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1、Wonderful Balloon Ascents:or,the Conquest of the Skies1Wonderful BalloonAscents:or,the Conquestof the SkiesF.(Fulgence)Marion1870Wonderful Balloon Ascents:or,the Conquest of the Skies2PREFACELet posterity know,and knowing be astonished,that on the fifteenthday of September,1784,Vincent Lunardi of Lu
2、cca,in Tuscany,the firstaerial traveller in Britain,mounting from the Artillery Ground in London,and traversing the regions of the air for two hours and fifteen minutes,onthis spot revisited the earth.In this rude monument for ages be recordedthis wondrous enterprise successfully achieved by the pow
3、ers of chemistryand the fortitude of man,this improvement in science which the greatAuthor of all Knowledge,patronising by his Providence the inventions ofmankind,hath graciously permitted,to their benefit and his own eternalglory.The stone upon which the above inscription was carved,stands,orstood
4、recently,near Colliers End,in the parish of Standon,Hertfordshire;and it will possibly afford the English reader a more accurate idea of thefeelings with which the world hailed the discovery of the balloon than anyincident or illustration drawn from the annals of a foreign country.The work which we
5、now introduce to our readers does not exaggeratethe case when it declares that no discovery of modern times has aroused solarge an amount of enthusiasm,has excited so many hopes,has appearedto the human race to open up so many vistas of enterprise and research,asthat for which we are mainly indebted
6、 to the Brothers Montgolfier.Thediscovery or the invention of the balloon,however,was one of thoseefforts of genius and enterprise which have no infancy.It had reached itsfull growth when it burst upon the world,and the ninety years which havesince elapsed have witnessed no development of the origin
7、al idea.Theballoon of to-day-the balloon in which Coxwell and Glaisher have madetheir perilous trips into the remote regions of the air-is in almost everyrespect the same as the balloon with which the physician Charles,following in the footsteps of the Montgolfiers,astonished Paris in 1783.There are
8、 few more tantalising stories in the annals of invention than this.So much had been accomplished when Roziers made his first aerialvoyage above the astonished capital of France that all the rest seemed easy.The new highway appeared to have been thrown open to the world,andWonderful Balloon Ascents:o
9、r,the Conquest of the Skies3the dullest imagination saw the air thronged with colossal chariots,bearingtravellers in perfect safety,and with more than the speed of the eagle,fromcity to city,from country to country,reckless of all the obstacles-the seas,and rivers,and mountains-which Nature might ha
10、ve placed in the path ofthe wayfarer.But from that moment to the present the prospect which wasthus opened up has remained a vision and nothing more.There are-asthose who visited the Crystal Palace two years ago have reason to know-not a few men who still believe in the practicability of journeying
11、by air.But,with hardly an exception,those few have abandoned all idea ofutilising the balloon for this purpose.The graceful machine whichastonished the world at its birth remains to this day as beautiful,and asuseless for the purposes of travel,as in the first hour of its history.The daymay come whe
12、n some one more fortunate than the Montgolfiers may earnthe Duke of Sutherlands offered reward by a successful flight from theMall to the top of Stafford House;but when this comes to pass the balloonwill have no share in the honour of the achievement.Not the less,however,is the story of this wonderf
13、ul invention worthy of being recorded.Itdeserves a place in the history of human enterprise-if for nothing else-because of the daring courage which it has in so many cases brought tolight.From the days of Roziers down to those of Coxwell,our aeronautshave fearlessly tempted dangers not less terrible
14、 than those which face thesoldier as he enters the imminent deadly breach;and,as one of thechapters in this volume mournfully proves,not a few of their number havepaid the penalty of their rash courage with their lives.All the more is it tobe regretted that so little practical good has resulted from
15、 their labours andtheir sacrifices;and that so many of those who have perished in balloonvoyages have done so whilst serving to better end than the amusement of aholiday crowd.There is,however,another aspect which makes at least theearlier history of the balloon well worth preserving.This is the inf
16、luencewhich the invention had upon the generation which witnessed it.As thesepages show,the people of Europe seem to have been absolutelyintoxicated by the success of the Montgolfiers discovery.There issomething bitterly suggestive in our knowledge of this fact.Whilstpensions and honours and popular
17、 applause were being showered upon theWonderful Balloon Ascents:or,the Conquest of the Skies4inventors of the balloon,Watt was labouring unnoticed at hisimprovements of the steam-engine-a very prosaic affair compared withthe gilded globe which Montgolfier had caused to rise from earth amidstthe accl
18、amations of a hundred thousand spectators,but one which hadbefore it a somewhat different history to that of the more startlinginvention.England,when it remembers the story of the steam-engine,haslittle need to grudge France the honour of discovering the balloon.Afterall,however,Great Britain had it
19、s share in that discovery.The earlyobservations of Francis Bacon and Bishop Wilkins paved the way for thelater achievement,whilst it was our own Cavendish who discovered thathydrogen gas was lighter than air;and Dr.Black of Edinburgh,who firstemployed that gas to raise a globe in which it was contai
20、ned from the earth.The Scotch professor,we are told,thought that the discovery which hemade when he sent his little tissue-paper balloon from his lecture-table tothe ceiling of his classroom,was of no use except as affording the meansof making an interesting experiment.Possibly our readers,after the
21、y haveperused this volume,may think that Dr Black was not after all so farwrong as people once imagined.Be this as it may,however,in these pagesis the history of the balloon,and of the most memorable balloon voyages,and we comprehend the story to our readers not the less cordially that itcomes from
22、the land where the balloon had its birth.London,January,1870.Wonderful Balloon Ascents:or,the Conquest of the Skies5PART I.THE CONQUEST OF THE SKIES.-1783.Wonderful Balloon Ascents:or,the Conquest of the Skies6CHAPTER I.Introduction.The title of our introduction to aeronautics may appear ambitious t
23、oastronomers,and to those who know that the infinite space we call theheavens is for ever inaccessible to travellers from the earth;but it was notso considered by those who witnessed the ardent enthusiasm evoked at theascension of the first balloon.No discovery,in the whole range of history,has elic
24、ited an equal degree of applause and admiration-never has thegenius of man won a triumph which at first blush seemed more glorious.The mathematical and physical sciences had in aeronautics achievedapparently their greatest honours,and inaugurated a new era in theprogress of knowledge.After having su
25、bjected the earth to their power;after having made the waves of the sea stoop in submission under thekeels of their ships;after having caught the lightning of heaven and madeit subservient to the ordinary purposes of life,the genius of man undertookto conquer the regions of the air.Imagination,intox
26、icated with pastsuccesses,could descry no limit to human power;the gates of the infiniteseemed to be swinging back before mans advancing step,and the last wasbelieved to be the greatest of his achievements.In order to comprehend the frenzy of the enthusiasm which the firstaeronautic triumphs called
27、forth,it is necessary to recall the appearance ofMontgolfier at Versailles,on the 19th of September,1783,before LouisXVI,or of the earliest aeronauts at the Tuileries.Paris hailed the first ofthese men with the greatest acclaim,and then,as now,says a Frenchwriter,the voice of Paris gave the cue to F
28、rance,and France to theworld!Nobles and artisans,scientific men and badauds,great and small,were moved with one universal impulse.In the streets the praises of theballoon were sung;in the libraries models of it abounded;and in thesalons the one universal topic was the great machine.In anticipation,t
29、hepoet delighted himself with birds-eye views of the scenery of strangecountries;the prisoner mused on what might be a new way of escape;thephysicist visited the laboratory in which the lightning and the meteorswere manufactured;the geometrician beheld the plans of cities and theoutlines of kingdoms
30、;the general discovered the position of the enemy orWonderful Balloon Ascents:or,the Conquest of the Skies7rained shells on the besieged town;the police beheld a new mode in whichto carry on the secret service;Hope heralded a new conquest from thedomain of nature,and the historian registered a new c
31、hapter in the annalsof human knowledge.Scientific discoveries in general,says Arago,even those fromwhich men expect the most advantage,like those of the compass and thesteam-engine,were greeted at first with contempt,or at the best withindifference.Political events,and the fortunes of armies monopol
32、isedalmost entirely the attention of the people.But to this rule there are twoexceptions-the discoveries of America and of aerostatics,the advents ofColumbus and of Montgolfier.It is not here our duty to inquire how ithappened that the discoveries made by these two personages are classedtogether.Air
33、-travelling may be as unproductive of actual good to societyas filling the belly with the east wind is to the body,while every oneknows something of the extent to which the discovery of Columbus hasinfluenced the character,the civilisation,the destinies,in short,of thehuman race.We are speaking at p
34、resent of the known and well-attestedfact,that the discovery of America and the discovery of the method oftraversing space by means of balloons-however they may differ in respectof results to man-rank equally in this,that of all other discoveries thesetwo have attracted the greatest amount of attent
35、ion,and given,in theirrespective eras,the greatest impulse to popular feeling.Let the readerrecall the marks of enthusiasm which the discovery of the islands on theeast coast of America excited in Andalusia,in Catalonia,in Aragon andCastile-let him read the narrative of the honours paid by town and
36、village,not only to the hero of the enterprise,but even to his commonest sailors,and then let him search the records of the epoch for the degree of sensationproduced by the discovery of aeronautics in France,which stands in thesame relationship to this event as that in which Spain stands to the othe
37、r.The processions of Seville and Barcelona are the exact prototypes of thefetes of Lyons and Paris.In France,in 1783,as in Spain two centuriespreviously,the popular imagination was so greatly excited by the deedsperformed,that it began to believe in possibilities of the most unlikelydescription.In S
38、pain,the conquestadores and their followers believed thatWonderful Balloon Ascents:or,the Conquest of the Skies8in a few days after they had landed on American soil,they would havegathered as much gold and precious stones,as were then possessed by therichest European Sovereigns.In France,each one fo
39、llowing his ownnotions,made out for himself special benefits to flow from the discoveryof balloons.Every discovery then appeared to be only the precursor ofother and greater discoveries,and nothing after that time seemed to beimpossible to him who attempted the conquest of the atmosphere.Thisidea cl
40、othed itself in every form.The young embraced it with enthusiasm,the old made it the subject of endless regrets.When one of the firstaeronautic ascents was made,the old Marechal Villeroi,an octogenarianand an invalid,was conducted to one of the windows of the Tuileries,almost by force,for he did not
41、 believe in balloons.The balloon,meanwhile,detached itself from its moorings;the physician Charles,seated in the car,gaily saluted the public,and was then majesticallylaunched into space in his air-boat;and at once the old Marechal,beholding this,passed suddenly from unbelief to perfect faith inaero
42、statics and in the capacity of the human mind,fell on his knees,and,with his eyes bathed in tears,moaned out pitifully the words,Yes,it isfixed!It is certain!They will find out the secret of avoiding death;but itwill be after I am gone!If we recall the impressions which the first air-journeys made,w
43、e shallfind that,among people of enthusiastic temperament,it was believed thatit was not merely the blue sky above us,not merely the terrestrialatmosphere,but the vast spaces through which the worlds move,that wereto become the domain of man-the sea of the balloon.The moon,themysterious dwelling-pla
44、ce of men unknown,would no longer be aninaccessible place.Space no longer contained regions which man couldnot cross!Indeed,certain expeditions attempted the crossing of theheavens,and brought back news of the moon.The planets that revolveround the sun,the far-flying comets,the most distant stars-th
45、ese formedthe field which from that time was to lie open to the investigations of man.This enthusiasm one can well enough understand.There is in thesimple fact of an aerial ascent something so bold and so astonishing,thatthe human spirit cannot fail to be profoundly stirred by it.And if this is theW
46、onderful Balloon Ascents:or,the Conquest of the Skies9feeling of men at the present day,when,after having been witnesses ofascents for the last eighty years,they see men confiding themselves in aswinging car into the immensities of space,what must have been theastonishment of those who,for the first
47、 time since the commencement ofthe world,beheld one of their fellow-creatures rolling in space,withoutany other assurance of safety than what his still dim perception of the lawsof nature gave him?Why should we be obliged here to state that the great discovery thatstirred the spirits of men from the
48、 one end of Europe to the other,and gaverise to hopes of such vast discoveries,should have failed in realising theexpectations which seemed so clearly justified by the first experiments?Itis now eighty-six years since the first aerial journey astonished the world,and yet,in 1870,we are but little mo
49、re advanced in the science than wewere in 1783.Our age is the most renowned for its discoveries of any thatthe world has seen.Man is borne over the surface of the earth by steam;heis as familiar as the fish with the liquid element;he transmits his wordsinstantaneously from London to New York;he draw
50、s pictures withoutpencil or brush,and has made the sun his slave.The air alone remains tohim unsubdued.The proper management of balloons has not yet beendiscovered.More than that,it appears that balloons are unmanageable,andit is to air-vessels,constructed more nearly upon the model of birds,thatwe