Early Balloons, The History of Flight 1972 US Navy Training Film

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more at: http://scitech.quickfound.net/aviation_news_and_search.html 'EARLY ATTEMPTS TO ATTAIN FREE FLIGHT THROUGH THE USE OF BALLOONS.' Presented by Paul Garber, Historian Emeritus and Ramsey Associate of the Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum. Public domain film from the US National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied. The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balloon_(aeronautics) ...Following Henry Cavendish's 1766 work on hydrogen, Joseph Black proposed that a balloon filled with hydrogen would be able to rise in the air. The first recorded manned flight was made in a hot air balloon built by the Montgolfier brothers on 21 November 1783. The flight started in Paris and reached a height of 500 feet or so. The pilots, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes, covered about 5½ miles in 25 minutes. On 1 December 1783, Professor Jacques Charles and the Robert brothers made the first gas balloon flight, also from Paris. Their hydrogen-filled balloon flew to almost 2,000 feet (600 m), stayed aloft for over 2 hours and covered a distance of 27 miles (43 km), landing in the small town of Nesles-la-Vallée. Pilâtre Rozier took part in a further flight on 23 June 1784, in a modified version of the Montgolfiers' first balloon christened La Marie-Antoinette after the Queen, which took off in front of the King of France and King Gustav III of Sweden. Together with Joseph Proust, the balloon flew north at an altitude of approximately 3,000 metres, above the clouds. They travelled 52 km in 45 minutes before cold and turbulence forced them to descend past Luzarches, between Coye et Orry-la-Ville, near the Chantilly forest. They set records for speed, altitude and distance travelled. The first balloon ascent in Britain was made by James Tytler on 25 August 1784 at Edinburgh, Scotland, in a hot air balloon. The first aircraft disaster occurred in May 1785 when the town of Tullamore, County Offaly, Ireland was seriously damaged when the crash of a balloon resulted in a fire that burned down about 100 houses, making the town home to the world's first aviation disaster. To this day, the town shield depicts a phoenix rising from the ashes. Jean-Pierre Blanchard went on to make the first manned flight of a balloon in America on 9 January 1793, after touring Europe to set the record for the first balloon flight in countries including the Austrian Netherlands, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland. His hydrogen filled balloon took off from a prison yard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The flight reached 5,800 feet (1,770 m) and landed in Gloucester County, New Jersey. President George Washington was among the guests observing the takeoff. On 29 September 1804, Abraham Hopman became the first Dutchman to make a successful balloon flight in the Netherlands. Gas balloons became the most common type from the 1790s until the 1960s. The French military observation balloon L'Intrépide of 1795 is the oldest preserved aircraft in Europe... The earliest successful balloon flight recorded in Australia was by William Dean in 1858. His balloon was gas-filled and travelled 30 km with two people aboard... The first military use of a balloon was at the Battle of Fleurus in 1794, when L'Entreprenant was used by the French Aerostatic Corps to watch the movements of the enemy. On 2 April 1794, an aeronauts corps was created in the French army... The first major use of balloons in the military occurred during the American Civil War with the Union Army Balloon Corps established in 1861. During the Paraguayan War (1864–70), observation balloons were used by the Brazilian Army. Balloons were used by the British Royal Engineers in 1885 for reconnaissance and observation purposes during the Bechuanaland Expedition and the Sudan Expedition... Hydrogen-filled balloons were widely used during World War I (1914–1918) to detect enemy troop movements and to direct artillery fire. Observers phoned their reports to officers on the ground who then relayed the information to those who needed it. Balloons were frequently targets of opposing aircraft. Planes assigned to attack enemy balloons were often equipped with incendiary bullets, for the purpose of igniting the hydrogen. The Aeronaut Badge was established by the United States Army in World War I to denote service members who were qualified balloon pilots... During World War II the Japanese launched thousands of helium "fire balloons" against the United States and Canada. In Operation Outward the British used balloons to carry incendiaries to Nazi Germany...