On 15 October 1783, Francois Pilatre de Rozier made the first space flight in a hot air balloon. He rose 84 feet and was aloft for approximately four minutes. Although King Louis XVI had decided that two condemned prisoners should be the first two humans to test the balloon which had previously been flown with a sheep, a cockerel, and a duck as passengers, de Rozier was able to convince the King that someone of higher social status should be permitted the honor.

Some sources suggest that de Rozier was joined by the Marquis d’Arlandes on this flight. It is known that on 21 November 1783, both de Rozier and S’Arlandes were the first two passengers to ride in an untethered balloon. Two years later on 15 June 1885, de Rozier and Pierre Romain attempted to cross the English Channel in a hydrogen filled balloon. Unfortunately, a spark caused the balloon to catch fire which caused de Rozier and Romain to fall to their deaths becoming the first two individuals to be killed in a ballooning accident.

Although de Rozier is credited as the first man to fly in space, Joseph Michael and Jacques Ètienne Montgolfier were the brothers who invented the first practical hot air balloon. The U.S. Centennial Flight Commission explains that the brothers “had observed that smoke tended to rise and that paper bags placed over a fire expanded and also rose, pushed upward by the hot air. They concluded that if they could only capture what they thought was a unique gas inside an enclosed lightweight bag, this container or bag would rise from the ground.” During their experiments, the brothers rediscovered the theory of buoyancy which had originally been discovered by Archimedes.

Archimedes argued that an object is immersed in a fluid is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the object. Leonardo Di Vinci applied this principle to a study of floating objects in air. For the coronation of Pope Leo X, Di Vinci painted the pictures of saints on paper sacks which were floated using hot air.

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–Steven L. Berg, PhD

Photo Caption: Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d´Arlandes. Credits: 2001 National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution (SI Neg. No. A-4691)

Although Today in History is primarily student written, there are some days when we do not have a student author. You will enjoy another student entry tomorrow.