It remained ten minutes in the air,
but the loss of gas by the button-holes, and by other
imperfections, did not permit it to continue longer. The wind at
the moment of the ascent was from the north. The machine came
down so lightly that no part of it was broken."
Chapter V. Second Experiment.
(Charles's Balloon, Paris, Champ de Mars, 27th of August, 1783.)
The indescribable enthusiasm caused by the ascent of the first
balloon at Annonay, spread in all directions, and excited the
wondering curiosity of the savants of the capital. An official
report had been prepared, and sent to the Academy of Sciences in
Paris, and the result was that the Academy named a commission of
inquiry. But fame, more rapid than scientific commissions, and
more enthusiastic than academies, had, at a single flight, passed
from Annonay to Paris, and kindled the anxious ardour of the
lovers of science in that city. The great desire was to rival
Montgolfier, although neither the report nor the letters from
Annonay had made mention of the kind of gas used by that
experimenter to inflate his balloon. By one of the frequent
coincidences in the history of the sciences, hydrogen gas had
been discovered six years previously by the great English
physician Cavendish, and it had hardly even been tested in the
laboratories of the chemists when it all at once became famous.
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