Wonderful Balloon Ascents; Or, The Conquest of the Skies

Another species of parachute, less perfect, to be sure; than that of Garnerin, but still a practical machine, was described 189 years before the great aeronaut’s feat at Paris. We read in the narrative of the ambassador of Louis XIV at Siam, at the end of the seventeenth century, the following passage--“A mountebank at the court of the King of Siam climbed to the top of a high bamboo-tree, and threw himself into the air without any other support than two parasols. Thus equipped, he abandoned himself to the winds, which carried him, as by chance, sometimes to the earth, sometimes on trees or houses, and sometimes into the river, without any harm happening to him.” Is not this the idea of our parachutes? Chapter IV. First Public Trial of the Balloon. (Montgolfier’s Balloon Annonay, 5th of June of 1783.) We are accustomed to rank the brothers Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier as equally distinguished in the field of science. The reason for thus associating these two names seems to have been the fraternal friendship which subsisted in an extraordinary degree in the Montgolfier family, rather than any equality of claim which they had to the notice of posterity. After special investigation, we find that Joseph Montgolfier was very superior to his brother, and that it is to him principally, if not exclusively, that we owe the invention of aerostation. Nevertheless, we shall not insist upon this fact; and seeing that a sacred amity always cemented a perfect union in the Montgolfier family, we will regard that union as unbroken in any sense, and will not insinuate that the brother of Montgolfier was undeserving of the honoured rank which in his lifetime he held.