History Of Ballooning, Hot Air Balloon Flight, Balloon Yarra Valley, Air Balloon Ride Melbourne

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History of Ballooning

The history of ballooning and man's fascination with flight is certainly an interesting one. Historians have put forward theories that the earliest form of a hot air balloon was made by the ancient Nazca civilisation of Peru over 2000 years ago. The main evidence is a piece of pottery found in Lima which unmistakably displays a picture of a hot air balloon. The balloon was of a simple design and made of a non-porous material in a tetrahedral shape. Below the envelope was a type of hammock in which the aeronaut/s would have been carried.

The balloon, which was tethered to the ground, would have been filled with smoke from a fire. Once the envelope was fully inflated with hot air, the ropes would have been cut and the balloon would have ascended. The balloon may have reached heights up to 1500 feet or more and as the air cooled it would have floated gradually to Earth.

This may explain the detailed stone piles laid out on the Peruvian Nazca Plain over a 200 square mile area, the intricate patterns may only be viewed from the air.

Man's recorded history of hot air balloon flight began in the late 16th Century in France when two brothers, Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier, began experimenting with small paper balloons filled with smoke.

By 1783 the Montgolfiers were building balloons capable of lifting the weight of two men. To see if it was possible to breath above the surface of the earth, they experimented with a sheep, a rooster and a duck in an enclosed basket. The experiment was a success.

The first recorded manned ascent took place in Paris, on November 21, 1783. Two noble men of the day, Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis of Arlandes, climbed on to the gallery of a huge 'Montgolfier' balloon. The balloons were made of paper and linen and the two men would stand on a platform fixed around the mouth of the balloon.

Watched by a crowd of 400,000, which included Louis XVI of France, the balloon was filled by hot air from a smoky fire of burning straw suspended under the mouth of the envelope in a large metal bowl. The intrepid aeronauts flew for 22 minutes before landing in the surrounding vineyards outside Paris. Marie Antoinette was so impressed by what she saw that she dubbed ballooning 'the sport of the Gods'.

Two weeks later, on December 1, 1783 Professor Jacques Alexandre Cesar Charles and, Aine Robert, piloted the first manned hydrogen balloon. (Professor Charles had in fact launched an unmanned hydrogen balloon in Paris on August 27, 1783 in front of thousands of spectators in the pouring rain. The balloon rose swiftly into the air and landed 15 miles away where it was attacked with pitchforks by terrified and superstitious peasants.) The manned hydrogen balloon travelled a distance of 45km from Paris to Nesle having been aloft for almost two hours.

Ballooning became a popular and adventurous activity from this time on. It reached Australia in 1856, when a young Frenchman, Pierre Maigre, advertised that he would climb to the heavens under Vice-Regal patronage. The flight was not successful but in 1870 Thomas Gale flew from the Domain in Sydney to Glebe. It's popularity was overtaken with the development of the Zeppelin (airship) in 1884 and later with the aeroplane in 1903.

The revival of the modern hot air balloon was pioneered by an American, Ed Yost. Ed was commissioned by the American Air force to come up with a lighter than air lifting device for military application. He invented the propane burner in 1953, a controllable and economical method of heating air inside the balloon. This was the beginning of the modern hot air balloon industry !.

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