Sect, VL] Pneumatics. 55 



purposes of that contrived by the Montgoltiers, 

 and would also possess several additional advant- 

 ages. They made their first experiment on the 

 23d of August, 1783, which was attended with 

 complete success 3 and the hrst human beings who 

 ventured to ascend in a balloon raised upon this 

 plan were Messrs. Charles and Roberts, who rose 

 from Paris, on the 1st day of December in the 

 same year. The inflammable air balloons have 

 been generally used since that time \ many aerial 

 voyages have been performed in Europe and Ame- 

 rica; and what is remarkable, out of all the numer- 

 ous instances of such hazardous enterprise, only 

 one is recollected, which was attended with any 

 fatal accident*. 



The invention of balloons, though far-famed and 

 brilliant, cannot be considered as having hitherto 

 added much to the comfort or utilitj^ of man. The 

 only practical purposes which it has been made 

 to subserve, are those of aiding in meteorological 

 inquiries, and inspecting the fortifications and re- 

 connoitring the camp of an enemy, which coidd 

 not be approached by other means. It has been 

 applied to this latter purpose in at least one, if not 

 more instances, by the French engineers, during 

 the late warf. But who can undertake to assign 

 the limits beyond which the ingenuity and the 

 enterprise of man shall not pass ? Though this spe- 



* This is a reference to the doatli of jNI. PiJntre de Ro- 

 zier and M. Remain ^ who rose in a balloon, from Roulogne, in 

 the month of June, 1/85, and after having been a mile high, for 

 about half an hour, the balloon took fire, and the two adventurers 

 were dashed to pieces by their fall. 



I Gregory's Economi/ of Nature, 2d edit., vol. i, p. 500'. 



