What is most important to examine in each of the great aerial
voyages that have been made, is the special character which
distinguishes them from average experiments. All our great
voyages are rendered special and particular by the ideas of the
men who undertook them, and the aims which they severally meant
to achieve by them. The early ascents of Montgolfier had for
their aim the establishment of the fact that any body lighter
than the volume of air which it displaces will rise in the
atmosphere; those of Roziers were undertaken to prove that man
can apply this principle for the purpose of making actual aerial
voyages; those of Robertson, Gay-Lussac, &c., were undertaken for
the purpose of ascertaining certain meteorological phenomena;
those of Conte Coutelle applied aerostation to military uses. A
considerable number were made with the view of organising a
system of aerial navigation analogous to that of the sea-steerage
in a certain direction by means of oars or sails--in a word, to
investigate the possibility of sailing through the air to any
point fixed upon. It was with this object that the experiments
at Dijon took place, and these were the most serious attempts
down to our times that have been made to steer balloons.
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