There is a poster on the wall in one of the cottages here at Rochebonne that says something about the French being the first to fly, and yesterday a guest commented “but it was the Wright brothers!”
Indeed it was. The American Wright brothers were the first to fly (1909), they invented the aeroplane and made the Great Breakthrough.
The French Montgolfier brothers, however, were the first to ascend. That is not the same thing. They didn’t really fly anywhere – I think the longest journey their balloon travelled was under 2 kms. But it was still significant and a Great Breakthrough in its own right. And it was over 100 years earlier.
Gas hot-air balloons, which very soon took over because the Montgolfier ones didn’t go far and were dangerous (the fire was actually there in the basket, of course, or remained on the ground underneath), were invented by another pair of French brothers, called Roget, and an Englishman, Henry Cavendish, who invented the gas.
For this blog in full and more please see http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk/blog/snippets-of-french-history-hot-air-balloons/
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire