Balloon Ascensions 181 



reprisals, and it had much to do with the undeserved discredit 

 which has since fallen upon the statements of Robertson. 



The ascent of Gay-Lussac had a well deserved fame. But people 

 went too far in passing over in complete silence those which had 

 preceded it. Robertson complained justly that the role which he 

 himself had previously played had not been recognized: 



M. Biot printed in his treatise on physics and repeats in his 

 courses in the College de France that M. Gay-Lussac rose to the 

 greatest height that man had reached up to that time. This assertion, 

 though false, is believed by the youth of today, because I have no one 

 who can say every year to some hundreds of auditors that I had risen 

 to 3630 fathoms more than a year before the ascent of Gay-Lussac; 

 and the time will soon come when no one will know or remember that, 

 before the ascent of MM. Biot and Gay-Lussac, I had made one like it, 

 and like theirs, in the interest of science, but during which the air of 

 those high regions had been less hospitable to me than to those gentle- 

 men. (Mem., vol. I, p. 117.) 



A few years after, in August, 1808, Andreoli, one of the com- 

 panions of the unfortunate Zambeccari, rose from Padua, and 

 reached, if we are to believe him, a height much greater than that 

 which his predecessors had attained. The correspondent of the 

 Journal de Paris, 18 who tells the story, seems to give little credence 

 to the account of the Italian aeronaut, a really very extraordinary 

 account, in which we do not know whether to be more astonished 

 at the ascent or the descent of the daring and lucky aeronauts: 



Italy. Padua, April 23, 1808. 

 M. Andreoli undertook yesterday in this city an aerostatic journey, 

 which was not very lucky and the account of which arouses unpleas- 

 ant doubts among well-informed people as to the veracity of the 

 physicist. According to this really curious story, which people in 

 Paris may perhaps ridicule, M. Andreoli, accompanied by M. Brioschi, 

 rose at 3:30 in the afternoon, in the presence of a great number of 

 spectators. The barometer having dropped to 15 inches (to 15 inches! 

 Are they quite sure of what they say, and do they know how prodi- 

 giously rarefied the air should be and really is at that height? And in 

 that case, how would the two travellers have breathed?) at this eleva- 

 tion, Brioschi began to feel extraordinary palpitations, without, however, 

 noticing any painful change in his breathing: the barometer dropping 

 next to 12, he felt himself overcome by a gentle sleep, which soon 

 became a real lethargy (they do not say how M. Andreoli felt, and 

 how he resisted the powerful narcotic which overcame his companion). 

 The balloon kept rising and when the barometer was at about 9 

 inches (that is, a height much greater than that of the highest of the 

 Cordilleras) Andreoli perceived that it was completely expanded and 

 that he could not move his left hand. The mercury, continuing to 

 descend, registered 8V2 inches. Then the balloon exploded with a loud 



