(Ballooning, Aviation, Montgolfier Brothers.) Barthelemy Fau...

Hammer

£250

(Ballooning, Aviation, Montgolfier Brothers.) Barthelemy Faujas de Saint-Fond: 'Description des Expériences de la Machine Aérostatique de MM. de Montgolfier: et de celles auxquelles cette découverte a donné lieu: suivie de recherches sur la hauteur à laquelle est parvenu le ballon du Champ-de-Mars . ouvrage orné de neuf planches en taille douce, représentant les diverses machines qui ont été construites jusqu'a ce jour.', Paris, Cuchet, 1783, 1st edition, 9 engraved plates complete, but this copy without the folding table (plate IX professionally reinforced at outer margin to verso), xl,299,[3]pp + [4]pp supplement and errata at end, fine rebound half calf gilt, marbled paper covered boards, top edge gilt. The first full-length account of the historic experiments with balloon flight conducted by the Montgolfier brothers in 1783, and "the first serious treatise on aerostation as a practical possibility" (PMM). The Montgolfier brothers, Joseph (1740-1810) and Étienne (1745-99), had been intrigued by the experiments of Cavendish and Priestly with 'inflammable air' (hydrogen). "After some unsatisfactory experiments with hydrogen gas (which dissipated too quickly from their trial models), the Montgolfiers discovered that air heated to 100 degrees Celsius became sufficiently rarefied to lift a balloon and did not diffuse. On 5 June 1783 the brothers released their first full-sized balloon, a paper and linen globe thirty-five feet in diameter, which rose 6,000 feet and travelled a horizontal distance of 7,668 feet from the starting point. On 19 September, before Louis XVI and the French court, they launched the first flight with living beings aboard (a sheep, a cock and a duck); and on 20 November the first manned flight took place. Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond was a successful lawyer and geologist, and one of the most ardent supporters of ballooning. He sponsored the first hydrogen balloon of the physicist J. A. C. Charles, who demonstrated balloon flight before the Montgolfiers, and invented the hydrogen balloon. Scarce