Wonderful Balloon Ascents. Camille Flammarion
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regrets. When one of the first aeronautic ascents was made, the old Maréchal Villeroi, an octogenarian and an invalid, was conducted to one of the windows of the Tuileries, almost by force, for he did not 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 majestically launched into space in his air-boat; and at once the old maréchal, beholding this, passed suddenly from unbelief to perfect faith in aerostatics 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 is fixed! It is certain! They will find out the secret of avoiding death; but it will be after I am gone!"
If we recall the impressions which the first air-journeys made, we shall find that, among people of enthusiastic temperament, it was believed that it was not merely the blue sky above us, not merely the terrestrial atmosphere, but the vast spaces through which the worlds move, that were to become the domain of man—the sea of the balloon. The moon, the mysterious dwelling-place of men unknown, would no longer be an inaccessible place. Space no longer contained regions which man could not cross! Indeed, certain expeditions attempted the crossing of the heavens, and brought back news of the moon. The planets that revolve round the sun, the far-flying comets, the most distant stars—these formed the field which from that time was to lie open to the investigations of man.
This enthusiasm one can well enough understand. There is in the simple fact of an aerial ascent something so bold and so astonishing, that the human spirit cannot fail to be profoundly stirred by it. And if this is the feeling of men at the present day, when, after having been witnesses of ascents for the last eighty years, they see men confiding themselves in a swinging car into the immensities of space, what must have been the astonishment of those who, for the first time since the commencement of the world, beheld one of their fellow-creatures rolling in space, without any other assurance of safety than what his still dim perception of the laws of nature gave him?
Why should we be obliged here to state that the great discovery that stirred the spirits of men from the one end of Europe to the other, and gave rise to hopes of such vast discoveries, should have failed in realising the expectations which seemed so clearly justified by the first experiments? It is now eighty-six years since the first aerial journey astonished the world, and yet, in 1870, we are but little more advanced in the science than we were in 1783. Our age is the most renowned for its discoveries of any that the world has seen. Man is borne over the surface of the earth by steam; he is as familiar as the fish with the liquid element; he transmits his words instantaneously from London to New York; he draws pictures without pencil or brush, and has made the sun his slave. The air alone remains to him unsubdued. The proper management of balloons has not yet been discovered. More than that, it appears that balloons are unmanageable, and it is to air-vessels, constructed more nearly upon the model of birds, that we must go to find out the secret of aerial navigation. At present, as in former times, we are at the mercy of balloons—globes lighter than the air, and therefore the sport and the prey of tempests and currents. And aeronauts, instead of showing themselves now as the benefactors of mankind, exhibit themselves mainly to gratify a frivolous curiosity, or to crown with éclat a public fête.
Attempts in Ancient Times to fly in the Air
CHAPTER II.
ATTEMPTS IN ANCIENT TIMES TO FLY IN THE AIR.
Before contemplating the sudden conquest of the aerial kingdom, as accomplished and proclaimed at the end of the last century, it is at once curious and instructive to cast a glance backward, and to examine, by the glimmering of ancient traditions, the attempts which have been made or imagined by man to enfranchise himself from the attraction of the earth.
The greater number of the arts and sciences can be traced along a chronological ladder of great length: some, indeed, "lose themselves in the night of time." The accomplishment of raising oneself in the air, however, had no actual professors in antiquity, and the discovery of Montgolfier seems to have come into the world, so to speak, spontaneously. By this it is to be understood that, unlike Copernicus and Columbus, Montgolfier could not read in history of any similar discovery, containing the germ of his own feat. At least, we have no proof that the ancient nations practised the art of aerial navigation to any extent whatever. The attempts which we are about to cite do not strictly belong to the history of aerostatics.
Classic mythology tells us of Dædalus, who, escaping with his son Icarus from the anger of Minos, in the Isle of Crete, saved himself from the immediate evil by the aid of wings, which he made for himself and his son, and by means of which they were enabled to fly in the air. The wings, it appears, were soldered with wax, and Icarus, flying too high, was struck by a ray of the sun, which melted the wax. The youth fell into the sea, which from him derived its name of Icarian. It is possible that this fable only symbolisms the introduction of sails in navigation.
Coming down through ancient history, we note a certain Archytas, of Tarentum, who, in the fourth century B.C., is said to have launched into the air the first "flying stag," and who, according to the Greek writers, "made a pigeon of wood, which flew, but which could not raise itself again after having fallen." Its flight, it is said, "was accomplished by means of a mechanical contrivance, by the vibrations of which it was sustained in the air."
In the year 66 A.D., in the time of Nero, Simon, the magician—who called himself "the mechanician"—made certain experiments at Rome of flying at a certain height. In the eyes of the early Christians this power was attributed to the devil, and St. Peter, the namesake of this flying man, is said to have prayed fervently while Simon was amusing himself in space. It was possibly in answer to his prayers that the magician failed in his flight, fell upon the Forum, and broke his neck on the spot.
From the summit of the tower of the hippodrome at Constantinople, a certain Saracen met the same fate as Simon, in the reign of the Emperor Comnenus. His experiments were conducted on the principle of the inclined plane. He descended in an oblique course, using the resistance of the air as a support. His robe, very long and very large, and of which the flaps were extended on an osier frame, preserved him from suddenly falling.
The inclined plane probably suggested to Milton the flight of the angel Uriel, in "Paradise Lost," who descended in the morning from heaven to earth upon a ray of the sun, and ascended in the evening from earth to heaven by the same means. But we cannot quote here the fancies of pure imagination, and we will not speak of Medeus the magician, of the enchantress Armida, of the witches of the Brocken, of the hippogriff of Zephyrus with the rosy wings, or of the diabolical inventions of the middle ages, for many of which the stake was the only reward.
Roger Bacon, in the thirteenth century, inaugurated a more scientific era. In his "Treaty of the Admirable Power of Art and Nature," he puts forth the idea that it is possible "to make flying-machines in which the man, being seated or suspended in the middle, might turn some winch or crank, which would put in motion a suit of wings made to strike the air like those of a bird." In the same treatise he sketches a flying-machine, to which that of Blanchard, who lived in the eighteenth century, bears a certain resemblance. The monk, Roger Bacon, was worthy of entering the temple of fame before his great namesake the Lord Chancellor, who in the seventeenth century inaugurated the era of experimental science.
Jean Baptiste Dante, a mathematician of Perugia, who lived in the latter part of the fifteenth century, constructed artificial wings, by means of which, when applied to thin bodies, men might raise themselves off the ground into the air. It is recorded that on many occasions he experimented with his wings on the Lake Thrasymenus. These experiments, however, had a sad end. At a fête, given for the celebration of the marriage of Bartholomew d'Alvani, Dante, who must not be confounded with the poet, whose flights were of quite another kind—offered to exhibit the wonder of his wings to the