Page 4 - Demo

balloon was made of four large pieces of sackcloth held together by 1,800 buttons, three thin inner layers of paper, and a colorfully decorated exterior reinforced with corded fishnet. Later that fall, the brothers had a new balloon, the A%u00e9rostat R%u00e9veillon (or Le Martial, depending on the source), which carried aloft a cockerel, a duck, and a sheep. The sheep was named Montauciel (Climb-tothe-sky). The launch took place at the royal palace in Versailles, and was witnessed by both Queen Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI, who had proposed placing two convicted criminals aboard. The eightminute flight covered two miles and landed safely. Joseph poetically described the device as, %u201ca cloud in a paper bag.%u201dTwo months after the animals%u2019 flight, Etienne was lifted upward in a balloon tethered to the ground for safety. Then on November 21, a chemistry-andphysics teacher named Jean-Fran%u00e7ois Pil%u00e2tre de Rozier and army-officer Marquis d%u2019Arlandes became the first humans to experience a free flight. Taking off from the outskirts of Paris in a Montgolfier balloon, they drifted for about 9 kilometers. They had enough fuel to go much further, but burning embers from the fire were scorching the balloon%u2019s fabric, which had to be daubed out with water and sponges.Within a short time, other brave souls began building and flying their own balloons, and the once unique mode of aerial transportation became increasingly common. Interestingly, the brothers%u2019 Montgolfier Company still exists in Annonay. Now under the name Canson, it manufactures fine-art and school-grade drawing papers, as well as digital-fine-art and photography papers which are distributed in 150 countries.Working at the same time as the Montgolfiers, Jacques A.C. Charles, a French physicist, surmised that a balloon rose because the heated air within was lighter than the cooler, denser air surrounding it. If so, then hydrogen should also work. To test his theory, he created a balloon using a rubberized fabric and filled it with the lightweight gas.It took Charles three days to completely fill his hydrogen balloon, and in August of 1783, it rose upward to the cheers of a Parisian crowd. While it was unmanned, on December 1, he and his mechanical engineer, NicolasLouis Robert, took off together just ten days after the Montgolfier%u2019s first manned flight. The feat was witnessed by half-amillion people, including Benjamin Franklin, who was America%u2019s Foreign Minister to France.Gas balloons were also sometimes filled with coal gas, which was not quite as buoyant as hydrogen, but was readily available in some communities, and somewhat cheaper. These balloons became popular because they could fly higher, further, and for less money, than their hot-air cousins. Eventually they became known as Charliere balloons in honor of Jacques Charles. Over