George Washington and the Dream of Flying

We’ve all dreamed of swooping skyward. The fantasy became reality in America during George Washington’s first term in office. Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard attempted the extraordinary and dangerous feat — to leave the earth and soar into the heavens — on the morning of January 9, 1793. He began his flight in a prison yard in Philadelphia. The president, along with John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and other dignitaries, watched in awe.

Hoping to emulate birds, Blanchard had earlier experimented with a winged contraption operated by levers. He failed to get off the ground. The idea of using a lighter-than-air device had originated with Joseph Montgolfier, scion of a French paper-making firm. Seeing an article of his wife’s lingerie wafting on warm air as it dried by a fire had given him ideas. Joseph and his brother Etienne used burlap sacks lined with paper to hold more hot air, increasing the size until the globe would lift a human. Their first ride in 1783 touched off balloon mania across Europe.

Chemists knew that iron filings treated with sulfuric acid gave off hydrogen, a gas with even more lifting power. Balloons started sailing aloft all over the continent.

Blanchard used a hydrogen balloon to make the first aerial crossing of the English Channel in 1785. He took off from Dover accompanied by an American doctor, John Jeffries, who was bankrolling the attempt. The two found themselves skimming the waves. After throwing over all the ballast, they ditched the ineffective rudder, the gondola’s decorations, and Jeffries’ scientific instruments. Desperate to lighten the load, they stripped off their clothing. A favorable breeze finally helped them reach the French coast, where they alighted, Jeffries said, “almost naked as the trees.”

Blanchard and Jeffries crossing the Channel.

In 1793, Blanchard traveled to America, where ballooning was still unknown. Benjamin Franklin, who had died three years earlier, had speculated that flight would “possibly give a new turn to human affairs.” The Frenchman planned to charge viewers as much as five dollars to watch the ascent from the prison courtyard. Frugal Philadelphians preferred to stand outside and observe the spectacle for free.

Blanchard equipped his gondola with “ballast, meteorological instruments, and some refreshments.” He took a small black dog as a companion. President Washington gave him a pass directing citizens to “aid him with that humanity and good will, which may render honor to their country.”

Shortly after ten a.m. on the unusually balmy January morning, the buoyant hydrogen lifted the yellow varnished silk orb off the earth. “Anxiety for the safety of the Aeronaut was painted on every face,” wrote a reporter for Dunlap's American Daily Advertiser. A long moment of silent amazement — then wild cheering.

In spite of his previous ascents, Blanchard himself was impressed. “I could not help being surprised and astonished, when, elevated at a certain height over the city, I turned my eyes towards the immense number of people, which covered the open places . . . over which my flight carried me in the free space of the air. What a sight!”

When he reached an altitude of more than a mile, he performed some experiments that earthbound scientists had requested – filling bottles with air and checking his pulse. The city of Philadelphia, whose population was approaching 50,000, was now “a most minute and microscopic object.” He ate a biscuit, drank some wine, and opened the balloon’s valve to begin his descent.

Blanchard had drifted across the Delaware River and now landed in a pasture in Gloucester County, New Jersey. He spoke almost no English, and the illiterate farmer who came running to investigate the astounding sight could not read Washington’s letter. But the “exhilarating juice of the grape” quickly established a companionable atmosphere. The first air trip in America had lasted forty-six minutes.

Having lost rather than made money on his American venture, Blanchard continued his ballooning in Europe. In 1808, while making his sixtieth ascension, he suffered a heart attack and fell fifty feet -- he died of his injuries.

His wife, Sophie, the first woman to fly solo, continued to give balloon demonstrations. As the novelty of merely flying wore off, she enlivened her display with night ascents in which she launched fireworks from her lofty perch. The practice proved fatal in 1819 when her hydrogen balloon caught fire and she too perished.

Blanchard had never found a way to steer his balloons, which remained subject to the whims of air currents. Balloons served as observation posts during the American Civil War and World War I, but played no major role in aviation until the 1930s, when giant dirigibles carried passengers across the Atlantic in two days. The fiery crash of the airship Hindenburg in 1937 showed their limitations. It was Blanchard’s original idea of a heavier-than-air craft with birdlike wings that would prove most practical for routinely lifting humans into the skies.

In the 1960s, the hot air balloon suddenly returned to popularity. American engineer Ed Yost came up with the idea of a light-bulb-shaped nylon balloon inflated by propane burners. His reinvention of the Montgolfier brothers’ craft prompted thousands of enthusiasts to take to the air. Today, these aeronauts keep alive Blanchard’s tradition— they routinely carry a bottle of wine, usually champagne, to share with the owner of the property where they land.

Please share this free post with others.