394 ' The Atlantic 



also a "fire balloon," that is, it carried its own source o£ "smoke" 

 with it. There was a grate for the fire and de Rozier was supplied 

 with wood and other fuel to keep the fire going. When the fuel ran 

 out the flight was over. After several such trial ascensions de Rozier 

 made a free flight on the 21st of November, 1783, which was given 

 wide publicity and in which he was joined by a companion, the Mar- 

 quis d'Arlandes. They landed successfully but both of them were 

 smoky black. 



In the meantime the scientists began to take an interest in the bal- 

 loons and the idea began to grow that there were less smoky ways of 

 making a balloon rise. The Academy of Sciences suggested that it was 

 not the smoke that made the balloon rise but hot air, therefore that a 

 gas lighter than the general atmosphere would do the same thing. 



Professor J. A. C. Charles of the University of Paris set to work 

 to make a balloon and fill it with hydrogen which Cavendish had dis- 

 covered in 1776 and at that time named inflammable air. Charles' bal- 

 loon was made of silk and coated with an elastic varnish to keep in 

 the gas. This balloon flew without passengers, is said to have reached 

 a height of 3,000 feet and to have traveled at least fifteen miles. Before 

 the close of the year Professor Charles and an assistant made a flight 

 in another hydrogen balloon which lasted an hour and forty minutes 

 and carried them nearly thirty miles. 



By January of 1785 the first American air traveler appeared on the 

 scene. This was an American physician named John Jeffreys who 

 financed a French balloonist named Jean Pierre Francois Blanchard. 

 Their conveyance was a hydrogen balloon which Blanchard had built. 

 The balloon was inflated at Dover and in it they crossed the English 

 Channel and landed safely in France. Jeffreys and Blanchard were, 

 therefore, the first to cross even a small arm of the ocean by air. 



Jeffreys was not the only United States citizen to exhibit an active 

 interest in air travel; in fact, he continued his trip to Paris so that he 

 might deliver in person a letter which he carried written by George 

 Washington and addressed to Benjamin Franklin. In the States the 

 Philosophical Society of Philadelphia was taking both a theoretical 

 and also a practical interest in air travel and actively promoting 

 some flights. In one of these the aeronaut was carried aloft by a 

 whole cluster of small hydrogen-filled balloons. These he punctured, 

 one by one, when he wanted to reach the ground. 



The first important balloon ascension in the United States, how- 

 ever, was that made from the city of Philadelphia by Blanchard in 



