Whilst pensions and honours and popular applause were being
showered upon the inventors of the balloon, Watt was labouring
unnoticed at his improvements of the steam-engine--a very prosaic
affair compared with the gilded globe which Montgolfier had
caused to rise from earth amidst the acclamations of a hundred
thousand spectators, but one which had before it a somewhat
different history to that of the more startling invention.
England, when it remembers the story of the steam-engine, has
little need to grudge France the honour of discovering the
balloon. After all, however, Great Britain had its share in that
discovery. The early observations of Francis Bacon and Bishop
Wilkins paved the way for the later achievement, whilst it was
our own Cavendish who discovered that hydrogen gas was lighter
than air; and Dr. Black of Edinburgh, who first employed that gas
to raise a globe in which it was contained from the earth. The
Scotch professor, we are told, thought that the discovery which
he made when he sent his little tissue-paper balloon from his
lecture-table to the ceiling of his classroom, was of no use
except as affording the means of making an interesting
experiment. Possibly our readers, after they have perused this
volume, may think that Dr Black was not after all so far wrong as
people once imagined.
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