Wonderful Balloon Ascents; Or, The Conquest of the Skies

The idea was too simple in its grandeur, and was of too easy a kind not to call up a host of imitators. Of these Blanchard was one of the first; but this mechanician was anxious to incorporate his own invention with that of Montgolfier, and he arranged that on the 2nd of March, 1784, he should make an ascent in what he still called his “flying vessel,” which he furnished with four wings. Blanchard and his companion, Pesch, a Benedictine priest, were prevented from going up in the balloon, as represented in our illustration, which was drawn before the event it was intended to commemorate. A certain Dupont de Chambon persisted in accompanying the voyagers. Pushed back by them, he drew his sword, leaped into the car or boat, wounded Blanchard, cut the rigging, and broke the oars or wings. The aeronaut was consequently compelled to have his machine partly re-fitted in great haste, and in the course of a few hours he made the ascent alone in the usual way. Blanchard should have known the uselessness of oars, though he did not abandon their employment in subsequent ascents. The Brothers Montgolfier had dreamed of the employment of oars as a means of guidance, but had ultimately rejected the idea. Joseph wrote to his brother Etienne, about the end of the year 1783: “For my sake, my good friend, reflect; calculate well before you employ oars. Oars must either be great or small; if great, they will be heavy; if small, it will be necessary to move them with great rapidity. I know no sufficient means of guidance, except in the knowledge of the different currents of air, of which it is necessary to make a study; and these are generally regulated by the elevation.” The two brothers often recurred to this idea. The pictures of the first ascent of Blanchard from the Champ de Mars on the 2nd of March, 1784, in the presence of a vast multitude, show us the oars and the mechanism of his flying-machine fitted to a balloon. The design which we here give seems to us deserving of being considered only as one of the caricatures of the time, especially when we look at the personage dressed in the fool’s head-gear, who sits behind and accompanies the triumphant ascent of the aeronaut with music. It was not with this apparatus that Blanchard effected his