#aerostation

Thomas L. Shaw's Improvement in Aerostation, 2/10/1863

Series: Utility Patent Drawings, 1837 - 1911. Record Group 241: Records of the Patent and Trademark Office, 1836 - 1978

(Some artistic license taken.)

More Vintage Patent Posts

Unfortunately, his confidence that balloons could be vastly improved upon was misplaced. The French Academy of Sciences used their considerable resources to explore improvements on the design, in four key areas: Finding the best balloon material, finding the best gas to fill it with, finding a way to control ascent and descent, and steering.

Here’s Lavoisier saying as much:

That last one ended up being the thing that prevented balloons from really taking off (if you’ll pardon the pun) in a big way. The French scientists were convinced that they could use the balloon for long-distance travel and military applications if they could figure out how to steer it, and loads of scientific organisations aside from the main Paris one tried to design a steerable balloon. There were a lot ideas as to how, some imitating ships (using oars, rudders, and/or sails to steer) and some imitating birds (using wing-like contraptions to steer), but none worked. The balloon was at the mercy of the air currents.

Got really confused by this before remembering that England used to use Fahrenheit. In fact, England used Fahrenheit from the 1720s, when it was invented by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, until the 1960s, when all of the Anglophone countries who were using Fahrenheit, except the USA, changed to Celsius. That's about 240 years! So the whole "Americans are dumb for using Fahrenheit" thing is kind of a throwing stones in a glass house situation.

Also, this section of The History and Practice of Aerostation is describing the first ballon flight in England. It was made in an oiled silk hydrogen balloon, by Vincent Lunardi, a very funny Italian man who continued to fly his chaotic ass around England and Scotland and, later, Italy, Spain and Portugal, being generally reckless and making enemies.

In 1785, scientists seem to have thought methane and hydrogen were the same thing. This was an interesting detail I liked from "The History and Practice of Aerostation," which I have not finished reading, but which is fascinating:

The author, Tiberius Cavallo, writes that "In general, the putrefaction or decomposition of animal and vegetable substances [that's methane], and the decomposition of such minerals as contain abundance of the inflammable principle [here he's describing hydrogen], generate inflammable air." Inflammable air, though confusingly named, means flammable air, and since both methane and hydrogen are flammable, and lighter than air, they were thought of as the same thing.

So Cavallo instructs that you can gather inflammable air from the swamps of London AND by by mixing iron or zinc with acid.

He does note that "inflammable air thus obtained by means of acid of vitriol," i.e. hydrogen obtained by means of sulfuric acid, is the lighter of the gases:

Though the first balloon was powered by hot air, the invention of the hydrogen balloon quickly followed. These were inflated by putting barrels full of iron filings and sulfuric acid under the balloon and piping the gas into the balloon. Hydrogen had way more lifting power, meaning only a smaller balloon was needed, so it dominated ballooning and, later, airships like the Hindenburg, until it's flammability caused enough disasters that it was phased out in the 1930s.

[ID: Print depicting the Inflation of First Hydrogen Balloon, by J. A. C. Charles, August 26-27, 1783. Print shows four men inflating the first hydrogen balloon (created by Jacques Charles) on August 26-27, 1783. In the background on the left hand side are a table, ladder and a basket. The balloon is centred in the picture and is held in place by the wooden barrel in which hydrogen is being generated.]