Hot-Air Balloon Tours

Many believe that the first recorded hot-air balloon was made in 1782 by the Montgolfier brothers from a silk bag; the brothers thought that it rose into the air due to “Montgolfier gas.” In a demonstration for King Louis XVI in September 1783, the balloon passengers were a duck, sheep, and rooster. By November of that year, humans [Page 622]went aloft, in the dense smoke then thought to be necessary for flight. It was originally thought that the dense smoke caused the balloon to rise, until it was realized that it was the hot air. However, it turns out that the Portuguese court of King John V was first to see a balloon rise almost 75 years earlier, in the early 1700s, thanks to the ...