Talk:History of ballooning

The discussion, from Talk:Hot air balloon that prompted creation of this page
As far as I can tell, these articles are trying to cover a great deal of the same information. Whilst I'm aware that the Balloon (aircraft) article covers gas-filled balloons, as well as hot air balloon, a glance at the page should be enough to justify a merge. I honestly think this would be worthwhile - though it would necessitate the title being changed to 'Balloon (aircraft)' (since you'd be including balloons of both the hot-air and gas variety).

CharlieRCD (talk) 17:16, 8 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Disagree. Balloon (aircraft) contains very little hot air balloon information. The areas of overlap, history and military use, should be addressed by sub articles. There already is one for History of military ballooning. One of History of ballooning (started June 10, 2008) would take care of the rest. -AndrewDressel (talk) 15:57, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

When was the first manned flight with hot air balloons?
I see two contradictory paragraphs here. the first one is in the introduction, the second one in the History section: It is needed to clarifiy this. Mazarin07 19:52, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) "The first flight carrying humans was made on November 21, 1783, in Paris by Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes."
 * 2) "...the first balloon flight with humans on board took place on October 19, 1783 with the physician Pilâtre de Rozier, the manufacture manager, Jean-Baptiste Réveillon and Giroud de Villette, at the Folie Titon in actual Paris. Officially, the first flight was 1 month later, 21 November 1783. King Louis XVI had originally decreed that condemned criminals would be the first pilots, but a young physicist named Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis Francois d'Arlandes successfully petitioned for the honor. "

This is still an issue 2 months later! Due to google exposure, this page will probably get a good bit more traffic. Fix these facts! -- Anon —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.54.165.204 (talk) 17:55, 4 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Finally cleared up. According to U.S. Centenial of Flight Commisstion, the October flight was tethered, and the November flight was free. -AndrewDressel (talk) 18:40, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Flying eggs
I believe the examples listed are of eggshells propelled by rapidly escaping jets of gas and not lifted by buoyancy. That is why the 2nd and 3rd examples mention closing up the hole, in order to build pressure. Without a hole for expanding gas to escape or the flexibility to expand in volume, a vessel can never become lighter than the air it displaces. Can anyone find a good source for egg volume and egg shell mass? I suspect it will be trivial to show that even if the interior of an eggshell were completely evacuated, its mass far out weighs the air it displaces. I'd just weigh an empty eggshell myself, but that would be OR. -AndrewDressel 12:12, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Here is the text from the article:


 * Yet the first known evidence of model flight in China employing the use of hot air comes from the Huainanzi, a Taoist book written by the Chinese prince Liu An in the 2nd century BC. This ancient Chinese text stated:

Eggs can be made to fly in the air by the aid of burning tinder...Take an egg and remove the contents of the shell, then ignite a little mugwort tinder (inside the hole) so as to cause a strong air-current. The egg will of itself rise in the air and fly away.


 * A similar method of making egg shells float in the air on their own accord is discussed in Rashi's commentary on the bible "Even were you to fill an eggshell with dew and close up its opening and place it in the sun, it will, on its own, rise into the air"(Rashi's commentary on exodus chapter 16 verse 14), and was re-discovered in Europe by the 17th century, yet this was achieved by means of steam, not hot air like in the earlier Chinese experiment. Jacques de Fonteny's poem L'Oeuf de Pasques written in 1616 was one of the earliest accounts that explained the procedure. A small hole was made on the egg's outer shell, whereupon all its contents could be drained; after a period of drying, a small amount of water was poured in through the tiny hole and sealed with wax. When set in the hot sun, the steam produced by the water inside the egg would cause it to temporarily float in the air, then fall back down.

And here is the reference showing how it is simply impossible. The mass of an empty egg shell it too great (7 g) for the buoyancy caused by the air it displaces (0.035 g) to ever lift it. I suspect these descriptions may be reporting jet action, but that has no place in a hot air balloon article.


 * Well, a normal large hen's egg has a volume of about 70 ml, and the shell weighs about 7 g. An unboiled egg is sealed by a material in the shell, and by a membrane that excludes water but through which gases can diffuse for the respiration of the embryo. A boiled egg cannot be emptied through a small hole, and the dried membrane of an unboiled egg would probably be a good seal. That is neither here nor there, however, since the weight of the air displaced by the eggshell is about 0.09 grams, and this is the maximum buoyant force. Filled with water vapour, the buoyancy is closer to 0.035 g, which is too small for liftoff by a factor of 200. If I have not made some gross error, I believe it would be a waste of time trying to fly eggs.


 * -Dr James B. Calvert, Associate Professor Emeritus of Engineering, University of Denver, Registered Professional Engineer, State of Colorado No.12317 http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/humor/eggs.htm

-AndrewDressel (talk) 14:32, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Try using a naked [egg shell] http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/eggs/activity-naked.html which is less than 1/250 of the total eggshell mass which would cover the amount needed to make it fly. Additionaly Rashi's commentary on the bible was translated wrong. Rashi uses the word "shfoferes" which properly translated would mean the egg membrane not the shell which is called klipa. Therefore this does belong in the article since this would be the first hot air balloon. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Beebee2100 (talk • contribs) 07:20, 18 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Cool. All we need now is a reference for that 1/250 number, and for the mistranslation. Without them, this is original research and cannot stay. -AndrewDressel (talk) 12:55, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Simply changing the wording in the "translation" doesn't cut it. Without references, it is original research.
 * A method of making objects float in the air on their own accord by means of hot air is discussed by the 11th century C.E. Jewish scholar Rashi in his commentary on the bible "Even were you to fill an eggshell membrane with dew and close up its opening and place it in the sun, it will, on its own, rise into the air" -Rashi Exodus Chapter 16 Verse 14
 * Where is this quotation take from? Certainly not Rashi's original writing. Whose translation is it? Where is the reference for the membrane weighing 1/250 of the total eggshell? -AndrewDressel (talk) 14:11, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Bartolomeu de Gusmão
While the text about Bartolomeu de Gusmão is well sourced, and I don't doubt its veracity, I don't believe it should get the prominence it now has in the lead paragraph. Here's why: As this article is about the human-carrying flight technology, I suggest: Comments? -AndrewDressel (talk) 21:14, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) He flew a model with no living passengers. So apparently did Zhuge Liang of the Shu Han kingdom, in the Three Kingdoms era (220-280 AD), according to published sources, but that only gets a mention in the Premodern section.
 * 2) He designed, but never built, a craft to carry passengers, and the image of it appears to be no more likely to have flown than the wings of Daedalus and Icarus.
 * 1) The lead paragraph go back to mentioning only the Montgolfier brothers, and the first pilots: Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes.
 * 2) Bartolomeu de Gusmão be moved to the Premodern section along with Kongming lanterns and the Nazca culture. Perhaps renamed the section to Early unmanned flight.
 * 3) The First balloon flight section be renamed back to First recorded manned balloon flight.

Nazca ballooning?
I removed this spurious claim, as one man's hobby of building a balloon out of materials that were available to the Nazca, is not the same as there being evidence (historical, archaeological, or otherwise) of them having done so, except in his imagination. If he had built an automobile out of materials available to the Nazca, that wouldn't have been evidence of their motoring habits either. Wishful thinking should have no place in Wikipedia articles. Naymetayken (talk) 10:17, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Piccards?
I can't believe that there's no mention of the Piccard family in a history of ballooning!

They did many things, but reading about their invention and flight of cluster balloons was an inspiration to me as a kid.

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