The first human flight


 
Portrait of Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier. Engraving by Le Grand, 1784. Credit: Smithsonian Libraries


The first confirmed human flight was accomplished by Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier (1745–1799) in a tethered Montgolfière No 7 hot air balloon, most likely on October 15, 1783, from the yard of the workshop in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, one of the suburbs of Paris. A little while later on that same day, physicist Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier (1754–1785) became the second to ascend into the air, to an altitude of 26 metres, which was the limit of the rope. Sources differ on whether Pilâtre de Rozier was accompanied by Marquis d'Arlandes (1742–1809) on this flight. 

   The hot air was provided by a straw fed fire below the fabric envelope and the balloon stayed up for nearly 4 and a half minutes. The balloon, built by Étienne Montgolfier, was about 23 m tall, 15 m in diameter, and had a volume of 60,000 cubic feet (1,700 m3).

The tethered flight of Montgolfière balloon on October 19, 1783. Credit: Bibliothèque nationale de France


   Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier and his brother Joseph-Michel Montgolfier (1740–1810) were French paper manufacturers and aviation pioneers. In 1782–83 they invented the hot air balloon, which launched the first confirmed piloted ascent by humans. 

   On September 19, 1783, the Montgolfier brothers' balloon launched carrying the first living creatures to fly in a craft: a duck, a rooster, and a sheep. The demonstration was performed at the royal palace in Versailles, before King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette and a crowd. All animals survived and helped to demonstrate that balloon flight was safe for humans. On November 21 of that year, de Rozier and d'Arlandes made the first free balloon flight by humans. They flew about 3,000 feet (900 m) above Paris for a distance of nine kilometers.
 
   1786 description of the historic Montgolfier Brothers' 1783 balloon flight. Illustration with engineering proportions and description. Engineering data is provided in prerevolutionary French units. These units, while translating literally to "feet" and "pounds", varied regionally and the version was not specified by the engraver. If Parisian units were used then this translates to metric and Imperial measurements as follows:

 Height of the globe: 70 pieds du roi = 22.7 metres
 Weight of the globe: 1600 Livres = 780 kg
 Diameter: 46 pieds du roi = 14.9m
 Lifting capacity: 1600-1700 livre = about 780-830 kg
 Volume: 60,000 pieds cubes = about 2,000 cubic metres
 Gallery: 3 pied du roi = 1 metre

   The top portion was surrounded by fleurs-de-lys, with the twelve zodiac signs below. In the middle portion were images of the king's face, each surrounded by a sun. The bottom section was filled with mascarons and garlands; Several eagle's wings appear to support this powerful machine in the air. All of this ornamentation was gold on a beautiful blue background, so that that this superb globe appeared to be gold and azure. The circular gallery, in which we see the Marquis D'Arlandes and Mr. Pilatre de Rozier, was covered in crimson draperies with gold fringes.
 

 © 2025, Andrew Mirecki

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
Sputnik 1. The first in orbit.   I begin my blog about the history of astronomy and space exploration with a post about Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. Replica of Sputnik 1 satellite at the Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum.  Credit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum In 1948, Mikhail Tikhonravov (1900–1974), then a deputy chief of a secret Soviet NII-4 research institute, started to make proposals for the construction of multistage rockets for long-range missiles and satellites. The reactions for his reports were initially skeptical, but they piqued the interest of Sergei Korolev (1907–1966), the future chief designer of the Soviet space program at Design Bureau No. 1 (OKB-1). In January 1954, NII-4 officially initiated project to create an artificial Earth satellite. In May 1954 the project received approval from the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences and Korolev submitted a proposal "On the artificial satellite of the Earth" to the Min...
Read more
Image
 SpaceShipOne. The r ecord breaking plane.   SpaceShipOne aircraft in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Credit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, NASM Original Photography, NASM Acc. 2012-0026.   SpaceShipOne is an experimental air-launched rocket-powered aircraft with sub-orbital spaceflight capability using a hybrid rocket motor. Its mother ship was named "White Knight". Both craft were developed and flown by Mojave Aerospace Ventures, which was a joint venture between Paul Allen (1953–2018) and Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan's (b. 1943) aviation company.    With SpaceShipOne, private enterprise crossed the threshold into human spaceflight, previously the domain of government programs. The SpaceShipOne team aimed for a simple, robust, and reliable vehicle design that could make affordable space travel and tourism possible. SpaceShipOne won the $10 million Ansari X Prize for repeated flights in a priva...
Read more
Image
 Tiangong 1. China's first space station.     Computer-generated rendering of Tiangong 1 in orbit. Credit: China Manned Space Engineering Office   Tiangong 1 (eng. Heavenly Palace 1), the first Chinese space laboratory module and a prototype space station, was launched from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on September 29, 2011 at 13:16 UT by a Chang Zheng 2F rocket. The module served as both a crewed laboratory and an experimental testbed to demonstrate orbital rendezvous and docking capabilities and to accumulate the experience for the construction, management and operation of a space station.   Tiangong 1  weighed approximately 8,506 kg and measured 10.4 m long with a diameter of 3.35 m. The module had a pressurised habitable volume of approximately 14.4 cubic metres, and used passive APAS-type docking connectors. Structurally, Tiango...
Read more