The Golden Age of Balloons

1783 ! 1783 marks a break in the continuum of human evolution, almost as much as the appearance of the wheel some 5,300 years earlier. In that year, mankind fulfilled his ancestral dream of flying, of flying over the planet to which he could believe he was definitively chained. That year, beyond the legends, mythological and phantasmagorical tales, attested by thousands of witnesses from all walks of life, duly recorded on minutes initialled by valuable personalities, the reality of human flight was proven. In the past, no one has been able to freely free himself from the attraction of the earth... And on November 21, 1783, everything changed, the result of a rapid process of methodical experimentation. Trials with scale models, then on a larger scale with no one on board, animal flights, captive ascents, were the reasoned stages of the advent, before intrepid characters, who would later be called aeronauts, embarked on this magnificent exploration. Better yet, the invention of aerostats, a true paradigm shift, proved to be a dual one, as man found himself with two types of flying machines (albeit based on the same principle) at his disposal: hot-air balloon and charlière! Icarus' dream came true in France, in the heart of the Age of Enlightenment, the culmination of a unanimous craze for science. The Montgolfier brothers, Charles and Robert, opened the gates of heaven for a year without the slightest accident! From then on, mankind will not stop multiplying aerostatic experiments. Like a tidal wave, they spread from the capital to the provinces, from France to Europe before crossing the Atlantic... Balloons, instruments of scientific research, sport and pleasure, were at their peak until the beginning of the 20th century. Through the highlights of this epic epic of the golden age of aerostation, this book traces the origins and primordial stages of the air navigation revolution.