Wonderful Balloon Ascents; Or, The Conquest of the Skies

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.