Montgolfier Balloon (1783): The First Manned Flight in History

The first recorded free flight by human beings took place on 21 November 1783, when a hot-air balloon built by the Montgolfier brothers carried Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlandes over Paris. They rose from the gardens of the Château de la Muette, flew for about 25 minutes and landed some 9 kilometres away. Coming only months after the first public balloon experiments, the flight opened the age of human aviation.

Background: the paper makers of Annonay

The Montgolfiers were a prosperous family of paper manufacturers at Vidalon, near Annonay in the Vivarais region of southern France. Of Pierre Montgolfier’s many children, two became famous: Joseph-Michel, born in 1740, an inventive and restless experimenter, and Jacques-Étienne, born in 1745, a trained architect who managed the family business.

The 18th century was a period of intense interest in gases. Chemists such as Henry Cavendish had isolated “inflammable air”, now called hydrogen, in 1766, and scientists across Europe debated whether a vessel could be made to float in the air. Joseph Montgolfier became fascinated by the idea of lifting objects with heated air.

According to the brothers’ accounts, Joseph made his first experiment in Avignon in November 1782, when a small box of light wood and taffeta rose to the ceiling over a fire. The brothers then built larger models at Annonay, using paper and cloth, both materials their family business knew well.

The first public demonstration (June 1783)

On 4 June 1783 the brothers gave a public demonstration in the market square of Annonay before members of the local assembly. Their unmanned balloon, made of cloth lined with paper and held together with buttons, was inflated over a fire of straw and wool. It rose, by contemporary estimates, to a height of perhaps 1,600-2,000 metres and came down about 2 kilometres away after roughly ten minutes.

The brothers believed that the smoke from their fire produced a special gas with lifting properties, sometimes called “Montgolfier gas”. In fact the lift came simply from heated air, which is less dense than the cooler air around it. News of the Annonay ascent spread rapidly, and the Académie des sciences in Paris invited the brothers to repeat the experiment.

The physics is simple but unforgiving. Air heated to around 100 °C is roughly a fifth less dense than air at a cool spring temperature, so each cubic metre of hot air can lift only about a quarter of a kilogram. A balloon able to carry two people, a fire and its fuel therefore had to be enormous, and keeping the air hot meant carrying burning fuel beneath a fabric envelope, a constant fire risk.

The race with hydrogen

Before the Montgolfiers could do so, a rival appeared. The physicist Jacques Charles, working with the brothers Anne-Jean and Nicolas-Louis Robert, built a balloon of rubberised silk filled with hydrogen. On 27 August 1783 it rose from the Champ de Mars in Paris before a large crowd and came down about 45 minutes later near Gonesse, where frightened villagers reportedly attacked it with pitchforks.

Among the spectators in Paris was Benjamin Franklin, then the American envoy to France. A famous remark is attributed to him from this period: asked what use a balloon was, he reportedly replied by asking what use a newborn baby was. The story is widely repeated, although its exact wording and occasion are uncertain.

Versailles: the animal passengers (September 1783)

Étienne Montgolfier went to Paris and worked with the wallpaper manufacturer Jean-Baptiste Réveillon, whose workshop produced a large, richly decorated balloon in blue and gold. On 19 September 1783, at the Palace of Versailles, it was launched in front of King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette and a huge crowd.

The balloon carried a cage with a sheep, a duck and a rooster. It flew for about eight minutes and landed in woods at Vaucresson, roughly 3 kilometres away. The animals survived, apart from minor injuries usually blamed on the landing, showing that living creatures could breathe and survive in the air.

The first human flights (October-November 1783)

The next step was to send a person aloft. On 15 October 1783 the young science teacher Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier made a tethered ascent from the Réveillon workshop in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, rising to the end of a rope a few dozen metres long. Over the following days he made several more tethered flights, at times with a passenger.

King Louis XVI is said to have suggested that the first free flight should be made by condemned criminals, given the risks. Pilâtre de Rozier and his supporters argued that the honour should go to a free man, and François Laurent, Marquis d’Arlandes, an infantry officer, agreed to join him.

On 21 November 1783 a new balloon, about 23 metres high and 15 metres across according to a contemporary print, was inflated in the grounds of the Château de la Muette, on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne. In the early afternoon it rose with the two men standing on a circular gallery around its base, feeding straw into a fire burning in a brazier beneath the opening.

The balloon drifted across Paris, passing over the Seine and the city’s southern districts. At one point sparks burned holes in the fabric, and the aeronauts used wet sponges to put them out. After about 25 minutes and roughly 9 kilometres, they landed safely on the Butte-aux-Cailles, then in open country between windmills just outside the city. D’Arlandes later wrote a lively account of the journey.

Just ten days later, on 1 December 1783, Jacques Charles and Nicolas-Louis Robert flew a hydrogen balloon from the Tuileries Gardens, watched by a vast crowd. They stayed aloft for about two hours and landed near Nesle-la-Vallée, some 36 kilometres away; Charles then went up again alone and rose to an estimated 3,000 metres.

Hydrogen balloons could stay aloft longer and did not need a fire, so they soon dominated scientific and long-distance ballooning. Hot-air balloons, known in French as montgolfières, faded in importance until the invention of modern propane burners in the 1950s and 1960s revived them for sport.

Key people

• Joseph-Michel Montgolfier (1740-1810): The more experimental brother, who began the work on hot-air lift. He made his only flight on 19 January 1784, at Lyon.
• Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier (1745-1799): The more business-minded brother, who organised the Paris and Versailles demonstrations.
• Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier (1754-1785): Scientist and teacher who made the first tethered and free human flights.
• François Laurent, Marquis d’Arlandes (1742-1809): Army officer who accompanied Pilâtre de Rozier on 21 November 1783.
• Jacques Charles (1746-1823): Physicist who developed the hydrogen balloon with the Robert brothers.

Consequences

Balloon mania swept Europe. Balloon images decorated fans, plates, furniture and clothing, and crowds gathered wherever an ascent was announced. In December 1783 Louis XVI ennobled the brothers’ father, Pierre Montgolfier, in recognition of their achievement.

Within two years balloonists had flown in many countries. James Tytler, editor of the second edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, made the first balloon ascent in Britain at Edinburgh on 27 August 1784, and Vincenzo Lunardi flew from London that September. On 7 January 1785 Jean-Pierre Blanchard and the American John Jeffries crossed the English Channel by hydrogen balloon.

Ballooning also brought the first air deaths. On 15 June 1785 Pilâtre de Rozier and Pierre Romain were killed near Wimereux, on the French coast, when their combined hot-air and hydrogen balloon caught fire and crashed during an attempt to cross the Channel.

Timeline

• 1782, November: Joseph Montgolfier makes his first hot-air experiment at Avignon.
• 1783, 4 June: First public demonstration of an unmanned Montgolfier balloon at Annonay.
• 1783, 27 August: Jacques Charles launches an unmanned hydrogen balloon from the Champ de Mars.
• 1783, 19 September: A sheep, a duck and a rooster fly at Versailles before the king and queen.
• 1783, 15 October: Pilâtre de Rozier makes the first tethered human ascent in Paris.
• 1783, 21 November: Pilâtre de Rozier and d’Arlandes make the first free crewed flight.
• 1783, 1 December: Charles and Nicolas-Louis Robert make the first crewed hydrogen balloon flight.
• 1785, 15 June: Pilâtre de Rozier and Pierre Romain die attempting to fly across the Channel.

Legacy

The flights of 1783 proved that humans could leave the ground and travel through the air, a dream as old as the myth of Icarus. Balloons were soon used for scientific research into the atmosphere and, from the French Revolutionary Wars onward, for military observation. During the Siege of Paris in 1870-1871, balloons carried mail and passengers out of the encircled city.

The principles first tested by the Montgolfiers and Charles also led to airships, such as the German Zeppelin LZ 1, which first flew in 1900. Today the word montgolfière still means a hot-air balloon in French, and the brothers’ names are commemorated in Annonay, where a monument marks the site of the first public ascent.

Why it matters

The flight of 21 November 1783 marked the first time people are known to have travelled freely through the air. It turned flight from fantasy into experiment and began a chain of developments in ballooning, airships and aircraft that led to modern aviation.