For early balloonists such as James Glacier, the sky was uncharted territory full of danger and adventure. For centuries, the vast ocean of air above our heads has been a mystery. Hot air ballooning changed everything.
Drawing of fabulous clouds from the travels of Wilfried de Fonviel and Gaston Tissandier.
In 1862, Glacier and Coxwell flew 37,000 feet in a hot air balloon. It is 8,000 feet above the summit of Everest. At that time, it was the highest point in the atmosphere that people reached. Their air travel has inspired writers and philosophers to take a fresh look at the world.
Before the invention of the balloon, the atmosphere was like a blank slate onto which all fantasies and fears were projected. Philosophers believed that heaven stretches forever. In the Middle Ages, there were legends about birds that were so huge that they could carry several people. The atmosphere was considered a "death factory" - a place where disease-causing vapors lingered. People were afraid that if they climbed into the clouds, they would die from lack of oxygen.
Mythical birds transported people across the sky.
The dream of a voyage into the sky became a reality in 1783 when two French brothers Joseph-Michel Montgolfier and Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier launched the first manned hot air balloon.
Early ballooning was difficult and dangerous. Ballooners and their passengers were often killed when balloons were unexpectedly deflated, set on fire, or carried out to sea. In part because of this, hot air ballooning became a subject of crowd entertainment. People gathered to see how something went wrong. The novelist Charles Dickens, horrified by balloon flights, wrote that these "dangerous antics" were no different from hanging them in public.
Over time, balloonists became more skilled, technology improved, travel became safe enough to take passengers with them. In the days of Glacier, the production of a hot air balloon cost about £ 600 - roughly $ 90,000 in today's money. Scientists who wanted to climb up had to fork out about £ 50 to hire an aeronaut, a balloon, and provide themselves with enough gas for one trip.
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Thunderstorm over Fontainebleau, France. From the travels of Camille Flammarion.
The first Europeans who ascended into the sky were so inspired by this that they wrote poetry about new sensations and what they saw. They described it as being in a dream, experiencing a sense of calm, loneliness, anxiety and isolation at the same time.
“We got lost in an opaque ocean reminiscent of ivory and alabaster,” wrote Wilfried de Fonviel and Gaston Tissandier in 1868 about a hot air balloon flight. In his 1838 book, Thomas Monk Mason, describing flight, talked about how he saw the world below as a "world without it." Travelers were also impressed by the diffusion of light, the intensity of the colors, and the effects of atmospheric lighting.
Author: Pavel Romanutenko