1784 The First Balloons 1 67 



serious risk of the balloon catching fire, and several accidents 

 from this cause occurred. Such risks, it was pointed out, 

 could be obviated by filling the balloon with hydrogen, the 

 lightest of gases, the properties of which and the method 

 of its preparation having been accurately described for the 

 first time by Henry Cavendish in 1766. Lunardi, then a 

 man of only five-and-twenty years, after some trials, made 

 a successful ascent in a gas-filled balloon from the Artillery 

 grounds, Moorfields, on I5th September 1784, and descended 

 near Ware in Hertfordshire. It was exactly a fortnight 

 after that date that he dined with the Royal Philosophers. 



It is difficult now to understand the fury of enthusiasm 

 which this success roused throughout the British Isles. As 

 Horace Walpole expressed it : " balloons occupy senators, 

 philosophers, ladies, everybody." Wigs, coats, hats, bon- 

 nets were named after the Italian aeronaut, and a popular 

 bow of bright scarlet ribbons, which had previously been 

 called a " Gibraltar/' from the heroic defence of that 

 fortress, was now termed a " Lunardi." He subsequently 

 made a number of ascents in Scotland. He has been credited 

 with the honour of being the first to make an aerial voyage 

 in this country. He was, however, preceded by a poor 

 man, James Tytler by name, who at Edinburgh, before 

 Lunardi's first ascent in London, made use of the Mont- 

 golfier method and the rudest materials. When he found 

 it impossible to carry up with him the source of his heat, 

 he jumped into his car, knocked over his fire stove, rose three 

 hundred feet into the air and travelled a distance of half 

 a mile. 1 



Writing towards the end of the year, Horace Walpole 

 thus describes the state of London in regard to ballooning : 

 " This enormous capital that must have some occupation, 

 is most innocently amused with those philosophical play- 

 things, air-balloons. But, as half a million of people, that 

 impassion themselves for any object, are always more 

 childish than children, the good souls of London are much 



1 Chambers, Book of Days, II. 346. Readers of Burns will remember 

 his ode to the insect on " Miss's fine Lunardi." 



