Chapter I, The Aeronauts CHAPTER I The first scientific ascents in England There are no frontiers in the reign of thought, and the conquests of the human mind belong to all the world; yet each civilized nation is called upon to give its contingent to the great work of the study of nature, and to choose those branches which are most suited to its genius. France has given the balloon to the world, but her work is still incomplete, and the conquest of Charles and Montgolfier remains undeveloped. It is not, however, my intention to describe the attempts which have been made to this end, or discuss the value of the balloon as a first step towards the solution of the problem of aerial locomotion; I desire only to describe the principal results of my own aeronautical excursions, after briefly alluding to the observations of my predecessors in this field of inquiry. The first persons in England who devoted themselves to aerial navigation were foreigners. The philosopher Tiberius Cavallo and the diplomatist Vincent Lunardi were both Italians. But from the time when Lunardi inaugurated balloon ascents to the present day, it may be truly said that balloons have remained popular with us; not only have noblemen and gentlemen shown a taste for aerial journeys, but men of science have followed up with avidity the great experiments made on the Continent, and several attempts have been made in England, both by free and captive balloons, to study systematically the phenomena of the atmosphere. In 1838 and 1850, Mr. [George] Rush ascended several times with Mr.

Green, and made some observations mainly on humidity. Public attention was aroused to a certain extent, but the ascents were chiefly known from an incident which occurred at the end of one of them. The balloon descended in the sea near Sheerness, and the car was dragged through the water with considerable rapidity; the balloon acting as a kite. Mr. Green therefore threw out the grapnel, which caught in a sunken wreck, and detained the balloon till a boat came up and secured the voyagers. A volley of musketry was fired into the balloon to admit of the escape of the gas, and it was ultimately secured. Soon after the discovery of the balloon, a desire arose for experiments in the higher regions of the air. The first experiments, as I have previously stated, were made at St Petersburg, by command of the Emperor of Russia, by Mr.

Robertson, in the years 1803 and 1804, but no important results were obtained. In the year 1804 two experiments were made at Paris: the first on August 31, by Gay-Lussac and [Jean-Baptiste] Biot. These gentlemen ascended to the height of 13,000 feet, but did not commence their observations till they were 7,000 feet high. Their experiments in magnetism, electricity, or galvanism, gave results identical with those made on the earth--a source of much disappointment to everyone. It was then supposed that they had not ascended high enough, and Gay-Lussac resolved to go alone, with the view of reaching a greater elevation. This he succeeded in doing on September 15 following, when he reached a height of 23,000 feet, and found a decline of temperature from 82° to 15°; almost confirming the theory of a decline of temperature of 1° in 300 feet of elevation. The sky was very blue, and the air was found to be very dry. A magnet took a longer time to vibrate than on the earth.

He filled two bottles with air from the higher regions, which on analysis was found to be in its component parts the same as the lower air. Two years after this, the Astronomer Royal of Naples, Carlo Brioschi, wished to ascend higher than Gay-Lussac, but this he was unable to do in consequence of the balloon bursting. After this no attempt was made till the year 1843, when the British Association appointed a committee and voted a sum of money for experiments by means of captive balloons. Several committees were subsequently appointed, and out of the limited resources of the Association considerable sums of money were granted for experiments by means of balloons; but no good results were obtained. This want of success ought neither to discourage nor astonish us; captive ascents, though easy enough when directed by experienced aeronauts with proper appliances, present inextricable difficulties to novices unaccustomed to the disappointments of aerial navigation. In the year 1850 Messrs [Jacques Alexandre] Bixio and [Augustin] Barral conceived the project of ascending to a height of 30,000 to 40,000 feet, in order to study the many atmospheric phenomena as yet imperfectly known. On June 29 in that year, a balloon was filled in the garden of the Observatory at Paris with pure hydrogen gas. The weather was bad--a torrent of rain fell; Messrs Bixio and Barral, and the aeronaut, placed themselves in the car without testing the ascending power of the balloon, and darted into the air like an arrow, as described by the spectators, so that in two minutes they were lost in the clouds.

At a height of 5,000 feet the gas in the balloon expanded with great force against the netting, which proved to be too small. The balloon became full, and descending upon the voyagers covered them completely as they were seated in the car, which unfortunately was suspended by cords much too short. In this difficult situation, one of them, in his efforts to disengage the cord from the valve, made an opening in the lower part of the balloon, from which the gas escaping at the height of their heads, occasioned them continued illness. Then they found that the balloon was torn and they were falling fast. They threw away everything they could, and came to the earth in a vineyard, having left it only forty-seven minutes previously. A mass of clouds 9,000 feet in thickness was passed through. The decrease of temperature up to 19,000 feet, the highest point reached, seemed to confirm the results obtained by Gay-Lussac in 1804. In the following month, on July 27, the filling of the balloon was commenced early in the morning.

It proved to be a long operation, occupying till nearly two o''clock: then heavy rain fell, the sky became overcast, and it was after four when they left the earth. They soon entered a cloud at 7,000 or 8,000 feet, which proved to be fully 15,000 feet in thickness; they never, however, reached its highest point, for when at 4:50 a.m. the height of 23,000 feet was reached, they began to descend, owing to a tear which was then found in the balloon. After vainly attempting to check this involuntary descent, they reached the earth at 5:30 a.m. On approaching the limit of this cloud of 15,000 feet in thickness, the blue sky was seen through an opening in the surrounding vapour. The polariscope, when directed towards this point, showed an intense polarization, but when directed to the side, away from the opening, there was no polarization.

An interesting optical phenomenon was observed in this ascent. When near their highest point, the bed of clouds which covered the balloon having become less dense, the two observers saw the sun dim and quite white, and also at the same time a second sun reflected as from a sheet of water, probably formed by the reflection of luminous rays on horizontal sides of crystal ice floating in the clouds. The most extraordinary and unexpected result, however, observed in this ascent was the great change of temperature. At the height of about 19,000 feet the temperature was 15°, but in the next 2,000 feet it fell to minus 39°. This wonderful change was experienced in the clouds. What, we may ask, can the constituents of such a cloud then be? In this voyage a height short of Gay-Lussac''s by 50 feet was reached, but a temperature lower by 54° was recorded, and the clothes of the observers were covered with fine needles of ice. From this time until quite recently no ascents have been made in France in the cause of science. In the year 1852 Mr.

[John] Welsh, of the Kew Observatory, made, under the auspices of the British Association, four ascents in the great Nassau balloon, with the veteran aeronaut Mr. Green, who had then an experience derived from several hundred ascents. In August, October, and November he reached the respective heights of 19,500, 19,100, 12,640, and 22,930 feet, and in each ascent made a valuable series of observations. The facts recorded by Gay-Lussac, relative to the decline of temperature with increase of elevation, appeared to confirm the law which had been derived from observations made on mountain-sides, viz. a decrease of 1° for every increase of 300 feet of elevation; and the deductions of Mr. Welsh from his experiments tended to the confirmation of the same law, with some modifications. The results of Welsh''s observations were published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for the year 1853, and afterwards in the Bulletin Géographique de Dr. Petermann for 1856.

When these ascents were made, they excited the greatest public interest. I watched Mr. Welsh''s fourth ascent throughout, from the roof of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, with a good telescope. The day was fine and the air clear, and I was surprised at the facility with which I could follow every movement of the balloon, from its departure to its descent. During the whole time that the balloon was in the air, and while it traversed a course of fifty-seven miles in the direction E.S.E., I never lost sight of it for a moment.

I saw it rise from Vauxhall at 2:22 p.m., and descend at 3:40 p.m., at a place which I afterwards learned was near Folkestone. It was this circumstance which notably influenced me in my desire for balloon observations, and which led me to believe in the possibility of combining terrestrial observations with those made in the balloon, and thereby determining the height of the balloon at different t.