John Jeffries
John Jeffries was an American–English doctor who accompanied Jean-Pierre Blanchard on some balloon flights.
Jeffries was born in Boston and graduated from Harvard in 1763, then immigrated to England to practice medicine. He served as a doctor for the royalist troops during the American revolution.[1]
On 30 November 1784 he traveled with Blanchard on a balloon voyage from London to Kent. He took meteorological measurements, finding temperature and humidity decreasing with altitude.[1]
On 7 January 1785 Blanchard and Jeffries ballooned across the English Channel, from Dover to Artois, France. The travelers were welcomed in style and their success was considered, by at least one versifier, occasion to celebrate the future of Anglo-French political unity:[1]
Deux Peuples divisées pour l'Empire des Mers,
Ne font qu'un aujhour'hui en franchissant les airs,
Présage fortuné de l'union sincère
Qui va regner entre eux pour le bien de la Terre.
Jeffries carried four postcards addressed to friends, marked "From the balloon above the clouds", which he dropped on London during his first flight. Three of these were found and forwarded to their addresses. He and Blanchard successfully carried air mail across the Channel to the Mayor of Calais, having jettisoned all other dispensable cargo including their clothes.[2] [I don't find the bit about airmail in JJ's book -- wouldn't he have mentioned it?]
Jeffries recorded his observations, brought them (as well as vials of air he collected) to the Royal Society, and then published the, in 1786 as A Narrative of Two Aerial Voyages
[His diaries and papers are held by the Massachusetts Historical Society; or does Houghton Library have them? At any rate, the later site includes scans and secondary material collected by James Howard Means, son of James Means.]
Links
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Rotch, 1909, Conquest of the Air, pp. 61–63.
- ↑ Allaz, 1998, p. 12.
