Frères Montgolfier

Thus the first balloon invented was one that could have been invented at any time since the birth of weaving. For thirty centuries people could have built hot air balloons—they had the materials; all they needed was the idea.

(But see also Bartolomeu Lourenço de Gusmão.)

Climate after balloon successes:

It must be freely granted that prodigious progress had been made in an art that as yet was little more than a year old; but assuredly not enough to justify the absurdly inflated ideas that the Continental public now began to indulge in. Men lost their mental balance, allowing their imagination to run riot, and speculation became extravagant in the extreme. There was to be no limit henceforward to the attainment of fresh knowledge, nor any bounds placed to where man might roam. The universe was open to him: he might voyage if he willed to the moon or elsewhere: Paris was to be the starting point for other worlds: Heavan itself had been taken by storm.

Publications by or about Frères Montgolfier

• Felisch, 1866, Was in der Luft vorgeht. Vorträge über Luftdruck, Luftschifffahrt und Meteorologie (Simple title: What happens in the air. Lectures on air pressure, aviation and meteorology)
• Sébillot, 1902, Mémoire sur les navires aériens à air dilaté (Simple title: Memorandum on dilated-air vessels, Journal: L'Aéronaute)
• Besio Moreno, 1914, Historia de la Navegación Aérea (Simple title: History of Aerial Navigation, Journal: Anales de la Sociedad Científica Argentina)
• Chadeau, Emmanuel, 1985, État, Entreprise & Développement Économique : L’Industrie Aéronautique en France (1900-1940) Thèse pour le Doctorat, unpublished version (Simple title: State, Enterprise, and Economic Development: The aeronautic Industry in France (1900-1940), Journal: Doctoral thesis)

See Also

• Emmanuel Chadeau, the unpublished version of his Doctoral dissertation, in which further experimentation with the “Montgolfière”, conducted by others, is put into succinct context.