The Montgolfier Brothers’ Determination to Soar

A 1783 book by French geologist Faujas de Saint-Fond depicts the lift-off of a hot air balloon carrying livestock. PD-US

What was the first living creature to fly in a manmade contraption? It wasn’t a monkey. It wasn’t a dog. It certainly wasn’t a human. It was an unlikely trio of animals, actually: a sheep, a chicken, and a duck, and they were flung aloft by a pair of enterprising French brothers at the dawn of the aviation age. The Montgolfier brothers’ determination, dreaming, and discoveries laid the groundwork for humanity’s ascent to the skies.

Joseph-Michel Montgolfier was born in 1740 in Annonay, France, and his brother and co-experimenter Jacques-Étienne was born 5 years later. Joseph and Étienne came from a large family of 16 children. Their father, Pierre Montgolfier, was a successful paper manufacturer in Vidalon in southern France.

Of the two brothers, Étienne was the more practical, and he went to Paris to study architecture. He returned to run the family business in 1772. While maintaining the paper business, Étienne and his brother began developing some interesting hobbies.

The Montgolfier brothers were immortalized in prints, books, and engravings, such as this illustration from the 1870 book "Wonderful Balloon Ascents." Public Domain

The Mystery of Flight

Specifically, the brothers became fascinated by the rapid acceleration of scientific knowledge and experimentation occurring at that time. They read the “Journal of the Royal Society” and the works of scientists such as Joseph Priestly and James Watt with relish.

Joseph dreamed and wondered about aeronautics and the mystery of flight, and as early as 1775 he was crafting parachutes. Étienne must have caught the spark of wonder from his brother because they began to work together on aeronautical experiments. The discovery of hydrogen gas by Henry Cavendish in 1766 particularly intrigued them. British scientist Joseph Black had argued that if someone could find the proper material to hold the gas, they could use it to raise objects—or people—from the ground.

The idea lit a fire of fascination in the brothers, and they decided to do just that. Around 1781, they began conducting small experiments, at first using paper from the paper factory they ran. However, neither paper, silk, nor anything else they tried could hold the elusive hydrogen gas. But the brothers refused to be defeated by this failure.

The brothers noticed that heat also seemed to make things rise—like a scrap of paper or a bit of ash above a fire. They theorized that in addition to producing smoke, flames also produced some sort of gas, a type they could perhaps more easily harness (they called it “Montgolfier gas”). Though the aeronautic brothers erred on the exact mechanism that made fires lift light objects (they didn’t know that hot air is less dense than cold air), they were still pretty close to the mark—close enough to achieve some success.

In November of 1782, Joseph made a gas-bag from silk panels. When he burned paper underneath it the bag gently wafted up to the ceiling. Encouraged, the brothers succeeded in making a heat-powered bag rise 3,000 feet and stay in the air for some minutes.

This late 19th-century print depicts an early flight of the Montgolfier brothers, which paved the way for the age of aviation. PD-US

These promising experiments led the brothers to attempt a public demonstration on June 4, 1783. They sent up a 35 ft-wide silk and paper balloon from the square of Annonay before an admiring crowd. It rose to 6,000 feet, stayed aloft for 10 minutes, and travelled a mile.

Word of this feat quickly reached Paris, and the two brothers were summoned to the Royal Court at Versailles to repeat the demonstration in front of King Louis XVI himself on Sept. 19, 1783. Queen Marie-Antoinette also attended, but was repulsed by the smell from the fire used to raise the balloon—the brothers had convinced themselves that “Montgolfier gas” was best produced by burning damp straw, wool, old shoes, and ... spoiled meat.

The Farmyard Takes Flight

Smelly or not, the odiferous mixture successfully launched the balloon—but this time with an added twist. The Montgolfier brothers wanted to discover the effects of a skyward journey on living creatures—including whether they would remain living creatures. The experimenters loaded into the balloon’s basket three animals: a sheep, a chicken, and a duck. With the passengers loaded, the king, queen, and some 130,000 citizens held their breath as the balloon softly soared skyward. The richly decorated balloon hung in the sky like a topaz teardrop, shimmering in the sun. The marveling crowd gazed at it as it levitated, seemingly defying the laws of gravity for about 8 minutes. After rising 1,700 feet, it alighted back on the earth two miles from the launch site.

The Montgolfier brothers exhibited their hot air balloon in front of French royalty and over 100,000 French citizens. Public Domain

But now the burning question: Had the animals survived?

One young scientist, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, hastened across the fields the wreckage of the balloon to learn the answer. Tentatively approaching, he found the animal’s basket broken open and empty. Had they fallen from the balloon? Or simply vaporized due to the unknown effects of such altitudes? No. De Rozier quickly saw this was not the case because he found the sheep grazing peacefully nearby. The sheep’s companions—the duck and chicken—were also quickly located.

They appeared unharmed except for the fact that the chicken had an injured wing. Was this due to the inexplicable and mysterious laws of flight? Did any living thing that dared the skies risk a one-in-three chance of limb injury from atmospheric pressure? No, once again, the answer turned out to be much more mundane: The sheep had kicked the poor chicken.

One newspaper summarized the animal aeronauts’ experience like this: “It was judged that they had not suffered, but they were, to say the least, much astonished.”

The human onlookers, too, were much astonished and impressed. Only a few months later, two Frenchmen embarked on the world’s first untethered balloon escapade involving human passengers. All this caused a sensation. Balloons and ballooning became quite the fad as excitement about the skies swept Europe and America.

One of Benjamin Franklin’s associates wrote, “all our circle of friends, at all our meals, in the antechambers of our lovely women, as in the academic schools, all one hears is talk of experiments, atmospheric air, inflammable gas, flying cars, journeys in the sky.”

A monument to the Montgolfier brothers stands in Annonay, France, their hometown. Jacques Forêt/CC BY-SA 3.0

Through the dreaming and determination of two brothers, a new frontier of human history had been crossed. The age of aviation had arrived.

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