Today we invite you to listen to the biography of the brothers Joseph-Michel (1740-1810) and Jacques-Étienne (1745-1799) Montgolfier, considered to be the inventors of the hot air balloon. As often happens throughout the history of science, they were not the only ones, before them others developed the same idea, although with less success. Thus, the history of the invention of hot air balloons would be lame without mentioning two other pioneers: the Brazilian-born physicist and mathematician Bartolomeu Lourenço de Gusmão (1685 – 1724) and the French scientist Jacques Alexandre César Charles (1746 – 1823). )
Bartolomeu Lourenço de Gusmao
Bartolomeu Lourenço de Gusmâo designed and tested the first gadgets powered by the buoyancy of hot air, although he did not fly a human being with them. Bartolomeu himself described his invention with these words: “a machine by means of which one can walk through the air much faster than on land or sea“
To Father Bartolomeu, who was a Jesuit, inspiration appeared in the form of a soap bubble. One day he was absentmindedly watching a bubble wander through the air when he noticed a curious fact: when passing over a lit candle, the bubble rose abruptly, dragged by the hot air emanating from the flame. At that time, the Portuguese scientist -Brazil was a colony of Portugal- already had several inventions to his credit and a careful preparation in mathematics and sciences as a result of his studies at the University of Coimbra. Observing the behavior of the soap bubble, Bartolomeu understood that hot air rises because it is lighter than cold air and, therefore, it could serve as an engine to lift bodies and make them float in the sea of air.
These reasonings were the beginning of a long adventure. His first attempts were simple paper balloons that he made ascend, filled with hot air given off by a flame. Convinced of the value of his invention, he began to design devices powered in this way and convinced the Portuguese monarch, Joao V, of its potential value both for transporting objects through the air and for its war applications. Such was the vehemence of the Jesuit that the monarch asked him for a practical demonstration of his theories. On August 3, 1709, in the Audience Hall of the Royal Palace, he inflated a paper balloon with such bad luck that it went up in flames amid the uproar of those present due to the danger of fire. Two days later he tried again, this time with relative success. The balloon began to ascend before the astonished audience but the king’s servants, fearing it would start a fire, destroyed it before it reached the roof.
His great triumph took place three days later, on August 8, 1709, when, again before the monarch of Portugal and his entourage, he managed to make a huge balloon inflated with hot air rise several meters above the ground and fall again. gently when the flame that fed it was exhausted.
That triumph had a great impact and the King granted Bartolomeu Lourenço de Gusmão the rights to any floating device. From that moment on he was nicknamed “flying father”.
However, fame had dire consequences for the inventor. The common people mocked him and the ecclesiastical authorities, represented by the Nuncio of Lisbon and future Pope Innocent XIII, a known enemy of the Jesuits, reprimanded Lourenço de Gusmão for the fire hazards involved in handling the balloons. As if this were not enough, some associated the flying ship with the devil and the Holy Inquisition, which was less than holy, persecuted him so viciously that he was forced to flee to Spain. He died in Toledo, at the age of 39 without seeing his dream come true: to make human beings fly with his strange machines or Passarolas, as he called them.
Seventy-four years later, no one remembered the “Flying Father” and no one remembered him when on June 4, 1783, the immense 800-cubic-meter paper balloon, designed by Joseph and Étienne Montgolfier, rose to a height of more than a thousand meters per above the French town of Annonay, as we told you in the biography.
Jacques Alexandre Cesar Charles
Interestingly, the Montgolfiers were paper manufacturers and lacked the scientific knowledge necessary to correctly interpret the force that propelled their balloons. Initially they attributed the force of ascension to the smoke given off by the straw and other fuels with which they heated the air that filled their devices. Who did have the appropriate knowledge was the French scientist Jacques Alexandre César Charles who, taking advantage of his knowledge, is in fact the author of one of the ideal gas laws in physics, it was said. “If wood floats on water because it is less dense than it, a gas less dense than air will float in the air.” With this principle as a basis, he filled a huge balloon with hydrogen, much lighter than air, and released it in Paris on August 27, 1783. The balloon traveled 25 kilometers and landed in a village where, once again, the flying object was identified as a present from the devil and destroyed by villagers.
On December 1, 1783, Charles himself and another companion rose to 3,000 meters in a hydrogen balloon. Charles was not the first to fly in a balloon, that merit corresponded to the Montgolfier Brothers, who a month and a half earlier had managed to raise one of their huge “montgolfieras” – as they were called – with two people on board.
Thus, Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier were pioneers in manned hot air balloon trips and for this reason we dedicate this biography to them. We invite you to listen to it.
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