BALLOON. 



BALLOON. 



810 



and the parapet often had the merlons pierced with long chinks, ending 

 in round holes, called oillets. 



Within the outer ballium were the lodgings and barracks for the 

 garrison and artificers, the stable, hospital, wells, chapel, and even 

 sometimes a monastery. Large mounts were also thrown up in this 

 place : these served, like modern cavaliers, to command the adjacent 

 country ; these last being generally raised within the body of the place, 

 ten or twelve feet higher than the rest of the works, and commonly 

 within the bastion. In the inner ballium was placed the keep and the 

 residence of the lord of the castle. 



The entrance into the ballium was commonly through a strong 

 machicolated and embattled gate, between two towers, secured by a 

 herse or portcullis. Over this gate were rooms, originally intended for 

 the porter of the castle; the towers served for the corps de garde. 

 [CASTLE.] 



The church of St. Peter in the Bailey, at Oxford, derives its appel- 

 lation from having formerly stood within the outer ballium of Oxford 

 Castle. The Old Bailey, or outer space near Ludgate, in London, 

 received its name from its relative position in regard of the ancient 

 wall of the city. 



Froissart, in his account of the siege of Amand by the Earl of 

 Hainault, temp. Edward III., says, the attack was so furious that the 

 baUlu were instantly won. Johnes, in his English ' Froissart ' (4to. 

 edit. vol. i. p. 161), translates this word barriers. 



(Besides Grose's work already referred to, see Dufresne's Glostar. ad 

 Script, med. et inf. JEtatis. fol. Francof. 1681, torn. i. o. 447; King's 

 Obserr. on Anc. Catties, Arehseol. vol. vi. pp. 249, 308; Munim. Antigua, 

 vol. ii. p. 45; Ellis's Fableaux, edit. 1815, vol. i. p. 153, Notea; De 

 Caumont, Architectures Oiriie et MilUaire, &c.) 



BALLOON, from the French baUyn, a little ball, is a word applied, 

 in our language, only to the well-known machine which, consisting of 

 an envelope of silk or other stuff filled with hydrogen or other gas 

 specifically lighter than the atmosphere, is employed to raise those who 

 trust themselves to the chances of a safe voyage in the air. It U 

 scarcely correct to dignify the exploits of ballooning with the title of 

 Aeronautic!, sometimes applied to them; for our air navigation, com- 

 pared with that of the sea, is little more than on a level with the essay 

 of the first rude men who discovered that a hollow wooden vessel 

 might be made large enough to float a body heavier than water. 

 The first step towards guiding the machine is yet to be made ; and 

 some little power of ascending and descending is all that has been 

 gained. Nevertheless, the subject is an interesting one, and must 

 briefly be traced here. 



Montgolfier'0 first and second Balloons. 



The notion of imitating the flying of birds is very ancient. We pass 

 over the winged gods, the stories of Abaris, Daedalus, and the like, as 

 fictions which, like many others, might have been purely imaginative, 

 and not traditions of any previous reality. But Strabo (p. 296) mentions 

 the Capnobatse (or Capnioi, as has been conjectured), a Scythian people, 

 who (so the word has been very foolishly in terpreted) raised themselves 

 by smoke, as the vulgar first imagined Montgolfier did. The Carolinians 

 are also mentioned by the Jesuit Cantova as having a fable about a 

 female deity who raised herself to heaven by the smoke of a great fire. 

 We may also mention the pigeon of Archytas, the oracle of Hierapolis, 

 which Lucian professes to have seen raise itself in the air ; the fable, 

 in British mythology, of Bladud or Baldud, the father of the well- 

 known Lear, which resembles that of Daedalus ; and many others, all 

 of which serve to show that the notion of the possibility of raising a 

 man or a machine was very widely extended in the ancient world. 

 Roger Bacon (' De Mirabili Potestate,' &c.) says that there certainly is 

 a flying machine, of which he knows the name of the inventor, but 

 winch he has neither seen himself, nor any one whom he knows. Van 

 Heltnont and others proved the possibility of flying, by very eloquent 

 discourses, which convinced all hearers. Bishop Wilkins, in his ' Mathe- 

 matical Magic,' 1680, proposes a carriage, with sails like those of a 

 windmill, to be driven by the air ; and the same thing, according to 

 custom in the case of all inventions, has been attributed to the Chinese. 

 \V. ,h;ill only mention Schott, Baptista Porta, Cardan, and Fabri, as 

 having maintained the possibility of flying. The Jesuit Francis Lana 



(1670), among many other projects, has given perhaps the first idea of 

 a real balloon, as we have defined it. He proposes to raise a vessel by 

 means of metal balls, strong enough, when exhausted, to resist the 

 pressure of the external air, but at the same time so thin as, in the 

 same circumstances, to be lighter than their bulk of air. To the 

 possibility of this he asserts that he sees no objection, except that 

 the Almighty would never allow an invention to succeed, by means of 

 which civil government could so easily be disturbed. A reason of this 

 sort was all powerful iu his age, which abounded in a pretended know- 

 ledge of the minutest secrets of Providence : had the good father tried 

 the experiment, he would have found that strength to resist the external 

 air is incompatible with the necessary degree of thinness iu the 

 material, as was observed by Leibnitz. 



In the ' Ars Magnetica ' of Kircher, that author describes a method 

 of imitating the dove of Archytas, by attaching the bird by a string to 

 the hand of a statue, over which is a large dial ; a magnet revolving 

 behind the dial would cause the dove to fly round the head of the statue, 

 and point to the hour of the day. The oft-told story of Regiomontanus 

 constructing an eagle which flew out from Nurnberg to meet the 

 Emperor Charles V., and on meeting him flew back again over his head 

 to the town, is refuted by the simple fact that Regiomontanus died 

 twenty-five years before Charles V. was bom. Although the art of 

 flying had been diligently studied, or at least discussed, for centuries, 

 the exceedingly simple contrivance of Montgolfier had not been tried, 

 or even mentioned, by any of the projectors, some of whom were men 

 of ingenuity. We consider him the inventor of the balloon who raised 

 a mass of solid substance to some considerable height in the atmosphere. 

 But if we were to take the licence which is so common, of disputing the 

 right of an inventor on account of some previous experiments containing 

 a principle common with his own, we might either say that this machine 

 has been invented from time immemorial, in the ascent of soap-bubbles ; 

 or we might cite Candido Buono, who made one scale of a balance 

 ascend, by rarefying with a red-hot iron the air underneath it. After 

 Cavendish had ascertained how much hydrogen weighs less than air, it 

 immediately occurred to Dr. Black, that a light substance, filled with 

 the above-mentioned gas, would rise of itself. But he did not pursue 

 the idea farther ; and Cavallo, who tried to put it in practice in the 

 year 1782, could not succeed in raising, by means of hydrogen, anything 

 heavier than a soap-bubble. We shall see that, natural as it might 

 appear to use hydrogen for the purpose, the experiment succeeded only 

 with a very different agent. 



Stephen and Joseph de Montgolfier were paper-manufacturers at 

 Annonay, not far from Lyon. They had both studied natural philo- 

 sophy and chemistry, and their business gave them facilities for 

 procuring large masses of light envelopes : so that we owe the invention 

 of balloons to one of two accidents either to that of philosophers 

 being paper-makers, or to that of paper-makers being philosophers. 

 Struck with the notion of confining something lighter than air in a 

 recipient, as the means of making the latter ascend, they tried this 

 method at about the same period as M. Cavallo, by confining hydrogen 

 in paper. They succeeded to some extent ; but the gas so soon escaped 

 through the paper, that they abandoned the idea of anything like per- 

 manent elevation by means of it. The next thought which struck 

 them was, that as it was supposed the elevation of the clouds was 

 caused by the presence of electric matter, and as it seemed to them 

 from some experiments that electrified bodies were diminished in 

 weight, it might be possible to raise a surface, of great extent in pro- 

 portion to its specific gravity, by means of electricity. After trying 

 various methods, they applied fire underneath a balloon, not to rarefy 

 the inclosed air, but " as well to increase the layer (couche) of electric 

 fluid upon the vapour in the vessel, as to divide the vapours into 

 smaller molecules, and dilate the gas in which they are suspended." 

 The experiment succeeded ; and a balloon of 23,000 cubic feet (French) 

 capacity was raised with considerable force. All this took place early in 

 1782 ; and at that time the electric theory was stated as above. But in 

 the report made to the Academy of Sciences (December, 1783) by the 

 commission appointed to examine Montgolfier's invention, the inventors 

 are spoken of as simply rarefying the air contained in the balloon ; 

 probably by that time further consideration had led them to the correct 

 view of the subject. J. Montgolfier, in his memoir, says, "Large 

 balloons might be employed for victualling a besieged town, for raising 

 wrecked vessels, perhaps even for voyages, and certainly, in particular 

 cases, for observations of different kinds ; for reconnoitring the position 

 of an army, or the course of vessels, at twenty-five or even thirty leagues 

 distant," &c. One of these ideas was put in practice at the battle of 

 Fleurus, where the French made a reconnoissauce and prevented a 

 surprise by means of a balloon. 



The first public experiment was made at Annonay, June 5, 1783. 

 At the appointed time, nothing was seen in the public place of the 

 town but immense folds of paper 110 feet in circumference, fixed to a 

 frame, the whole weighing about 500 pounds, and containing 22,000 

 cubic feet (French measure). To the great astonishment of all, it 

 was announced that this balloon would be filled with gas, and would 

 rise to the clouds, which very few could believe. On the application 

 of fire underneath, the mass gradually unfolded and assumed the form of 

 a large globe, striving at the same time to burst from the arms which 

 held it. At length it rose with great rapidity, and in less than ten 

 minutes was at 1000 toises (6000 French feet) of elevation. It then 



