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172
Wonderful Balloon Ascents; Or, The Conquest of the Skies
·
Fulgence Marion
34
Chapter
V.
Second
Experiment.
(Charles’s
Balloon,
Paris,
Champ
de
Mars,
27th
of
August,
1783.)
The
indescribable
enthusiasm
caused
by
the
ascent
of
the
first
balloon
at
Annonay,
spread
in
all
directions,
and
excited
the
wondering
curiosity
of
the
savants
of
the
capital.
An
official
report
had
been
prepared,
and
sent
to
the
Academy
of
Sciences
in
Paris,
and
the
result
was
that
the
Academy
named
a
commission
of
inquiry.
But
fame,
more
rapid
than
scientific
commissions,
and
more
enthusiastic
than
academies,
had,
at
a
single
flight,
passed
from
Annonay
to
Paris,
and
kindled
the
anxious
ardour
of
the
lovers
of
science
in
that
city.
The
great
desire
was
to
rival
Montgolfier,
although
neither
the
report
nor
the
letters
from
Annonay
had
made
mention
of
the
kind
of
gas
used
by
that
experimenter
to
inflate
his
balloon.
By
one
of
the
frequent
coincidences
in
the
history
of
the
sciences,
hydrogen
gas
had
been
discovered
six
years
previously
by
the
great
English
physician
Cavendish,
and
it
had
hardly
even
been
tested
in
the
laboratories
of
the
chemists
when
it
all
at
once
became
famous.
A
young
man
well
versed
in
physics,
Professor
Charles,
assisted
by
two
practical
men,
the
brothers
Robert,
threw
himself
ardently
into
the
investigation
of
the
modes
of
inflating
balloons
with
this
gas,
which
was
then
called
INFLAMMABLE
AIR.
Guessing
that
it
was
much
lighter
than
that
which
Montgolfier
had
been
obliged
to
make
use
of
in
his
third-rate
provincial
town,
Charles
leagued
himself
with
his
two
assistants
to
constrict
a
balloon
of
taffeta,
twelve
feet
in
diameter,
covered
with
india-rubber,
and
to
inflate
it
with
hydrogen.
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