134 HISTORY OF THE BALLOON. 



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

 but immense folds of paper one hundred and ten feet in circumference, 

 fixed to a frame, the whole weighing about five hundred pounds, and 

 containing 22,000 cubic feet (French measure). To the great astonish- 

 ment of all, it was announced that the balloon would be filled with gas, 

 and would rise to the clouds, which few would believe. On the applica- 

 tion 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 arose with great rapidity, and in less than ten 

 minutes was at one thousand toises of elevation. It then described an 

 horizontal line of seven thousand two hundred feet, and gradually sunk. 

 This balloon contained nothing but heated air, maintained in a state of 

 rarefaction by fire, the receptacle of which was attached underneath the 

 globe of paper, which had an orifice opening downwards. Machines on 

 this principle were called Montgolfier's, to distinguish them from 

 hydrogen balloons, which were made immediately afterwards. This 

 success created a great sensation in France, and a subscription was 

 opened -to repeat the experiment upon a balloon of lutestring, dipped in a 

 solution of India rubber, and filled with hydrogen; at first it failed, but 

 the second time it was successful, and it ascended on the 27th of August 

 from the Champs de Mars ; rose beautifully to a great height, and fell 

 five leagues from Paris, after being about a quarter of an hour in the air. 

 The balloon on its next ascent had occupants, viz. a sheep, a cock, and a 

 duck this was Montgolfier's ; and on the 15th of October, 1783, the first 

 human being ascended one hundred feet, and again three hundred and 

 twenty-four feet, the balloon being held by a rope ; this adventurous man 

 was M. Pilatre de Rozier, who, with the Marquis d'Arlandes, first 

 performed the daring feat of leaving the earth entirely, at the Chateau 

 de la Muette near Passy, November 21st 1783, in a Montgolfier. The 

 procfo verbal, which bears the signatures of the great Benjamin 

 Franklin and several French Noblemen, described the balloon as seventy 

 feet high, forty-six feet in diameter, contained sixty thousand cubic feet, 

 and carried a weight of one thousand six hundred or one thousand seven 

 hundred pounds; it rose to the height of five thousand toises* in twenty- 

 five minutes. However, we shall let one of the Voyageurs tell his own 

 tale. Marquis d'Arlandes writing to a friend, thus describes his 

 perilous and novel fet: "We set off at fifty-four minutes past one. 

 The balloon was so placed that M. de Rozier was on the west and I on 

 the east. The machine, says the public, rose with majesty. I think few 



A toise is 6 feet, French. French feet stand in relation to English, as 16 is to 15. 



