Observation balloon

“ Balloons are objects too familiar even to our children to cause them any surprise, [49] and every one knows how instantly a balloon, when in the air, rises up higher if a few pounds of ballast are thrown out, or sinks if a little of the gas is allowed to escape. ”

“ The title of our introduction to aeronautics may appear ambitious to astronomers, and to those who know that the infinite space we call the heavens is for ever inaccessible to travellers from the earth; but it was not so considered by those who witnessed the ardent enthusiasm evoked at the ascension of the first balloon. No discovery, in the whole range of history, has elicited an equal degree of applause and admiration—never has the genius of man won a triumph which at first blush seemed more glorious. ”

“ It must be recollected that there have not yet elapsed forty years since the discovery of the balloon, and that to perfect it would be a work of difficulty, as much from the increased knowledge which such a work would demand, as from the pecuniary sacrifices and the personal devotion which it would involve.
“Thus this invention, after having at first electrified all savants from the one end of the world to the other, has suffered the fate of all discoveries—it was all at once arrested. ”

“ But we must look for another point in the case, and if we cannot manage to guide our balloon, we must, at least, try to keep it in favorable aerial currents. In proportion as we ascend, the latter become much more uniform and flow more constantly in one direction. ”

“ It is now time to speak of the practical uses of the balloon, and how it has been employed as a most valuable scientific instrument to teach us facts about the upper atmosphere, its nature and extent, the clouds, the winds and their ways, the travel of sounds, and many other things of which we should otherwise be ignorant. ”

“ But the balloon which is subject to the same law, instead of coming toward the earth’s center, rises. It does not rise because the earth does not attract it, but because the atmosphere, for which the earth has a greater affinity than for the balloon, causes the balloon to recede and make room for it. ”

“ It is absurd to talk of guiding balloons. How will you set about it? How is it possible that a balloon—say, for instance, like the Flesselles, whose diameter measures 120 feet—can resist and manoeuvre against opposing winds or currents of air? It would require a power equal to 400 horses for the sails of a ship to struggle on equal terms with the wind. ”

“ Besides, the dilation of the hydrogen involved no danger, and only three-fourths of the vast capacity of the balloon was filled when the barometer, by a depression of eight inches, announced an elevation of six thousand feet.
"Shall we go this high very long?" asked Joe.
"The atmosphere of the earth has a height of six thousand fathoms," said the doctor; "and, with a very large balloon, one might go far. ”

“ The result of recent experiments must have convinced every thinking man that the day of the balloon is past. A balloon, from the very nature of things, must be extremely bulky and fragile.
“It has always appeared to the writer that it would be absolutely impossible to make a dirigible balloon that would be of any use, even in a comparatively light wind. ”

“ We all know, of course, that the higher you rise from the earth the density of the air diminishes. The stratum of air that lies upon the surface of the earth is the heaviest, because it supports the pressure of all the other strata that lie above. Thus the lightest strata are the highest.
The principle of the construction of balloons is, therefore, in perfect harmony with physical laws. Balloons are simply globes, made of a light, air-tight material, filled with hot air or hydrogen gas which rise in the air because (they are lighter than the air they displace) . ”

“ Every year sees fresh improvements and developments in balloons for military purposes and in those employed for making meteorological and other similar observations; and there is no doubt that great advances may shortly be expected in both these directions. But there is yet another and totally different science to which the balloon may lend its aid, and help greatly to add to our knowledge ”

“ The balloon floats in the air as oil floats upon wine, as cork upon water, as the cannon-ball upon mercury, by relations of weight and of lightness, one single law everywhere. But unfortunately, the balloon has neither wings, nor tail, nor neck, nor feet, nothing which can guide it; it is a vessel without sail or helm, a fish without fins, a bird without feathers; it floats, that is all; it is immense, and it is nothing. Why do not all the inventors, wise mechanicians, chemists, poets, occupy themselves by endeavoring to solve the problem of the guiding of balloons? ”

“ After having torn and cut away everything that did not appear to us to be of indispensable necessity, the balloon, thus very much lightened, rose all at once, but with such rapidity and to such a prodigious elevation, that we had difficulty in hearing each other, even when shouting at the top of our voices. ”

“ A breath of cool, damp air rising from the river or the wood we are traversing makes the balloon descend two hundred metres. It does not vary when passing over fields of ripe grain, and it rises when it passes over towns.
The earth sleeps now, or, rather, men sleep on the earth, for the beasts awakened by the sight of our balloon announce our approach everywhere. ”

“ Unhappily, the balloon, like the fancied inspiration of the poet, goes where the wind guides it; this every one knows; while the steam-engine, like prose, goes straight upon its road. Green and his balloon were soon overlooking Paris and all its horizon; long trails of sand, ballast that he threw over to raise himself higher, streaked the heavens with their white tracks, proving, by the time it took them to descend to the earth, the hight to which the intrepid aeronaut had mounted in a few minutes. ”

“ I have often, when the balloon emerged from the clouds into the clear sky, suddenly perceived, at twenty or thirty yards' distance, a second balloon distinctly delineated, and apparently of a grayish color, against the white ground of the clouds. This phenomenon manifests itself at the moment when the sun re-appears. The smallest details of the car can be made out clearly, and our gestures are strikingly reproduced by the shadow. ”

“ This first ascent in Paris was an important event. Every one, from the smallest to the greatest, was deeply interested in it, while to the man of science it was one of the most exciting of incidents. For the purpose of observing the altitude to which the balloon rose, and the course it took, Le Gentil was on the observatory, Prevost was on one of the towers of Notre Dame, Jeaurat was on La Place Louis XV., and d’Agelet was on the Champ de Mars. It was only Lalande that frowned as he witnessed the success of the experiment. He had predicted the year before that air-navigation was impossible. ”

“ Sufficiently varied and important, they will be seen to rank the balloon as a valuable aid to the uses of philosophy, and rescue it from the impending degradation of continuing a toy fit only to be exhibited or to administer to the pleasures of the curious and lovers of adventure. ”

“ There is the only difficulty that science need now seek to overcome. The problem is not how to guide the balloon, but how to take it up and down without expending the gas which is its strength, its life-blood, its soul, if I may use the expression.”
“You are right, my dear doctor ”

“ In France, each one following his own notions, made out for himself special benefits to flow from the discovery of balloons. Every discovery then appeared to be only the precursor of other and greater discoveries, and nothing after that time seemed to be impossible to him who attempted the conquest of the atmosphere. This idea clothed itself in every form. The young embraced it with enthusiasm, the old made it the subject of endless regrets. ”

“ In a word, it is a matter of optics and angles, but, the professor declares, most assuredly a fact.
HOW THE EARTH LOOKS WHEN VIEWED FROM A HEIGHT OF ONE MILE.
(Photographed from a balloon.)
Never before these talks did I realize how busy an aëronaut is, how much there is to do in a balloon. Besides attending to valve-cords and ballast there is the barometer to keep your eyes on, for by it alone can you know your altitude. Around moves the needle slowly as you rise, slowly as you fall, one point for a thousand feet. Rising or falling, you know the worst or the best there. ”

“ Thus it becomes a fact that a balloon's vertical course is subjected to constant checks and vicissitudes from a variety of causes, and these will have to be duly borne in mind when we are confronted with the often surprising results and readings which are supplied by scientific observers. ”

“ Here, without pausing to calculate whether the discharge of an ounce or so would suffice to cause a large balloon to ascend through ninety feet, it may be pointed out that the record cannot be trustworthy, from the mere fact that a free balloon is from moment to moment being subjected to other potent influences, which necessarily affect its position in space. ”

“ These early experiments of the Montgolfiers and de Rozier fired the imaginations of scientific men in every part of the world, and it was only a very short time before a safer and more reliable type of balloon than the fire balloon was developed. ”

“ Not less than twenty men were required to move it, and they were obliged to use all their skill, and every precaution, not to destroy it. No balloon had ever given so much trouble. On the 11th of September the weather improved, and the balloon was entirely completed and prepared for the first experiment. ”

“ So a truce to classical ideas, and let us see whether scientific ones may not serve us better just now. You have a quick invention, brother Caspar; can you think of anything—I mean anything within our reach—that would make the air-bag of a balloon?”
“But could you make the balloon, if you had the stuff?” inquired Caspar, still in doubt whether any other than an experienced aeronaut could construct so wonderful a machine.
“Pooh!” replied the philosopher, “the making of a balloon is almost as easy as making a soap-bubble. Any air-tight bag, filled with heated atmosphere, becomes a balloon. ”

“ The balloon at first collapsed, then furiously expanded, then whirled round and round with sickening vvelocity, and finally, reeling and staggering like a drunken man, hurled me over the rim of the car; and in the moment of my fall I lost consciousness.
I had no knowledge of what had saved me. When I partially recovered the sense of existence, I found the day breaking, the balloon at a vprodigious height over a wilderness of ocean, and not a trace of land to be discovered far and wide within the limits of the vast horizon. ”

“ And I do not believe that without such previous study and experience a man is capable of succeeding with an elongated balloon, whose handling is so much more delicate. Before attempting to direct an air-ship, it is necessary to have learned in an ordinary balloon the conditions of the atmospheric medium; to have become acquainted with the caprices of the wind, now caressing and now brutal, and to have gone thoroughly into the difficulties of the ballast problem, from the triple point of view of starting, of equilibrium in the air, and of landing at the end of the trip. ”

“ Probably no single man, woman, or child who thus has stared at a balloon within the hundred years or so in which balloons have existed, but has longed to experience, at any rate for a little while, the sensation of riding on the air and gazing at the great world below ”

“ Not being able to support our position any longer, we descended, after having used up much gas and ballast. Our descent caused that degree of terror among the inhabitants which the size of our balloon was calculated to inspire in a country where such machines had never before been seen. ”

“ The ascent of this balloon deserves to be regarded with special interest, because, besides being the first hydrogen balloon which carried up human beings, it was the first in which scientific observations were made and recorded. Monsieur Charles was a lecturer on natural philosophy, and, like our own great aeronaut, Mr Glaisher, does not seem to have been content to produce merely a spectacle, but went up to the realms of ether with an intelligent and scientific eye; for we read of him recording the indications of the thermometer and barometer at different heights and under various conditions. ”

“ The work which we now introduce to our readers does not exaggerate the case when it declares that no discovery of modern times has aroused so large an amount of enthusiasm, has excited so many hopes, has appeared to the human race to open up so many vistas of enterprise and research, as that for which we are mainly indebted to the Brothers Montgolfier. The discovery or the invention of the balloon, however, was one of those efforts of genius and enterprise which have no infancy. ”

“ After the balloon and the car were in equilibrium, we threw over 19 lbs. of ballast, and we rose in the midst of silence, arising from the emotion and surprise felt on all sides.
“Nothing will ever equal that moment of joyous excitement which filled my whole being when I felt myself flying away from the earth. ”

“ Many-colored, these little circulars as they fell beneath us looked like a flight of giant butter-flies, and we kept on throwing out handfuls of them until our pilot warned us we were wasting so much weight we should soon be out of easy view of the earth! Indeed, the balance of the balloon is so extremely fine that when a single handful of these little tissue circulars was thrown out, increased ascent was shown on the dial of our aneroid barometer! ”