The First Montgolfier Balloon
Next: June 4, 2027
Linen, paper, hot air: the sky opens.
The story
Where it comes from
On 4 June 1783 the brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier, papermakers from Annonay in the Ardèche region of France, sent a hot-air balloon up from their town's public square, and this Story marks the anniversary. Made of linen and paper and about 11 metres across, it rose some 1,800 metres, floated for ten minutes and came down more than a mile away. News of it spread across France. Within months a Montgolfier balloon carried the first living passengers, and in November 1783 people flew for the first time.
How it's celebrated
There is no organised observance, so mark it in your own way: watch a balloon launch if one flies near you, read about the first passengers, or show a child why warm air rises. The principle is Archimedes' law of buoyancy: anything lighter than the air or water it pushes aside will float, and the Montgolfiers turned it to the sky.
Did you know
- The first passengers, sent up from Versailles on 19 September 1783, were a sheep, a duck and a rooster.
- On 21 November 1783 Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes made the first human flight in history, from the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, feeding the fire with straw and landing about 25 minutes later.
- Small hot-air balloons had been flown in Asia centuries before the Montgolfiers.
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