The History of Hot Air Balloons

The first balloons capable of carrying passengers used hot air to obtain buoyancy and were built by the brothers Josef and Etienne Montgolfier in Annonay, France. They were from a family of paper manufacturers who had noticed the ash rising in fires and thought that the smoke was the lifting agent. After experimenting with unmanned balloons and flights with animals, the first manned balloon flight took place on 21 November 1783. King Louis XVI had had said that prisoners condemned to death would be the first pilots, but actually a physicist named Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis Francois d'Arlandes took the first flight. Back then, hot air balloons were just paper bags with a smoky fire on a grill at the bottom, so they had a tendency to catch fire. After the invention of the hydrogen balloon, hot air ballooning faded out - until being reborn in the 1960s.

The first flight of a hot air balloon in the USA was on January 9, 1793. A 45-minute-long flight, that started in Philadelphia and ended in New Jersey. George Washington witnessed the flight.

Balloons were the first form of air power and they were used by the North for artillery observational purposes in the American Civil War. They were also used for communication during the Siege of Paris in 1871 and for observation of the trenches in the First World War.

Unmanned hot air balloons are also given a mention in Chinese history where Chu-ko Kung-ming of the three kingdoms era used airborne lanterns for military signalling. These lanterns (known as Kung-ming lanterns nowadays) are still being flown in China, despite the risk of causing a fire upon landing - but not for military signalling.

For more information on the history, please visit the Hot air balloon page on the wikipedia.