Falling Upwards Chronicles the Oft Overlooked but Fascinating History of Early Ballooning

By S. Mark Rhodes

Many believe that the history of aviation begins with the Wright Brothers or maybe some less well-known (at least to the public) aviation pioneers like John Montgomery or Alberto Santos-Dumont.  Interestingly enough, you could make an argument that the history of aviation starts with individuals like Dr. Jacques Alexander Charles, Felix Nadar, Charles Green and Thaddeus Lowe who all in one way or another helped pioneer and popularize the notion of balloon flight in the 18th and 19th century.  This history and these figures remain, if not forgotten, at least considerably overshadowed by their early 20th century counterparts like the Wrights and so on.

The very fine historian Richard Holmes’ new book Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air (Pantheon) offers a corrective to this and gives the history of ballooning its fascinating, long overdue credit in the annals of the histories of aviation, the military and even society.  Mr. Holmes was nice enough to correspond with In Flight’s Mark Rhodes about his books and the colorful history and characters associated with man’s first successful forays into flight.

IF USA:  Had you been exposed to any of the history you write about here prior to writing about ballooning?

RH: “ As I recount in the book I have been interested in balloons since the age of four!  I researched the early history of the French Montgolfier balloons of the 1780s for the chapter entitled, ‘The Balloonists in Heaven’ in my previous book, The Age of Wonder (2009).  Among many others, I found one fascinating archive at Le Bourget, the old Paris airport, now the Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace.  It can be visited by the public, and its exhibits include the original basket of Felix Nadar’s famous monster balloon Le Géant, whose terrifying story I tell.”

IF USA:  There are strong traditions and history in ballooning in both Europe and the U.S. – What, if any, were the differences between the two?

Fanny Godard found fame during the 19th century as a charismatic female balloonist whose exploits electrified (and occasionally scandalized) Europe. (Musee de l’Air et l’Espace)RH: “American balloonists were primarily interested in long distance flights, responding to the natural challenge of their whole, mighty, unrolling land. The first successful balloon flight in America was actually made by a Frenchman, Jean-Pierre Blanchard, from the Walnut Street Prison Yard Philadelphia, in 1794 and crossed the Delaware river, symbolically carrying an open passport from George Washington saying Blanchard had permission to land anywhere in the nation. Early American balloonists like John Wise, Professor Thaddeus S. Lowe and John La Mountain were always scheming long-distance flights, going west to east in the prevailing wind stream, with the ultimate aim of crossing the Atlantic to Europe. Some of these epic voyages covered upwards of 1,000 miles overland, far greater than anything in Europe, though the Atlantic itself was not crossed by an American balloon until the 20th century. (Edgar Allan Poe wrote a brilliant news story, saying it was crossed by a British balloon, east to west, in 1844. But, typically, this turned out to be a complete hoax.) The American balloonists were also more serious about the commercial potential, such as airmail services. But they were soon outdistanced by the phenomenal growth of American railroad and telegraph networks after 1850.”

 IF USA:  Is it fair to say that being a balloonist in the 19th Century was the equivalent of being an extreme sport participant in 2013?

RH: “Ballooning was certainly very dangerous, primarily because hydrogen was volatile to handle and highly explosive; and landings with Union Army “Chief Aeronaut” Thaddeus Lowe utilizing his balloon The Intrepid at the Battle of Fair Oaks in 1862 (Library of Congress)big balloons were always perilous and difficult to control.  I described, for example, the terrible fate of Sophie Blanchard in Paris in 1819. But ballooning was not really regarded as a ‘popular sport’ in the modern sense of the term, until the 1960s and the expansion of contemporary hot-air ballooning festivals such Albuquerque, Colorado and Bristol UK. Apart from anything else it was hugely expensive. Charles Green’s British balloon, the Royal Nassau, cost the equivalent of $500,000 to build and fit out in London in 1836. Each launch, even using coal gas, cost something like $20,000. So flights were usually undertaken as scientific investigations (e.g. by James Glaisher exploring the upper atmosphere above 29,000 feet in 1862); as commercial speculations, (e.g. by John Wise in his airmail schemes of the 1850s); as popular entertainments attached to seasonal festivals or public parks; or for military use, as in the American Civil War and the Siege of Paris.”

IF USA:  The U.S. military had some interesting experiments using balloons in the 19th century, particularly during the Civil War.  Would you consider these experiments successful or just interesting footnotes in the annals of U.S. History?

RH: “The most effective use of balloons for military observation was by Thaddeus Lowe’s Balloon Company attached to the Union Army of the Potomac under General McClellan during the Peninsula Campaign of 1862-3. The military intelligence they provided, via telegraph lines suspended from their tiny balloon baskets, was significant at the siege of Yorktown, and later at the Seven Days Battle outside Richmond in July 1862. Lowe described his balloons as ‘like hawks hovering above a chicken yard.’ Beyond this, their main significance was probably propaganda, as in the case of the legendary ‘Silk Dress Balloon’ flown by the Confederate army, said to be sewn together from  ball-gowns patriotically contributed by numerous Southern belles. Both the young Lieutenant George Armstrong Custer, and the future German airship master, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, left vivid accounts of Civil War balloon flights.”

IF USA: Would you say that the pioneers of balloon flight and the pioneers of early aviation like the Wright Brothers had anything in common?

RH: “Yes, reckless courage, but combined with clear heads and cool determination – an unusual mixture. It’s the same quality that the novelist Tom Wolfe famously described in his book about the American astronauts and the test pilot Chuck Yeager, as the ‘Right Stuff.’ The women balloonists – like Sophie Blanchard, Fanny Godard, or Dolly Shepherd – had just the same steely quality. Or perhaps even more of it, as they also had to survive social disapprobation for doing the ‘unladylike’ thing, which can be even more alarming than vertigo.

IF USA: What was your own experience like flying in a balloon?

RH:  “Always euphoric, but occasionally terrifying. I have flown in many places – England, France, Australia and New Mexico, and some of my less heroic experiences are described in the footnotes of my book, like landing by mistake at night, in a field of large and distinctly unfriendly prize Norfolk pigs.”