The Ups and Downs of Ballooning

Balloon ascensions were an exciting part of the nineteenthcentury. Some daring individual would set up a balloon in a public space likeHyde Park, and crowds would gather to watch the intrepid adventurer take offand ascend into the skies. In most cases, the balloon would fly a shortdistance and come down in some field. In a few cases, the event was an attemptto set a record. For example, in 1785, Jean-Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffriesleft Dover in the first successful attempt to cross the Channel by balloon.

But sometimes, things did not go as planned.

I discovered the following 1895 graphic not too long ago. Itwas originally an uncut set of 10 cards showing the early history ofballooning. As you can see, the emphasis appears to be on disasters!

Starting from top left, we have Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac andJean-Baptise Biot, who ascended to 4,000 meters to conduct scientificexperiments on gas. They lived. So did the second fellow, André-Jacques Garnerin, who,despite the illustration, made the first successful parachute jump from aballoon in 1797. He owed much to the third fellow, Louis-Sebastien Lenormand,who had conceived the idea of a parachute and jumped from a building with hisumbrella-like contraption in 1783.

The fourth card on the top row has ideas for every steampunkauthor! These are purportedly utopian dreams of flight from the “last century.”Some very interesting flights of fancy! Next to it we have Commander Jean-MarieCoutelle at the Siege of Mainz in 1795, where he used a balloon for reconnaissance(and seems to have earned the wrath of the enemy in the process!).

The first card on the bottom row is a balloon commemoratingNapoleon’s achievements. Interesting that he is still revered nearly 80 yearsafter his ultimate defeat. I was both delighted and saddened to see my belovedSophie Blanchard featured on the next card. Of course the artist had to includethe queen of aeronauts. But perhaps they might have shown something besides herfiery death!

Next to her is Count Franceso Zambeccari, who flew the firstunoccupied balloon in England in 1783, but instead of commemorating thatachievement, the artist decided to cover his crash in the Adriatic in 1804. Anumber of balloons took off from the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, but the artist choseto depict the one from which Thomas Harris fell in 1824. Finally, we have therescue of Francois Arban by Italian fishers in 1846, after he too had crashedinto the Adriatic Sea.

Doesn’t exactly make you want to jump into the next balloon,doesn’t it?