ABSTRACT
The next extract is the official deposition of Jacques-Alexandre-César Charles concerning his ascent in a hydrogen balloon in 1783, emulating the sensational recent achievements of the provincial Montgolfier brothers, Étienne and Joseph, who had recently put on shows of hot-air balloons that quickly grew to carry human aeronauts. When word of the first Montgolfier demonstration had originally reached Paris, the reports were ambiguous about the kind of air that filled the Montgolfier's balloons; the scientifically literate assumed that it must be the recently identified inflammable air that was known to be lighter than common air. Charles was a Parisian public lecturer in experimental natural philosophy—an exponent of elaborate and sometimes spectacular demonstration apparatus. Monseigneur the Duke of Chartres and M. the Duke of Fitz-James, who arrived at the moment of the descent of the machine, honoured the statement with their signature, as did M. Farer, an English gentleman.
