January 21, 2021 • 25 mins
At the dawn of human flight you had one option... Balloons! Balloons were all the rage in 1700s France and Aeronauts were the daredevils / entertainers at the cutting edge of this new science that made the spectacle come alive! Matt and Helen discuss this magical time with professor and writer Jennifer Tucker.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is job Salte. I'm Matt beat and I'm Helen Hong,
and today we're talking about aeronnaouts balloon fashion. Did she
say balloon fashion? Does that mean like ladies of the day,
we're wearing dresses with little balloons on them. Whatever you're
(00:22):
doing right now, I want you to stop and look up. Okay, Well,
if you're inside, you might want to first find a window,
But if you're outside, look up at the sky. It's amazing,
isn't it. Now? Imagine living in a time before the
scientific revolution. How do you explain the sky, the clouds
(00:45):
constantly moving into all kinds of shapes, the different colors
from blue to pink, to orange to even red and
even crazier. What is beyond the sky? So join us
on this adventure up there as we learn about the
aero knots. You know, Matt, before before you said that
(01:06):
we were talking about aeronauts, I thought you were just
on really good drugs. By that intro, you'd probably assumed
that I was. Yeah, Helen, are you afraid of heights? Like,
if I'm inside a tall building and I'm looking out
a window, that's fine. But if I'm like outside and
looking straight down yeah, I get a little like that's
(01:31):
the thing, Like, you know, if you're in an airplane,
you generally feel pretty secure, and you're in a skyscraper,
but you're afraid of I have never been too bothered
by it. But again, this show is about aero knots
and we're talking about the original daredevils who just went
up in balloons, like really high up there. So just
(01:54):
to start out, Matt, is what is the definition of
an aeronaut Because I don't think I've ever said the
word aeronnot or thought about the word aeronnot. So essentially,
the aeroknot is that person in the basket of a
balloon automatically. People are probably just thinking about balloonists of today, right.
It was actually quite different from the job of balloonists today.
(02:16):
This was one of the most exciting obsolete jobs that
we have here because it attracted the thrill seekers. Some
of them though, were scientifically minded, so they wanted to
learn more about what was up there. You know. Here's
Jennifer Tucker. She's the Associate professor of History and Science
in Society at Wesland University, where she describes the origin
(02:39):
of the term aero knots so the term aero knots
began to be connected to taking balloons up in the
air almost immediately. It kind of captured the idea that
going up in a balloon and exploring the oceans of
air overhead was going to be similar in some ways
to the ocean navigator Shian. So a lot of the
(03:01):
terminology that creeps into balloon language is already um circulating
among people who are familiar with marine travel. It's it
sort of captures the idea of discovery and exploration and adventure.
And maybe today people might call themselves balloon pilots rather
than aeronnots, but this was certainly the main way that
(03:23):
that balloonists would describe themselves at the time. Wait, so, Matt,
I guess I'm still not super clear about what's the difference.
Is it just because it was like the first time
anyone had ever traveled in balloons, so it was all
d I y. Yeah, Like they would literally build the
balloons promote them as if it was like this big spectacle.
(03:44):
Everyone would show up and watch and then okay, watch me,
I want to go up and and and everyone's like,
let's go watch Bob as he decides to open that
big blob of air. I mean, that's so crazy to
be like, they just had this concept of like I think,
if we fill a balloon, we can get up there
and they just d I Y the whole thing. Yeah. So, Matt,
(04:06):
how is an ernut different from a modern day balloonists
because we still have balloonists today. Well, today's balloonists are
mostly just pilots. They have that one purpose, whereas aero
knots were i would say, part sky explorers, part inventor
slash engineer because they put these balloons together themselves. They
(04:28):
were also entertainers. So in many ways, this is like
a bunch of jobs all rolled into one. So where
does the term arrow not come from. It comes from France.
This is where the first aero knots really became famous.
One of the things that's interesting about the French context
and this sort of era of early flight was that
(04:50):
there was this balloon mania which swept across Europe at
this time, which was encouraged by the circulation of numerous
writings and lithographs or balloon fashions and memorabilia, and this
kind of ferment of discovery and imagination and possibility was
(05:12):
partly a reflection of the sciences at the time. Balloon fashion.
Did she sink balloon fashion? Does that mean like ladies
of the day, or wearing dresses with little balloons on them,
or like or their dre wearing dresses that are shaped
like balloons. That would be pretty pretty darn cool, honestly.
But yeah, it was fashionable. It was it was just
(05:33):
these balloon well, these aero knots, they were they were celebrities.
But yeah, so the earliest aeroknots, it was a one
stop shop. They would put the balloons together, they would
fill it filled with gas. A lot of times they
were known as quote gentleman scientists. So do you know
have you heard that term before gentlemen scientists? I don't
(05:55):
think I have. Essentially, they were scientists who were self trained,
like they just kind of it was more like a hobby.
And again the age of Enlightenment, it was it was
stylish to study science. And even though they had never
been you know, classically trained, they you know, they had
dabbled here and there and so. But they had the
(06:16):
money too. That was a lot of these aero knots
actually had personal fortunes that they could actually use to
spend on these balloons. This reminds me of a guy
dated once who like, build his own motorcycles. That's hot.
It's like, it's like the guy who builds his own motorcycles.
But of this is it seventeen hundreds Matt, Yeah, sev
(06:39):
hundreds of guys like, yeah, build my own balloon, you know,
and and all the ladies are like, oh, you build
your own balloons, that's hot. Well. One of the one
of the people that was fascinated by aeroonnots was Benjamin Franklin.
There was this idea that it would be possible with
the balloon to see the world differently, and that mystery
(07:01):
around the balloon was there from the start. So Benjamin
Franklin one time watched a balloon launch through a telescope
from his carriage. This is what he wrote later, someone
asked me what's the use of a balloon? And I replied,
what's the use of a newborn baby? So you know,
this idea that well who knows what its use is
(07:22):
going to be, but just the fact that it's there
is has so much potential and promise that it was
going to open the mind as well as the skies.
I wouldn't have thought of Benjamin Franklin as like a
renegade hottie. But maybe he was a renegade hottie of
the day because he was inventing all these things and
(07:44):
all the ladies are like, oh, what you're working on?
Nap Ben. It's well known that he's he was a
ladies man. He was definitely you see those pictures of
him in the wig, all the images we think of
Benjamin Franklin. Wait, I'm still I'm still like fascinated. So
before aeronauts, nobody had like humans did not fly in
(08:06):
any way whatsoever. Well, they okay, they were. There were
some that dabbled with gliders, like they would jump off
of tall like the like the top of a church
and like watch me off as I fly. But my understanding,
no as far as actual giant balloons. So everyone knew,
according to science, that if you filled a vessel with
(08:28):
a certain type of gas, that the vessel would rise, right,
I'm as say people knew that. So then these these
renegade rogue people of the time, we're like, you know what,
I'm going to extrapolate this to a giant scale. Oh yeah,
and I'm gonna make I'm gonna sew a bunch of
cloth together to make this humongous balloon. And I'm going
(08:49):
to fill that vessel with all these mysterious light gases
and then I'm gonna attach that balloon to a basket,
and then I'm gonna get in it. Like that's crazy.
So the on Goulfier brothers were the ones who first
sent up balloons. The first ones, of course, did not
have humans. They sent up animals. Wait what a duck?
(09:11):
A rooster? Yeah, yeah, of course, a sheep? Wait wait
wait wait wait back up. So these two brothers, actually
it's two brothers in France. They remind me of the
right brothers, right, the right brothers? Right? Am I right?
Or am I right? So like these two brothers in
France who were like, we want to fly. We're gonna
(09:33):
put gas in this basket, but it's too dangerous for people.
So we're gonna put a duck in the basket. Yeah,
they put a duck, a rooster. The first one with
humans was October nineteen seventy three, and that was the
scientists Jean Francois and his associate French. That's beats. Your
(09:57):
French is a torches. I'm so sorry, about the pronunciations.
So wait, there's so many things that are blowing my mind.
I can't believe the duck didn't jump out, to be honest,
just jump out and be like I'm out of here,
I'm going. And then this other guy was like, I'll
do you one better. I'm gonna put people in the basket.
(10:29):
Were any animals harmed in the making of this technology.
There's no documented animals ever getting harmed. Thank god, thank god.
The duck made it, the rooster made it, everyone made
it back down safely to Earth. The rooster was like,
I'm never doing that again. And then people were like,
all right, well the sheep made it. I'm gonna try
(10:51):
it myself. I think the thing that just kind of
fascinates me the most about this is just imagine being
the first person to look down on people like that,
you know, to literally look down. I mean it's a
bird's eye view um for the first time, and it
was almost like a psychedelic experience on my trip and
holy cal like your intro it's like I'm high, No, literally,
(11:14):
I'm high. Yeah. So I mean later you'd have these
wealthy Victorian type people that you know, they're all dressed
up and all these balloons, but then they just be giggling,
like having such a good time up in the balloons.
By that time it was it wasn't quite as dangerous.
I think we do need to look more at the
science angle of it, because a lot of scientists wanted
to send stuff up there, like send this up there,
(11:36):
see see what happens when you put this on the balloon.
There was this tremendous interest in the scientific possibilities of
the balloon by the nineteenth century, and by that point
there there really wasn't a project that the British Association
was more interested in, really than than ballooning. They saw
it as a symbol of a new kind of science
and a new kind of scientist. It was kind of
(11:58):
like today with the space shot. Lots of different scientists
put experiments on board to see what happens. So the
balloon was like an instrument, like a microscope or a telescope.
That's kind of how they saw it, except that they
are going to be dependent on aero knots to be
able to to to get them up there with their
instruments and back safely. So it was like the NASA
(12:23):
of the day, only it was just random wealthy people
who were like, hey, we're going to try this. Yeah, well,
but legitimate scientists, not just gentleman scientists, but legitimate scientists
and stuff up there, and they just wanted to see
what happens, Like if you put this plan up there
is they're just gonna shrivel up once you get high
(12:45):
enough in the air. These guys sound like the Elon
Musk of their day, like they just they have a
lot of money and they have these wild theories like hey,
let's try it. I have the money, let's try it,
and as well, yeah it's a good allergy actually yeah,
because they needed to have these daredevils come in to
do a lot of that that work that no one
(13:06):
else wanted to do. It's like the first people that
went out into space, Like, no one's ever done it.
We have no idea if you're going to survive. We
have no idea if you're going to make it back alive.
And these are people like, we're doing it. Let's just
jump into the dangers here, Like how dangerous was it
in the early decades of doing this, So like the
late seventeen hundreds, they didn't know what was going to
(13:26):
happen if like say, a storm came up, or if
there was lightning in the area. Down drafts. Sometimes if
people went up too high in the air, they would
pass out because the air was too thin and so
and they didn't know where that was exactly. It was
kind of trial trial and error, Like, okay, I think
if you go a little bit higher, we might pass
out or maybe not, like I think if we got
(13:50):
were there deaths like was were there a lot of
people who died? Were there accidents? There were accidents? There
were deaths, not many deaths. Let's well, there's this movie.
Have you heard of the movie aeroknots? There's a movie
called Aeronnats that looks at a lot of these When
did it come out? Came out? And it came out
last year? Oh wow, it seems like so long. So
(14:11):
you haven't heard of this movie? Okay. There was a
character in that movie based off a real life character
or real life person, Blanchard, who was the figure on
which the character of Amelia Wren in the Aeronnauts movie
is based. She was a very confident and natural entertainer.
Immediately after her husband's death of a heart attack while
(14:33):
descending in eight ten, she made her first solo balloon
display in Paris, and she died in eighteen nineteen. During
one of her ascents, her balloon caught fire as she descended,
the rigging got caught on a rooftop and so that
the crash didn't kill her, but she slid off and
fell onto the street to her death. Owes, that's brutal.
(14:54):
Sophie Blanchard. I mispronounced her name. Of course, yeah she didn't.
She did not make it. But that was the character
of Amelia Wren from the Aeronnauts movie was based off
of her. I mean, that's a ballsy lady. Excuse my French,
but that but that's like a really that she was, like,
(15:16):
I mean, a woman in the eighteen hundred. She's there,
she's still wearing those crazy corseted dresses and the feathery
hats and stuff. And her husband dies in a balloon accident.
She's like, my turn, stand back, I'm doing it myself.
Her husband dies in a balloon accident, and she like,
(15:39):
she puts her corset itself into the basket herself and
flies a solo balloon flight on her own, a solo woman,
and then she crashes and dies. That is wow. The
part I'm most impressed about was that she was all
about the show, you know, doing fireworks and acrobats, and
you know, she was like first and foremost an entertainer,
(16:01):
like watch me do this. You know. She was like
Lady Gaga mixed with Amelia Earhart. Yes, she's like Amelia
Earhart meets Lady Gaga. There's also this other guy named
Felix Nadar. There was a really nightmarish balloon journey of
Felix Nadar in eighteen sixty three. He lost um, They
(16:23):
lost ground and kept bouncing up and down on the ground,
tearing through branches. They blew into the path of an
oncoming train and then barely missed that, and then they
hurtled toward a line of telegraph wires. And it was
after that that he he became a proponent of heavier
than air flight because he was convinced that, you know,
this sort of lack of control over the balloon was
a big problem for it. So he was he was
(16:46):
one of the ones in the nineteenth century really pushing
for balloons powered by steam or electric. So yeah, that
she she for the first time here Jennifer mentioned heavier
than air flight. Yeah, what is that? So that's basically
what we think of flight today mostly, which is airplanes
and helicopters. Like machine doesn't it doesn't require air as,
(17:09):
it doesn't require a gas that's propelling you. It's like
it requires like something like like engineering something, Yeah, engineering
something like I could put that any better myself. You
know that he hurtled towards a line of telegraph wires,
she mentioned, Well, that was something they didn't have to
(17:30):
worry about when they started in the late seventeen hundreds
of the telegraph didn't exist yet, and so there are
things that didn't anticipate that would be obstacles in the
coming decades. So when ballooning started, like when aero nodding started,
(17:57):
it was so early that they didn't have wire, they
didn't have telegraph wires, they didn't have I'm assuming, they
didn't have super tall buildings, so they didn't have anything
that they could crack the balloon could crash into. But
then as the technology progressed and telegraph wires went up
and in buildings started getting taller and they were chimneys
(18:18):
and these tall structures, man made structures that the balloon
could crash into But then as as time progressed, it
was like whoa, it was like became an obstacle course,
like wow, all these things are like popping up. Yeah, no, totally.
And that's again, it was not just one thing. It
wasn't just Felix Madar. It was all kinds of people
just starting to say like, yeah, this maybe isn't the
(18:40):
safest thing. But we had blimps. We had giant blimps
that transported people up until the nineteen thirties. I'm sure
you're aware of the Hindenburg disaster. Yeah, yeah, that was
another thing that discouraged lighter than air travel. And they're like, no,
let's just focus on heavier than air. Let's get let's
focus more on those airplanes getting those safe. When did
(19:00):
blimp start? And it's blimp ing part of this whole
aeronauts story. So here's Jennifer explaining that that big debate
between lighter than air and heavier than air. There was
a debate beginning around the eighteen fifties and sixties between
those who champions the lighter than aircraft and those who
championed the heavier than aircraft. And it was a pretty
(19:22):
intense debate, and so a lot of people think that
lighter than aircraft sort of fell by the wayside, partly
because the heavier than aircraft people. In a way they
kind of won. Um, I mean the helicopter and the
jet you know, the jet plane, they sort of won,
and they sort of won the public rhetoric. But I mean,
if we look at even now, lighter than aircraft and
(19:45):
you know hot air balloons are still really popular and
they still attract interest, just not on the same level.
So I would not call the people who were on
the air these big airships aeronnats. I don't think they
fit that description. But you couldn't have had blimps without aeronauts, right,
because the balloons came first, So the technology of the
(20:05):
blimps was based on the technology that was discovered by
the aeronauts. True, yes, it wasn't until the eighteen fifties
where airships came around. So what exactly is the difference
between an aeronnot which we're saying is job sleete and
a current day balloonist. It might be better just to
have Jennifer describe the process. One of the kind of
(20:28):
crazy things about nineteenth century ballooning was that there really
was no such thing as a typical day. Every balloon
ascent was its own thing, and for some people that
was part of the attraction, the kind of the kind
of uncertainty. Was it gonna be a huge success, was
it going to be a complete failure. Aeronauts typically arrived
at a launch site days in advance and got their
(20:51):
inflation hoses set up so that the balloon was nicely
inflated by the day of the ascent. Sometimes the balloon
would be bouncing around when it was tethered and kind
of raring to go, so the aeronaut would often enlist
members of the crowd to help stabilize it until they
were ready, and also to hold the lead lines so
that as it started to um go up in the air,
it wasn't going to kind of veer off in some
(21:13):
direction into a building. So they also had to observe
the weather, making sure that they were going up at
at a at a good moment and not right in
the middle of when a thunderstorm was going to happen.
And then once they were starting to get up in
the air, sometimes before they before the crowd lost sight
of them. Uh they might have acrobats outside the balloon.
(21:33):
Hanging from the balloon, they might parachute animals out. Sometimes
they would throw out candy or pretty much anything they
could think of, and if it was a night ascent,
they would It was popular to have fireworks as well,
which were very dramatic and exciting. I have so many questions.
Did she say they would throw animals out? Well, yeah,
(21:58):
I know, I had the same reaction to and I
was like, what you say, Like, what is that what
she said? She would they were just toss animals out
of the balloon. Okay, Well, Jennifer has a little bit
of an explanation here. Leonardi's historic first flight in Britain four,
he brought his pet cat. One of the first balloon
flights made without humans, which they called unmanned flights, they
(22:20):
put animals in a basket. In that case it was
a sheep, a rooster, and a duck and um. After
a lot of people had been seeing these balloon is
since for a while, sometimes by the eighteen twenties or thirties,
they were demanding more exciting spectacles, and at that point
there are examples of people trying to ascend with a
horse harnessed underneath the basket with someone riding the horse.
Sometimes people are putting dogs in a parachute and um
(22:45):
throwing them out of the out of the balloon. Today
there would be some you know, laws against that kind
of what we would see as kind of cruelty to animals. Wow.
I mean, Peto would have a field day with with
this group. As a dog lover and owner, I am
offended at the concept of a dog in a parachute
(23:07):
getting tossed out, and yet it would be a sight
to see for sure. Hey, stress again, there are no
documented accounts of any animals dying. This was crazy. It's
almost a precursor to the circus. I mean, this was
a spectacle. I loved when she said they would enlist
the crowd to like wrangle the balloons, Like, hey, everybody,
(23:29):
grab a grab a rope, it's about to go flying off.
I think the main reason why people will show up
to these things is they really didn't know what was
going to happen. Wow, that's wow, that you know what,
I I get it. I now understand what the differences
between an aeronaut and a modern day balloonist, because I
(23:50):
myself have never been on a modern day balloon, have you, No,
I have not, because it's it seems a little boring
to me, to be honest, Well, it seems like something
you do with like your once You're like, yeah, yeah,
there's there's definitely something kind of corny and romantic about it.
And I'm not better because I don't have a partner. No,
I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. Frankly, ORNs are just cooler. Sorry,
(24:15):
balloon pilots. Sorry, if any of our listeners are balloon
pilots and would like to invite us to a balloon
excursion um to show us how exciting because we're we're
I feel like we're talking trash about balloon balloonists and
(24:37):
neither one of us has ever been I was gonna
we've never I'm sure it's actually neither one of us
has ever been on and we're like boring. Probably one
of the most exciting things ever, is probably more exciting
than skydiving, and here we are just like, oh, so,
if there's a balloon balloonists out there who would like
to invite us and show us how not boring it is,
where I'm down. I'm down to go. Maybe we can
(24:59):
record the next episode up there. I don't Know Job
Slete is produced for I Heart Radio by Zealots manufacturing
hand Forge Podcast for You. It's hosted by us Helen
Hong That's Me and Matt beat That's Me. The show
was conceived and produced by Anthony Savini, Jason Elliott, and
(25:19):
Steve Zamarki. Our editor is Tommy Nichol, our researcher is
Amelia Pauca, our production coordinator is Angie Hymes, and theme
music is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Special thanks to
our I Heart Radio team led by Nikki Etore, Katrina Norvell,
Ali Cantor, Mangesh Hatty Khador, Will Pearson cone Burne and
(25:40):
Bob Pittman.
This is job Salte. I'm Matt beat and I'm Helen Hong,
and today we're talking about aeronnaouts balloon fashion. Did she
say balloon fashion? Does that mean like ladies of the day,
we're wearing dresses with little balloons on them. Whatever you're
(00:22):
doing right now, I want you to stop and look up. Okay, Well,
if you're inside, you might want to first find a window,
But if you're outside, look up at the sky. It's amazing,
isn't it. Now? Imagine living in a time before the
scientific revolution. How do you explain the sky, the clouds
(00:45):
constantly moving into all kinds of shapes, the different colors
from blue to pink, to orange to even red and
even crazier. What is beyond the sky? So join us
on this adventure up there as we learn about the
aero knots. You know, Matt, before before you said that
(01:06):
we were talking about aeronauts, I thought you were just
on really good drugs. By that intro, you'd probably assumed
that I was. Yeah, Helen, are you afraid of heights? Like,
if I'm inside a tall building and I'm looking out
a window, that's fine. But if I'm like outside and
looking straight down yeah, I get a little like that's
(01:31):
the thing, Like, you know, if you're in an airplane,
you generally feel pretty secure, and you're in a skyscraper,
but you're afraid of I have never been too bothered
by it. But again, this show is about aero knots
and we're talking about the original daredevils who just went
up in balloons, like really high up there. So just
(01:54):
to start out, Matt, is what is the definition of
an aeronaut Because I don't think I've ever said the
word aeronnot or thought about the word aeronnot. So essentially,
the aeroknot is that person in the basket of a
balloon automatically. People are probably just thinking about balloonists of today, right.
It was actually quite different from the job of balloonists today.
(02:16):
This was one of the most exciting obsolete jobs that
we have here because it attracted the thrill seekers. Some
of them though, were scientifically minded, so they wanted to
learn more about what was up there. You know. Here's
Jennifer Tucker. She's the Associate professor of History and Science
in Society at Wesland University, where she describes the origin
(02:39):
of the term aero knots so the term aero knots
began to be connected to taking balloons up in the
air almost immediately. It kind of captured the idea that
going up in a balloon and exploring the oceans of
air overhead was going to be similar in some ways
to the ocean navigator Shian. So a lot of the
(03:01):
terminology that creeps into balloon language is already um circulating
among people who are familiar with marine travel. It's it
sort of captures the idea of discovery and exploration and adventure.
And maybe today people might call themselves balloon pilots rather
than aeronnots, but this was certainly the main way that
(03:23):
that balloonists would describe themselves at the time. Wait, so, Matt,
I guess I'm still not super clear about what's the difference.
Is it just because it was like the first time
anyone had ever traveled in balloons, so it was all
d I y. Yeah, Like they would literally build the
balloons promote them as if it was like this big spectacle.
(03:44):
Everyone would show up and watch and then okay, watch me,
I want to go up and and and everyone's like,
let's go watch Bob as he decides to open that
big blob of air. I mean, that's so crazy to
be like, they just had this concept of like I think,
if we fill a balloon, we can get up there
and they just d I Y the whole thing. Yeah. So, Matt,
(04:06):
how is an ernut different from a modern day balloonists
because we still have balloonists today. Well, today's balloonists are
mostly just pilots. They have that one purpose, whereas aero
knots were i would say, part sky explorers, part inventor
slash engineer because they put these balloons together themselves. They
(04:28):
were also entertainers. So in many ways, this is like
a bunch of jobs all rolled into one. So where
does the term arrow not come from. It comes from France.
This is where the first aero knots really became famous.
One of the things that's interesting about the French context
and this sort of era of early flight was that
(04:50):
there was this balloon mania which swept across Europe at
this time, which was encouraged by the circulation of numerous
writings and lithographs or balloon fashions and memorabilia, and this
kind of ferment of discovery and imagination and possibility was
(05:12):
partly a reflection of the sciences at the time. Balloon fashion.
Did she sink balloon fashion? Does that mean like ladies
of the day, or wearing dresses with little balloons on them,
or like or their dre wearing dresses that are shaped
like balloons. That would be pretty pretty darn cool, honestly.
But yeah, it was fashionable. It was it was just
(05:33):
these balloon well, these aero knots, they were they were celebrities.
But yeah, so the earliest aeroknots, it was a one
stop shop. They would put the balloons together, they would
fill it filled with gas. A lot of times they
were known as quote gentleman scientists. So do you know
have you heard that term before gentlemen scientists? I don't
(05:55):
think I have. Essentially, they were scientists who were self trained,
like they just kind of it was more like a hobby.
And again the age of Enlightenment, it was it was
stylish to study science. And even though they had never
been you know, classically trained, they you know, they had
dabbled here and there and so. But they had the
(06:16):
money too. That was a lot of these aero knots
actually had personal fortunes that they could actually use to
spend on these balloons. This reminds me of a guy
dated once who like, build his own motorcycles. That's hot.
It's like, it's like the guy who builds his own motorcycles.
But of this is it seventeen hundreds Matt, Yeah, sev
(06:39):
hundreds of guys like, yeah, build my own balloon, you know,
and and all the ladies are like, oh, you build
your own balloons, that's hot. Well. One of the one
of the people that was fascinated by aeroonnots was Benjamin Franklin.
There was this idea that it would be possible with
the balloon to see the world differently, and that mystery
(07:01):
around the balloon was there from the start. So Benjamin
Franklin one time watched a balloon launch through a telescope
from his carriage. This is what he wrote later, someone
asked me what's the use of a balloon? And I replied,
what's the use of a newborn baby? So you know,
this idea that well who knows what its use is
(07:22):
going to be, but just the fact that it's there
is has so much potential and promise that it was
going to open the mind as well as the skies.
I wouldn't have thought of Benjamin Franklin as like a
renegade hottie. But maybe he was a renegade hottie of
the day because he was inventing all these things and
(07:44):
all the ladies are like, oh, what you're working on?
Nap Ben. It's well known that he's he was a
ladies man. He was definitely you see those pictures of
him in the wig, all the images we think of
Benjamin Franklin. Wait, I'm still I'm still like fascinated. So
before aeronauts, nobody had like humans did not fly in
(08:06):
any way whatsoever. Well, they okay, they were. There were
some that dabbled with gliders, like they would jump off
of tall like the like the top of a church
and like watch me off as I fly. But my understanding,
no as far as actual giant balloons. So everyone knew,
according to science, that if you filled a vessel with
(08:28):
a certain type of gas, that the vessel would rise, right,
I'm as say people knew that. So then these these
renegade rogue people of the time, we're like, you know what,
I'm going to extrapolate this to a giant scale. Oh yeah,
and I'm gonna make I'm gonna sew a bunch of
cloth together to make this humongous balloon. And I'm going
(08:49):
to fill that vessel with all these mysterious light gases
and then I'm gonna attach that balloon to a basket,
and then I'm gonna get in it. Like that's crazy.
So the on Goulfier brothers were the ones who first
sent up balloons. The first ones, of course, did not
have humans. They sent up animals. Wait what a duck?
(09:11):
A rooster? Yeah, yeah, of course, a sheep? Wait wait
wait wait wait back up. So these two brothers, actually
it's two brothers in France. They remind me of the
right brothers, right, the right brothers? Right? Am I right?
Or am I right? So like these two brothers in
France who were like, we want to fly. We're gonna
(09:33):
put gas in this basket, but it's too dangerous for people.
So we're gonna put a duck in the basket. Yeah,
they put a duck, a rooster. The first one with
humans was October nineteen seventy three, and that was the
scientists Jean Francois and his associate French. That's beats. Your
(09:57):
French is a torches. I'm so sorry, about the pronunciations.
So wait, there's so many things that are blowing my mind.
I can't believe the duck didn't jump out, to be honest,
just jump out and be like I'm out of here,
I'm going. And then this other guy was like, I'll
do you one better. I'm gonna put people in the basket.
(10:29):
Were any animals harmed in the making of this technology.
There's no documented animals ever getting harmed. Thank god, thank god.
The duck made it, the rooster made it, everyone made
it back down safely to Earth. The rooster was like,
I'm never doing that again. And then people were like,
all right, well the sheep made it. I'm gonna try
(10:51):
it myself. I think the thing that just kind of
fascinates me the most about this is just imagine being
the first person to look down on people like that,
you know, to literally look down. I mean it's a
bird's eye view um for the first time, and it
was almost like a psychedelic experience on my trip and
holy cal like your intro it's like I'm high, No, literally,
(11:14):
I'm high. Yeah. So I mean later you'd have these
wealthy Victorian type people that you know, they're all dressed
up and all these balloons, but then they just be giggling,
like having such a good time up in the balloons.
By that time it was it wasn't quite as dangerous.
I think we do need to look more at the
science angle of it, because a lot of scientists wanted
to send stuff up there, like send this up there,
(11:36):
see see what happens when you put this on the balloon.
There was this tremendous interest in the scientific possibilities of
the balloon by the nineteenth century, and by that point
there there really wasn't a project that the British Association
was more interested in, really than than ballooning. They saw
it as a symbol of a new kind of science
and a new kind of scientist. It was kind of
(11:58):
like today with the space shot. Lots of different scientists
put experiments on board to see what happens. So the
balloon was like an instrument, like a microscope or a telescope.
That's kind of how they saw it, except that they
are going to be dependent on aero knots to be
able to to to get them up there with their
instruments and back safely. So it was like the NASA
(12:23):
of the day, only it was just random wealthy people
who were like, hey, we're going to try this. Yeah, well,
but legitimate scientists, not just gentleman scientists, but legitimate scientists
and stuff up there, and they just wanted to see
what happens, Like if you put this plan up there
is they're just gonna shrivel up once you get high
(12:45):
enough in the air. These guys sound like the Elon
Musk of their day, like they just they have a
lot of money and they have these wild theories like hey,
let's try it. I have the money, let's try it,
and as well, yeah it's a good allergy actually yeah,
because they needed to have these daredevils come in to
do a lot of that that work that no one
(13:06):
else wanted to do. It's like the first people that
went out into space, Like, no one's ever done it.
We have no idea if you're going to survive. We
have no idea if you're going to make it back alive.
And these are people like, we're doing it. Let's just
jump into the dangers here, Like how dangerous was it
in the early decades of doing this, So like the
late seventeen hundreds, they didn't know what was going to
(13:26):
happen if like say, a storm came up, or if
there was lightning in the area. Down drafts. Sometimes if
people went up too high in the air, they would
pass out because the air was too thin and so
and they didn't know where that was exactly. It was
kind of trial trial and error, Like, okay, I think
if you go a little bit higher, we might pass
out or maybe not, like I think if we got
(13:50):
were there deaths like was were there a lot of
people who died? Were there accidents? There were accidents? There
were deaths, not many deaths. Let's well, there's this movie.
Have you heard of the movie aeroknots? There's a movie
called Aeronnats that looks at a lot of these When
did it come out? Came out? And it came out
last year? Oh wow, it seems like so long. So
(14:11):
you haven't heard of this movie? Okay. There was a
character in that movie based off a real life character
or real life person, Blanchard, who was the figure on
which the character of Amelia Wren in the Aeronnauts movie
is based. She was a very confident and natural entertainer.
Immediately after her husband's death of a heart attack while
(14:33):
descending in eight ten, she made her first solo balloon
display in Paris, and she died in eighteen nineteen. During
one of her ascents, her balloon caught fire as she descended,
the rigging got caught on a rooftop and so that
the crash didn't kill her, but she slid off and
fell onto the street to her death. Owes, that's brutal.
(14:54):
Sophie Blanchard. I mispronounced her name. Of course, yeah she didn't.
She did not make it. But that was the character
of Amelia Wren from the Aeronnauts movie was based off
of her. I mean, that's a ballsy lady. Excuse my French,
but that but that's like a really that she was, like,
(15:16):
I mean, a woman in the eighteen hundred. She's there,
she's still wearing those crazy corseted dresses and the feathery
hats and stuff. And her husband dies in a balloon accident.
She's like, my turn, stand back, I'm doing it myself.
Her husband dies in a balloon accident, and she like,
(15:39):
she puts her corset itself into the basket herself and
flies a solo balloon flight on her own, a solo woman,
and then she crashes and dies. That is wow. The
part I'm most impressed about was that she was all
about the show, you know, doing fireworks and acrobats, and
you know, she was like first and foremost an entertainer,
(16:01):
like watch me do this. You know. She was like
Lady Gaga mixed with Amelia Earhart. Yes, she's like Amelia
Earhart meets Lady Gaga. There's also this other guy named
Felix Nadar. There was a really nightmarish balloon journey of
Felix Nadar in eighteen sixty three. He lost um, They
(16:23):
lost ground and kept bouncing up and down on the ground,
tearing through branches. They blew into the path of an
oncoming train and then barely missed that, and then they
hurtled toward a line of telegraph wires. And it was
after that that he he became a proponent of heavier
than air flight because he was convinced that, you know,
this sort of lack of control over the balloon was
a big problem for it. So he was he was
(16:46):
one of the ones in the nineteenth century really pushing
for balloons powered by steam or electric. So yeah, that
she she for the first time here Jennifer mentioned heavier
than air flight. Yeah, what is that? So that's basically
what we think of flight today mostly, which is airplanes
and helicopters. Like machine doesn't it doesn't require air as,
(17:09):
it doesn't require a gas that's propelling you. It's like
it requires like something like like engineering something, Yeah, engineering
something like I could put that any better myself. You
know that he hurtled towards a line of telegraph wires,
she mentioned, Well, that was something they didn't have to
(17:30):
worry about when they started in the late seventeen hundreds
of the telegraph didn't exist yet, and so there are
things that didn't anticipate that would be obstacles in the
coming decades. So when ballooning started, like when aero nodding started,
(17:57):
it was so early that they didn't have wire, they
didn't have telegraph wires, they didn't have I'm assuming, they
didn't have super tall buildings, so they didn't have anything
that they could crack the balloon could crash into. But
then as the technology progressed and telegraph wires went up
and in buildings started getting taller and they were chimneys
(18:18):
and these tall structures, man made structures that the balloon
could crash into But then as as time progressed, it
was like whoa, it was like became an obstacle course,
like wow, all these things are like popping up. Yeah, no, totally.
And that's again, it was not just one thing. It
wasn't just Felix Madar. It was all kinds of people
just starting to say like, yeah, this maybe isn't the
(18:40):
safest thing. But we had blimps. We had giant blimps
that transported people up until the nineteen thirties. I'm sure
you're aware of the Hindenburg disaster. Yeah, yeah, that was
another thing that discouraged lighter than air travel. And they're like, no,
let's just focus on heavier than air. Let's get let's
focus more on those airplanes getting those safe. When did
(19:00):
blimp start? And it's blimp ing part of this whole
aeronauts story. So here's Jennifer explaining that that big debate
between lighter than air and heavier than air. There was
a debate beginning around the eighteen fifties and sixties between
those who champions the lighter than aircraft and those who
championed the heavier than aircraft. And it was a pretty
(19:22):
intense debate, and so a lot of people think that
lighter than aircraft sort of fell by the wayside, partly
because the heavier than aircraft people. In a way they
kind of won. Um, I mean the helicopter and the
jet you know, the jet plane, they sort of won,
and they sort of won the public rhetoric. But I mean,
if we look at even now, lighter than aircraft and
(19:45):
you know hot air balloons are still really popular and
they still attract interest, just not on the same level.
So I would not call the people who were on
the air these big airships aeronnats. I don't think they
fit that description. But you couldn't have had blimps without aeronauts, right,
because the balloons came first, So the technology of the
(20:05):
blimps was based on the technology that was discovered by
the aeronauts. True, yes, it wasn't until the eighteen fifties
where airships came around. So what exactly is the difference
between an aeronnot which we're saying is job sleete and
a current day balloonist. It might be better just to
have Jennifer describe the process. One of the kind of
(20:28):
crazy things about nineteenth century ballooning was that there really
was no such thing as a typical day. Every balloon
ascent was its own thing, and for some people that
was part of the attraction, the kind of the kind
of uncertainty. Was it gonna be a huge success, was
it going to be a complete failure. Aeronauts typically arrived
at a launch site days in advance and got their
(20:51):
inflation hoses set up so that the balloon was nicely
inflated by the day of the ascent. Sometimes the balloon
would be bouncing around when it was tethered and kind
of raring to go, so the aeronaut would often enlist
members of the crowd to help stabilize it until they
were ready, and also to hold the lead lines so
that as it started to um go up in the air,
it wasn't going to kind of veer off in some
(21:13):
direction into a building. So they also had to observe
the weather, making sure that they were going up at
at a at a good moment and not right in
the middle of when a thunderstorm was going to happen.
And then once they were starting to get up in
the air, sometimes before they before the crowd lost sight
of them. Uh they might have acrobats outside the balloon.
(21:33):
Hanging from the balloon, they might parachute animals out. Sometimes
they would throw out candy or pretty much anything they
could think of, and if it was a night ascent,
they would It was popular to have fireworks as well,
which were very dramatic and exciting. I have so many questions.
Did she say they would throw animals out? Well, yeah,
(21:58):
I know, I had the same reaction to and I
was like, what you say, Like, what is that what
she said? She would they were just toss animals out
of the balloon. Okay, Well, Jennifer has a little bit
of an explanation here. Leonardi's historic first flight in Britain four,
he brought his pet cat. One of the first balloon
flights made without humans, which they called unmanned flights, they
(22:20):
put animals in a basket. In that case it was
a sheep, a rooster, and a duck and um. After
a lot of people had been seeing these balloon is
since for a while, sometimes by the eighteen twenties or thirties,
they were demanding more exciting spectacles, and at that point
there are examples of people trying to ascend with a
horse harnessed underneath the basket with someone riding the horse.
Sometimes people are putting dogs in a parachute and um
(22:45):
throwing them out of the out of the balloon. Today
there would be some you know, laws against that kind
of what we would see as kind of cruelty to animals. Wow.
I mean, Peto would have a field day with with
this group. As a dog lover and owner, I am
offended at the concept of a dog in a parachute
(23:07):
getting tossed out, and yet it would be a sight
to see for sure. Hey, stress again, there are no
documented accounts of any animals dying. This was crazy. It's
almost a precursor to the circus. I mean, this was
a spectacle. I loved when she said they would enlist
the crowd to like wrangle the balloons, Like, hey, everybody,
(23:29):
grab a grab a rope, it's about to go flying off.
I think the main reason why people will show up
to these things is they really didn't know what was
going to happen. Wow, that's wow, that you know what,
I I get it. I now understand what the differences
between an aeronaut and a modern day balloonist, because I
(23:50):
myself have never been on a modern day balloon, have you, No,
I have not, because it's it seems a little boring
to me, to be honest, Well, it seems like something
you do with like your once You're like, yeah, yeah,
there's there's definitely something kind of corny and romantic about it.
And I'm not better because I don't have a partner. No,
I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. Frankly, ORNs are just cooler. Sorry,
(24:15):
balloon pilots. Sorry, if any of our listeners are balloon
pilots and would like to invite us to a balloon
excursion um to show us how exciting because we're we're
I feel like we're talking trash about balloon balloonists and
(24:37):
neither one of us has ever been I was gonna
we've never I'm sure it's actually neither one of us
has ever been on and we're like boring. Probably one
of the most exciting things ever, is probably more exciting
than skydiving, and here we are just like, oh, so,
if there's a balloon balloonists out there who would like
to invite us and show us how not boring it is,
where I'm down. I'm down to go. Maybe we can
(24:59):
record the next episode up there. I don't Know Job
Slete is produced for I Heart Radio by Zealots manufacturing
hand Forge Podcast for You. It's hosted by us Helen
Hong That's Me and Matt beat That's Me. The show
was conceived and produced by Anthony Savini, Jason Elliott, and
(25:19):
Steve Zamarki. Our editor is Tommy Nichol, our researcher is
Amelia Pauca, our production coordinator is Angie Hymes, and theme
music is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Special thanks to
our I Heart Radio team led by Nikki Etore, Katrina Norvell,
Ali Cantor, Mangesh Hatty Khador, Will Pearson cone Burne and
(25:40):
Bob Pittman.
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