Page:Wonderful Balloon Ascents, 1870.djvu/39

Rh hotel, on the banks of the Seine, and fell into a boat full of washerwomen on the river. All these unfortunate attempts were lampooned, burlesqued on the stage, and pursued with the mockery of the public.

Up to this time, therefore, the efforts of man to conquer the air had miscarried. They were conducted on a wrong principle, the machinery employed being heavier than the air itself. But, even before the time of Montgolfier, the principles of aerostation began to be recognised, though nothing was actually done in the way of acting upon them. Thus, in 1767, Professor Black, of Edinburgh, announced in his class that a vessel, filled with hydrogen, would rise naturally in the air; but he never made the experiment, regarding the fact as capable of being employed only for amusement. Finally, Cavallo, in 1782, communicated to the Royal Society of London the experiments he had made, and which consisted in filling soap-bubbles with hydrogen. The bubbles rose in the atmosphere, the gas which filled them being lighter than air.