The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wonderful Balloon Ascents, by Fulgence Marion

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Title: Wonderful Balloon Ascents
or, the Conquest of the Skies

Author: Fulgence Marion

Posting Date: August 10, 2008 [EBook #899]
Release Date: May, 1997

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WONDERFUL BALLOON ASCENTS ***

Produced by Dianne Bean

WONDERFUL BALLOON ASCENTS

or, the Conquest of the Skies

A History of Balloons and Balloon Voyages.

By F. Marion

1870

PREFACE

"Let posterity know, and knowing be astonished, that on the fifteenth
day of September, 1784, Vincent Lunardi of Lucca, in Tuscany, the first
aerial traveller in Britain, mounting from the Artillery Ground in
London, and traversing the regions of the air for two hours and fifteen
minutes, on this spot revisited the earth. In this rude monument for
ages be recorded this wondrous enterprise successfully achieved by
the powers of chemistry and the fortitude of man, this improvement in
science which the great Author of all Knowledge, patronising by his
Providence the inventions of mankind, hath graciously permitted, to
their benefit and his own eternal glory."

The stone upon which the above inscription was carved, stands, or stood
recently, near Collier's End, in the parish of Standon, Hertfordshire;
and it will possibly afford the English reader a more accurate idea of
the feelings with which the world hailed the discovery of the balloon
than any incident or illustration drawn from the annals of a foreign
country.

The work which we now introduce to our readers does not exaggerate the
case when it declares that no discovery of modern times has aroused so
large an amount of enthusiasm, has excited so many hopes, has appeared
to the human race to open up so many vistas of enterprise and research,
as that for which we are mainly indebted to the Brothers Montgolfier.
The discovery or the invention of the balloon, however, was one of those
efforts of genius and enterprise which have no infancy. It had reached
its full growth when it burst upon the world, and the ninety years which
have since elapsed have witnessed no developm