooning and aeronautics.  

Always looking to improve the new field of aeronautics, restless and inventive minds turned their attention towards controlled aerial navigation. One of the earliest pioneers in aeronautics was the English engineer George Cayley.

At the close of the 18^th century, Cayley put forth designs for a fixed winged flying machine with separate systems for lift, propulsion, and control; similar to how the first modern airplanes would be designed. Cayley broke new ground in aeronautics at a time when science and the public questioned the future of flight as something more than a leisure activity. Cayley’s own inventions were not successful, but his work influenced ideas on practical flying machines.

Additional advancements took place in1797 when André-Jacques Garnerin designed and tested a parachute capable of slowing an aeronaut’s descent. His first substantial parachute jump was from a height of over 3,000 feet from a hydrogen balloon above Paris.

The great problem is at length solved. The air, as well as the earth and the ocean, has been subdued by science, and will become a common and convenient highway for mankind. The Atlantic has been actually crossed in a balloon…

–Edgar Allan Poe, “The Balloon Hoax”

Aneroid barometer ca. 1870–1900 National Museum of American History (Photo: Hugh Talman)

Ballooning provided an opportunity to study meteorological phenomena. Portable weather instruments, like this barometer, were used in balloon ascents to measure atmospheric pressure and record height, temperature, and humidity. 

In 1862, the British Association for the Advancement of Science appointed meteorologist James Glaisher to study the atmosphere by balloon, and his work is documented in volumes such as 1871's Travels in the Air. During one flight, Glaisher and his co-pilot Henry Coxwell ascended a record 36,000 feet. The air was so thin and cold that their test-subject—a pigeon—froze, while Glaisher passed out. Coxwell had to climb into the rigging to release a valve line and stop the ascent.

As the 19^th century progressed, fantastic airships became a mainstay of fiction. Intrepid travelers flew beyond the gravitational pull of the Earth to Mars. Ships sailed from the ocean into the air.

Creative minds were inspired by the possibilities that flight held and pictured a far-flung future with many of their works now revered as early examples of science fiction. In the late 1800s, novelist and illustrator Albert Robida drew images of France in the 1950s, when flying machines filled the skies. 

Albert Robida Le vingtième siècle [The twentieth century] Paris, 1880s

Albert Robida Le vingtième siècle: la vie électrique [The twentieth century: the electric life] Paris, 1893

In his 1909 story With the Night Mail, Rudyard Kipling describes life in the year 2000, featuring airships powered by a device called Fleury’s Ray. Flight is so commonplace in Kipling's fictional future that families place ads for personal pilots. 

Frank Reade was an extremely popular series of dime novels, starring Reade as a brilliant inventor. Reade traveled the world in fantastic flying machines searching for treasure. His wild adventures captured public attention when practical flight seemed possible and imminent.

One of the few women working in the genre at the time, Sara Weiss wrote in 1903 of an airship capable of flying to Mars so scientists could study the plants, animals, and other life thought to exist on the Red Planet. 

There isn’t a big power in Europe, or Asia, or America, or Africa, that hasn’t got at least one or two flying machines hidden up its sleeve at the present time. Not one. Real, workable, flying machines. And the spying! The spying and manoeuvring to find out what the others have got.

—H.G. Wells, The War in the Air

Early aviators were able to enjoy a taste of personalized flight using gliders, and these devices set the stage for powered flight. Otto Lilienthal designed and tested the most successful gliders of the time, using designs inspired by his studies of the anatomical structure of bird wings. Lilienthal's work helped persuade the scientific community and the public that powered flight could one day be practical—even though he died in 1896 due to injuries sustained in a glider crash.