Long years one of the unattainable desires of people was the ability to fly, or at least take to the air. What inventions have not been invented to make this happen. Once, the fact that objects of small weight can rise when exposed to hot air was recorded, and this became the impetus for the development of aeronautics.
It is believed that the world's first hot air balloon was created in 1783. How did it happen? History sends us back to the distant XVI-XVII centuries. It was then that the prototypes of the first balls appeared, which could not show themselves in practice. In parallel, in 1766, the chemist Henry Cavendish was the first to detail the properties of a gas such as hydrogen, which was used in his work with soap bubbles by the Italian physicist Tiberio Cavallo. He filled the bubbles with this gas, and they quickly soared into the air, since hydrogen is 14 times lighter than air. This is how the main two lift forces used in balloon flights today appeared - hydrogen and hot air.
These discoveries did not solve all the problems of flight. To create a balloon, a special material was required that would not be too heavy and would also be able to hold the gas inside. The scientists-inventors performed the solution of this problem different ways. Moreover, several designers competed for the championship of discoveries at once, the main of them are the brothers Jacques-Etienne and Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, as well as the famous professor Jacques Alexander Charles from France.
The Montgolfier brothers did not have special knowledge about the properties and characteristics of various gases, but they had a great desire for discovery. At first they experimented with smoke and steam. There were attempts to use hydrogen, but they were affected by the problem of the lack of a special fabric that would not allow this gas to pass through. Also, its cost was quite expensive, and Montgolfier returned to experiments with hot air.
The first hot air balloon was created in 1782. The Montgolfier brothers made it, although it was small in size, only 1 cubic meter in volume. But still, it was already a real ball that rose to a height of more than 30 meters above the ground. Soon the experimenters made a second balloon. It was already much larger than its predecessor: a volume of 600 cubic meters and 11 meters in diameter, a brazier was placed under the ball. The fabric for the balloon was silk, pasted over with paper on the inside. The ceremonial launch of the balloon in the presence of a large audience was carried out on June 5, 1783, which was organized by the already famous Montgolfier brothers. With the help of hot air, the balloon was raised to a height of 2 thousand meters! This fact was even written to the Paris Academy. Since then, balloons that use hot air have been named after their inventors - hot air balloons.
Such achievements of Montgolfier spurred Jacques Alexandre Charles to intensify the development of his new invention - a balloon that uses hydrogen to rise. He had assistants - mechanics brothers Robert. They managed to make a silk ball impregnated with rubber, the diameter of which was 3.6 m. They filled it with hydrogen using a special hose with a valve. A special installation was also made for extracting gas, which was obtained as a result of chemical reactions when metal filings interacted with water and sulfuric acid. To prevent acid fumes from spoiling the shell of the ball, the resulting gas was purified with cold water.
The first hydrogen balloon was launched on August 27, 1783. It happened on the Champ de Mars. Before the eyes of two hundred thousand people, the balloon rose so high that it was no longer visible behind the clouds. After 1 km, the hydrogen began to expand, as a result of which the shell of the balloon burst, and the balloon fell to the ground in a village near Paris. But they did not know anything about such an important experiment, and the inventors did not have time to arrive, as the frightened residents tore the unusual ball to shreds. So a great invention worth 10,000 francs fell into disrepair. Since 1783, hydrogen balloons have been called charliers, in honor of Charles.
On January 6, 1745, Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier was born in the small French town of Annone. His father, the owner of a small paper mill, could not even imagine that his "youngest" Jacques-Etienne, and with him his eldest son Joseph-Michel, would become those who would open the way to heaven for mankind: they would invent a balloon.
The brothers, who received a good education, showed a great interest in the sciences. True, after the death of their father, they had to come to grips with the paperwork. However, the enterprise brought a good income, there was money. And the brothers plunged headlong into invention. It is difficult to say who was the first to ask Katerina's question: why don't people fly? But the fact remains: the idea to rise into the sky took possession of them once and for all.
Obsessed with the dream of flying, the brothers designed and built the first balloons filled with hot air - hot air balloons. The backyard of the factory became a "testing ground".
The first hot air balloon took to the skies on June 5, 1783. The diameter of the "flying bag" was about 12 meters. It was sewn from canvas and pasted over with paper. Few of those present believed that this miracle could take off. Wool, paper, wood and wet straw were burned in a firebox under the shell. As it turned out, if the shell is filled with heated moist air, and not dry, then the lifting force of the balloon will be greater.
A protocol was drawn up about how the first flight went. It recorded: the balloon stayed in the air for 8 minutes and flew at an altitude of 520 meters for about 3 km.
Historians write that the inventors themselves were madly afraid of heights and did not dare to try out their brainchild. The first flights were without passengers at all. They appeared on board the hot air balloon only three months later, on September 19: during the demonstration of the ball in Versailles, a sheep, a duck and a rooster were put into the gondola. There are memories that King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette watched the flight. The animals survived the air travel well, but the rooster, they say, still suffered: a ram stepped on it.
But on November 21 of the same year, the first hot air balloon, controlled by people, the physicist Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlavde, took off from a castle in the vicinity of Paris. In a balloon gondola with a height of 20.7 m and a diameter of 13.6 m, these daredevils rose above the ground to a height of 1 km and covered more than 8 km in 25 minutes. They became the first aeronauts.
But, ironically, the first aeronaut became the world's first victim of a plane crash. On June 15, 1785, Pilatre de Rozier took to the skies in a hot air balloon consisting of two cylinders: one filled with air and the other with hydrogen. Together with his friend, mechanic Pierre-Ange Romain, the physicist was going to cross the English Channel. Alas: literally 15 minutes after takeoff, the hot air balloon caught fire and exploded ...
The invention of the Montgolfier brothers brought them great fame. They became members of the Academy of Sciences, and the king granted them a title of nobility and a coat of arms with the motto "So they rise to the stars."
Air balloons. Invention historyIt is said that the earliest information about the manufacture of balloons flying in the air was found in Karelian manuscripts. It describes the creation of a ball from the skin of a whale and a bull. And in the annals of the 12th century, we are told that in the Karelian settlements almost every family had a balloon.
With the help of such balls, the ancient Karelians moved - the balls helped people overcome the distances between settlements. But such journeys were quite dangerous: the shell of animal skins could not withstand air pressure for a long time - these balloons were explosive. And in the end, only legends remained from them, which you can either believe or not believe.
According to another version, the first balls were made from an animal Bladder(pigs).
Modern hot air balloons were born in 1824. They were invented by the English scientist Michael Faraday during his experiments with hydrogen (which was later replaced by helium). The scientist studied the elastic properties of rubber - and built two "cakes" from this material. In order for the "cakes" not to stick together, Faraday processed them inner sides flour. And after that, with his fingers, he glued their raw, remaining sticky edges. The result was something like a bag - which could be used for experiments with hydrogen.
About 80 years after that, the scientific hydrogen bag turned into a popular pastime: rubber balloons were widely used in Europe during city holidays. Due to the gas that filled them, they could rise up - and this was very popular with the public, which had not yet been spoiled by either air flights or other miracles of technology.
In 1922, in the United States, at one of the city holidays, a joker was found who, for the sake of fun, blew up the decoration of the holiday - air balloons. As a result of this explosion, an official was injured. As a result, the fun, which turned out to be quite dangerous, was banned. Instead of hydrogen, balloons were filled with safer helium.
The balloon, tied by the inventive aeronaut Giffard, allowed to be head in the clouds, it could accommodate about 50 passengers and rose to a height of almost 600m.
Types of balls
Classic Latex Balloons - Latex balloons. In 1931, Neil Tylotson released the first modern, latex balloon (polymer latex is obtained from aqueous dispersions of rubber). And since then, balloons have finally been able to change! Before that, they could only be round - and with the advent of latex, for the first time, it became possible to create long, narrow balls.
ShDM (Balls for modeling) - long balls-sausages from which various shapes are twisted (also made of latex)
Balloons with two or more tails (used to make complex spatial structures)
Packing balls are transparent or translucent balls with a wide neck, into which, using a special device, items are placed that require packaging.
Milar (foil) balloons
Walking figures usually depict a long-legged humanoid, which is attached to a support by its legs. Inflated with helium, under a breath of wind, they create the illusion that the figure is walking
Self-blowing balloons (able to inflate themselves through a chemical reaction)
ball shape
Most balloons are shaped like an ellipsoid of revolution. Other common shapes are the heart shape (especially popular on Saint Valentine's),
a hare, a horse, a flower and a long ellipsoid, colloquially called a "sausage", which can be shaped like a dog, complex rings and other shapes.
Despite the variety of shapes, balloons are still called balloons, although their shape is not always the shape of a ball.
We invite you to immerse yourself in the most interesting part of the history of mankind - the development of air. From this article you will find out who was the first to take to the skies, behind whose names are the inventions of the balloon and airship, and much more ...
There are many ways to turn a volcano of emotions bubbling in the heart into a noble deed: play a serenade on the guitar under the balcony of your beloved; with a generous stroke of the brush, reflect on the canvas the enchanting diversity of nature. Any beautiful gesture entails confirmation of the expressed feelings. But to declare one's love at the height of a bird's eye view - such a gesture is not possible for every lover. Only those who at least once felt the pacifying silence of the sky, the wild joy of realizing victory over daily worries, will forever remain a fan of the vertical abyss of aeronautics.
The history of the creation of the balloon goes back to the beginning of the 18th century. Among the pioneers of atmospheric exploration is the unfairly forgotten Brazilian and Portuguese priest Bartolomeo Lorenzo, known as Guzmao. After a long study of physical phenomena, he surprised the royal family with an unprecedented trick: an egg-shaped shell, stretched over a miniature brazier, rose 4 meters into the air.
Mechanic Jean-Pierre Blanchard has long dreamed of creating an aircraft. In 1781, he presented the world with a miracle that was tied with a rope through a block to a counterweight, and with the help of arms and legs rose several meters up.
The Montgolfier brothers were madly afraid of heights all their lives, but stubbornness pushed the dream of conquering the sky. One day they inherited a paper factory. During the process of evaporating the cellulose solution, they began to pay attention to bubbling bubbles - the prototype of a flying ship. Long experiments to search for a gas that would be lighter than air were unsuccessful. But one day at dinner, their maid rushed to the stove to save a burnt roast - the heat from the open stove lifted her skirt ...
The idea has taken shape. Soon the Montgolfier brothers built a fabric shell 3.5 m in diameter. Filled with smoke, it stayed at an altitude of 300 meters for about 10 minutes. And on June 5, 1783, a crowd of onlookers and an important commission saw the launch of a ten-meter ball from the market square. This date is the beginning of the "winging" of humanity.
The discovery of the Montgolfier brothers prompted Jean-Pierre Blanchard to the idea of equipping the balloon with paddle oars to control the flight. On an experimental model, he flew over the English Channel, proving the possibility of flying from country to country.
The Paris Academy of Sciences commissioned a young professor, Jacques Charles, to improve the apparatus of the Montgolfier brothers. The scientist believed in the advantage of fire over smoke, only the absence of light material strong enough to contain the volatile gas. This role went to silk soaked in a turpentine solution of rubber.
On August 27, 1783, half a million Parisians watched the start of Charles' brainchild from the Champ de Mars. His invention was the forerunner of the airship.
But the Montgolfier brothers were not eager to give the palm into the wrong hands and continued to defend their own invention. To surprise the king, the flight of a decorated balloon was demonstrated with a basket attached to it, in which a ram, a hen and a rooster were sitting. After 8 minutes, the first ever balloon passengers landed four kilometers from the take-off site. Since then, the two directions of aeronautics have developed in parallel.
Louis XVI forbade the brothers to personally participate in the tests of the balloon. For the risky venture, two criminals sentenced to death were chosen. But ardent admirers of the new entertainment de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arland won the right to be the first people on board the balloon. On November 21, 1783, they flew 10 km in half an hour. And 10 days later, Professor Charles flew 40 km at an unprecedented height - 2750 m. Some technical solutions developed by him in pursuit of competitors were used by his followers without changes for almost a hundred years.
So the development of air spaces turned into a profession. During the French Revolution, an aeronautical company was founded to observe enemy positions - reports from a gondola located at an altitude of 500 m were delivered to the ground along a cord to which a kind of anchor was attached.
Sky exploration in Russia
The Russian Empire did not particularly welcome balloons. They were considered entertainment for the nobles. And only on December 3, 1870, the Russian Air Society was opened. Later, Dmitri Mendeleev developed a unique model of a pressurized gondola for high-altitude flight.
Professional pilots appeared at the turn of the 20th century. In Soviet times, thanks to the rapid advance of aviation, interest in balloons did not fade away - in 1924, the All-Union Aeronautics Competitions were held, organized by the predecessor of DOSAAF - OSOAVIAKHIM, which had a significant number of balloons at its disposal.
The desire of mankind to fly exists exactly as long as civilization exists. But real steps in this direction were taken only towards the end of the 19th century, when the first flight on hot-air balloon. This greatest event shocked not only France, in which it actually took place, but the whole world. The Montgolfier brothers went down in history as pioneers and revolutionaries. The birth of aeronautics should be considered a significant milestone in the development of all science and human civilization.
Beginnings of the Montgolfier Brothers
When it comes to who invented the first balloon, almost every educated and well-read person remembers the name of the brothers Joseph and Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier. Of course, these inventors should not be considered the only ones of their kind, since studies of similar phenomena have been carried out before.
The impetus for the creation of the balloon was the discovery of hydrogen by scientist Henry Cavendish: the scientist found out that the density of "combustible air" is much less than ordinary air.
It was this property that was used in the first experiments and subsequent discoveries of Montgolfier. The brothers conducted numerous tests with shirts, bags and trial balloons made from natural fabrics, which, although they did not fly high, were not very high. But for that time, even such facts turned out to be frighteningly new and almost revolutionary.
The first full-fledged tests took place in 1782, when a three-cubic-meter ball rose into the air. The next balloon was already much larger: the design weighed 225 kilograms and consisted of four side strips and a dome made of paper-lined cotton. On June 4, the inventors launched this prototype into the air, but they managed to overcome only about one and a half kilometers, and the flight ended in a fall. The Montgolfier brothers were not the only ones who conducted such research during this period: the Frenchman Jacques Charles launched balloons filled with hydrogen, which was a significant leap in the development of this direction.
If the balloons from the research brothers, filled with warm air, were called hot air balloons, then the creations of Monsieur Charles were called charliers.
After such a start, which was considered practically successful, the Montgolfier brothers received strong support from the Academy of Sciences. Financial investments allowed them to carry out new launches, so that the next ball, on which a strange company swept - a sheep, a goose and a rooster, was much larger than its predecessor: 450 kilograms with a volume of 1000 cubic meters. After its relatively successful landing (smooth fall of the basket from a height of about half a kilometer), it was decided to test the air structure with people on board.
At the same time, Jacques Charles launched a balloon made of rubber-impregnated silk, which during the first flight was able to cover a distance of 28 kilometers.
First successful flight
The Montgolfier brothers dreamed of becoming the first passengers of their invention, but their father forbade such a risk. The search for volunteers did not take long, and the first people to take to the air were Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlande.
The Montgolfier brothers were able to make their first flight already in 1784, when 7 more people boarded with them. This journey is considered to be the first commercial flight in the history of aeronautics.
The brothers planned the first flight for November 21, 1873. It was on this day that the epochal journey of the two discoverers took place: the balloon, having risen to a height of one kilometer, flew over 9 kilometers in 25 minutes. The first passengers turned out to be more than skillful aeronauts and perfectly controlled the huge balloon, which to a large extent ensured the success of the event.
A successful flight spurred the desire to develop this direction further, but the next goal, which the brothers and their followers swung at, turned out to be too difficult. An attempt to fly across the English Channel, not agreed with the Montgolfiers themselves, turned out to be unsuccessful for Pilatre de Rozier: he died when a burnt ball fell. In the fate of this pioneer, two milestones sadly coincided: the honor of being the first person in a balloon and the tragedy of falling as his first victim.
After that, aeronautics began to develop by leaps and bounds. Jacques Charles, in his research, not only made flying much safer, but also invented a way to measure the flight altitude and regulate it. Balloon travel stimulated the invention of the parachute: in 1797, the first jump of Andre-Jacques Garnerin was successfully completed, escaping with only a dislocation of the hand. And already in 1799, the first parachute jump was made by a woman - Jeanne Labros, a student of Garnerin.
Today, hot air balloons, having undergone not very dramatic design changes, are still used in aeronautics, are popular with people and decorate many holidays. Huge bright balls of durable fabric with a sufficient level of security have become not a means of transportation, but an attempt by a person to get closer to the sky.
