A Short History

Balloons were used in the first successful human attempts at flying. With the work of Bartolomeu Lourenco de Gusmao, a Brazilian priest and inventor, craft experimentation may have begun as early as 1709. In 1783, Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier at Annonay, confirmed that a fabric bag filled with hot air would rise. On June 4 of that year, they launched an unmanned balloon that traveled for over 1.5 miles. At Versailles, they repeated this experiment with a larger balloon on September 19, 1783, sending a sheep, rooster, and a duck aloft.

On November 21, 1783, the first manned flight took place when Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier and Francois Laurent, Marquis d'Arlandes, sailed over Paris in a Mongolfier balloon. They burned wool and straw to keep the air in the balloon hot. Their amazing flight covered 5.5 miles in about 23 minutes. In December of that year, the physicist J.A.C. Charles, with Nicolas-Louis Robert, flew a balloon filled with hydrogen on a two-hour flight. On June 4, 1784, Marie Elisabeth Thible, a French opera singer, became the first female aeronaut when she ascended in a Mongolfier balloon in Lyon, France.

In 1861, balloonist Thaddeus Lowe proved the worth of the recently created civilian Balloon Corps when he rose a thousand feet above Arlington, Virginia and spotted Confederate troops in Fall Church three miles away. He was then able to telegraph their position to Union troops.

Military uses for balloons were soon developed. Anchored observation balloons were used by Napoleon in some of his battles and by both sides in the American Civil War and in World War I. The powered airship developed from balloons, but while the airship was eventually replaced with the airplane, balloons have continued to be useful. During World War II, balloons were anchored over many parts of Brittain to defend against low-level bombing.