Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. The Mongolfier Brothers ballooning efforts came up in
Speaker 1: our recent episode on Raincoats, so we are bringing that
Speaker 1: out today Today's Saturday Classic. So the term manned flight
Speaker 1: has become a little bit problematic um in terms of
Speaker 1: it being gendered language in recent years, So if we
Speaker 1: were recording this show today, we would have used different phrasing.
Speaker 1: Just def y. I yeah, I don't think that's a
Speaker 1: thing that we have normally pointed out, but I feel
Speaker 1: like manned flight gets a lot more immediate criticism than
Speaker 1: the many other gendered terms that are still in use.
Speaker 1: So just be aware. This originally came out September, so enjoy.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy, I
Speaker 1: have fantastic news. What is it? This episode is not creepy,
Speaker 1: it's not unsettling. I'm starting well, I love all that stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, I legit have a very sort of morbid
Speaker 1: and morose taste in many things, even though I'm pretty
Speaker 1: giggly in day to day life. But this one has
Speaker 1: none of that it's just kind of a cool moment
Speaker 1: in the development of human technologies. Hooray. Yeah, you're your
Speaker 1: your episodes were disproportionately jerks there for a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these people not jerks to the best of my knowledge,
Speaker 1: which is fantastic. So back in October, we had an
Speaker 1: episode about female balloonists Sophie Blanchard and the balloon omania
Speaker 1: that was gripping Europe at the time. But today we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the roots of that balloon omania.
Speaker 1: It's pretty close because this was a very explosive moment
Speaker 1: in terms of interest and excitement about air flight. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we're going to talk about the inventive minds of
Speaker 1: two brothers that really shaped ballooning. And we actually did
Speaker 1: talk about them briefly in the Blanchard episode, but their
Speaker 1: work sort of deserves its own episode. Uh. And the
Speaker 1: inspiration for this episode actually came from working on a
Speaker 1: house Stuff Works article a while back about drones that
Speaker 1: I was editing. UM and our art department put together
Speaker 1: this really fantastic interactive graphic about the ways humans have
Speaker 1: taken to the skies and unmanned vehicles over the years,
Speaker 1: and one of the earliest points on that clickable timeline
Speaker 1: featured Joseph Michel and Jacques Etienne Montgolfier, and so I
Speaker 1: thought it might be fun to talk about them. Joseph
Speaker 1: Michel was the older of the brothers, born on August
Speaker 1: and Anna A, France. He would go on to go
Speaker 1: by Joseph Jacques, Etienne or Etienne Jacques, depending on which
Speaker 1: the document you're looking at, was generally just called Etienne,
Speaker 1: and he was born about four and a half years
Speaker 1: later on January six, seventy. So for the timeline, if
Speaker 1: you are a fan of our prior, uh, Sophie Blanchard episode,
Speaker 1: I was about three decades before she was born. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the discrepancy in terms of talking about Etienne is
Speaker 1: that his name is listed different ways on different documents.
Speaker 1: So his birth certificate and death certificate are opposite. One
Speaker 1: says Jacques Etienne, one says Etienne Jacques. Just heads up
Speaker 1: there if you're like, why, why are they flippy? Uh?
Speaker 1: And in addition to these two brothers, their father, Pierre Mongolfier,
Speaker 1: and their mother and dere had fourteen other kids. Uh.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of children. Unfortunately, Pierre was a very
Speaker 1: successful businessman, so he was able to support that massive family,
Speaker 1: and the way he did so was through a family business,
Speaker 1: because the Mongolfier's owned a number of paper factories in France,
Speaker 1: all of which were doing pretty darn well. Joseph attended
Speaker 1: private school and then Jesuit College, but school just really
Speaker 1: didn't quite agree with him. His mind was really busy
Speaker 1: and he had trouble focusing on one thing, sort of
Speaker 1: like some other people in the room right now. He
Speaker 1: eventually left to start his own chemical business in Paris.
Speaker 1: At the end went to school to be an architect,
Speaker 1: although he was also interested in science, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: long before both he and his brother continued to run
Speaker 1: the family business as adults. At the end was better
Speaker 1: better at the business side of things. He had become
Speaker 1: the head of the family's paper factories at age thirty
Speaker 1: after Pierre retired and their brother Raymond, who had been
Speaker 1: in charge of the business, passed away. Joseph, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, was always interested in innovating and putting his
Speaker 1: chemistry knowledge to work to improve the processes in the
Speaker 1: mills that they owned. Yeah, every time you see any
Speaker 1: mention of Joseph's bus this acumen. Like at one point
Speaker 1: he was running his own chemical business. He was not
Speaker 1: good at that part of it. He tended to lose
Speaker 1: a lot of money because, as we said, well little
Speaker 1: focus issues. But the income from the paper factories would
Speaker 1: give Joseph and Etienne the financial freedom to explore and
Speaker 1: experiment in the science of ballooning. And it's not entirely
Speaker 1: clear why or how the two began thinking about air flight.
Speaker 1: There are so many apocryphal stories about how this happened.
Speaker 1: One was that watching bits of burning paper lift into
Speaker 1: the air from a fire got them started. Another was
Speaker 1: that it was simply watching smoke rise from a fire
Speaker 1: that gave them the inspiration to think about how air
Speaker 1: and smoke and lift worked. And another suggests that Joseph
Speaker 1: was watching his wife's chemise dry over a fire and
Speaker 1: he noticed how the fabric billowed out as warm air
Speaker 1: was trapped underneath it. But we do not know if
Speaker 1: any of those are true or not. They all sound
Speaker 1: like ballooning versions of being hit with an apple, yeah,
Speaker 1: very much, depending on which biography you are looking at. Uh,
Speaker 1: and most modern ones kind of acknowledge. We don't know.
Speaker 1: But some of the older accounts and even accounts that
Speaker 1: the gentleman gave in their lives. They shift a lot,
Speaker 1: and you can tell it's kind of like, we don't know,
Speaker 1: so we're just going to PLoP something here that that
Speaker 1: makes some sort of sense. So that's why we have
Speaker 1: a billion different stories about it. But the important thing
Speaker 1: is they did start thinking about it. In two the
Speaker 1: brothers observed that when heated air was contained in a
Speaker 1: lightweight vessel made of paper or fabric, that vessel would rise.
Speaker 1: They actually thought they had discovered a new type of
Speaker 1: gas that was lighter than air, and they named that
Speaker 1: Montgolfier gas. Their theory was that Mongolfier gas was contained
Speaker 1: in the smoke from the fire and that it possessed
Speaker 1: a property that they called levity, which brightens my day
Speaker 1: a little bit. It's very charming. Of course, over time,
Speaker 1: it would, you know, prove that it was it was
Speaker 1: just the heat that was, you know, making the regular
Speaker 1: air rise, not activating some sort of hidden gas that
Speaker 1: was present in the air. And we should also point
Speaker 1: out that while the Mongolfiers are often credited with inventing ballooning,
Speaker 1: and while we were talking about them specifically at length today,
Speaker 1: they were certainly not the only people experimenting with the
Speaker 1: idea of flight, and they were not even the first
Speaker 1: to be filling lightweight bags with air to make them float.
Speaker 1: Portuguese priest Bartolomeo Lorenzo du Guzmo, which I'm probably butchering,
Speaker 1: was floating small balloons in the early seventeen hundreds, and
Speaker 1: he was working on designs for a much more sophisticated
Speaker 1: airship based on those balloon experiments when he died in
Speaker 1: seventeen twenty four. It appears, however, that the Mongolfiers did
Speaker 1: not know about those ballooning experiments going on in Portugal
Speaker 1: earlier in the century. Filling balloons with hot air to
Speaker 1: lift them up was also employed in China, way before
Speaker 1: Europeans ever got this idea. Rising lanterns of this nature
Speaker 1: were common in China as early as the third century,
Speaker 1: So this was a long time before before Europeans were
Speaker 1: even thinking, Hey, maybe if I failed a bag with this,
Speaker 1: it would rise. Yeah. Yeah. Whenever I see like this
Speaker 1: sort of and I know because we both work in
Speaker 1: editing and we do copy that sometimes you just have
Speaker 1: to like cut down extraneous stuff to make a point.
Speaker 1: But whenever I see like a blurb or something that
Speaker 1: says the Mongolfier's first ever, you know, achieve balloon flight.
Speaker 1: I'm like, that needs a whole lot of qualifier, really,
Speaker 1: not um and prior to and during the time that
Speaker 1: Joseph and Etienne were at work on their ballooning efforts,
Speaker 1: there were also so many other of their contemporaries in
Speaker 1: Europe working on similar ideas. And we're mentioning all of
Speaker 1: this just to make clear that while these two gentlemen
Speaker 1: do get a lot of credit for inventing manned flight,
Speaker 1: it might be more accurate to say that they were
Speaker 1: two of many who were working towards that goal at
Speaker 1: the same time, and a bit of lucky timing happened
Speaker 1: to be on their side. In April of three, the
Speaker 1: Monk Alfie has began testing their theories and earnest creating
Speaker 1: various models of balloons from fabric and paper and then
Speaker 1: trying out their air worthiness. They also experimented with different
Speaker 1: flammable media to determine what would burn the best at
Speaker 1: the most controllable rate to heat the air so that
Speaker 1: it didn't just become an alarming conflagration of burning balloon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were some instances that happened, and they're testing, but
Speaker 1: on June four three, the brother duo went to the
Speaker 1: n and A marketplace to present their work in heated
Speaker 1: air by way of demonstration. So they set up the
Speaker 1: silk balloon that was lined with paper. It was huge.
Speaker 1: It had a diameter of thirty three feet that's about
Speaker 1: ten meters, and they arranged straw and carded wool beneath
Speaker 1: the balloon. They had determined that burned the best under
Speaker 1: the bags only opening, so then they earned that straw
Speaker 1: in the wall and it heated the air within their vessel.
Speaker 1: I bet this was stinky. Probably it seems like, especially
Speaker 1: the burning wool would be gross. So once the interior
Speaker 1: air was heated, the bag rows up off the ground.
Speaker 1: Estimates placed at an altitude of about three thousand feet
Speaker 1: which is a little more than nine meters at the
Speaker 1: highest that it reached. After staying aloft and drifting for
Speaker 1: about ten minutes, the balloon then drifted back down to earth,
Speaker 1: finally landing about a mile and a half or two
Speaker 1: point four kilometers from the marketplace where they started out
Speaker 1: this demonstration. And this was pretty exciting to everyone, and
Speaker 1: the success of their n n A display led them
Speaker 1: to Paris l Academy decience wanted to hear all about
Speaker 1: the balloon experiments, so Etienne went to give a talk.
Speaker 1: They're about their work, and the pair were honored by
Speaker 1: the Academy for that work. And if you're wondering why
Speaker 1: only Etienne spoke with the Academy in Paris, it was
Speaker 1: because the pair were wanted in many places at once
Speaker 1: once they had done this demonstration, So Joseph was speaking
Speaker 1: at the Lyon Academy at the same time. We're going
Speaker 1: to talk briefly about how very not accidental the success
Speaker 1: of the moncol Fer Brothers was. But first we will
Speaker 1: pause for a brief moment from a sponsor. It sounds grand,
Speaker 1: so all of this attention and praise was not, as
Speaker 1: we mentioned a moment ago, a situation where two gents
Speaker 1: were just goofing about and accidentally found themselves the toast
Speaker 1: of the country. Uh. Keep in mind too, that these
Speaker 1: weren't like super young guys. They were in their thirties
Speaker 1: at this point, so they were strategic thinkers. They were
Speaker 1: very smart men, and they had selected this date for
Speaker 1: their ant and a exhibition to coincide with a meeting
Speaker 1: of local leaders, so that people with some influence could
Speaker 1: witness what they had been working on. Etienne and Joseph
Speaker 1: were hoping to get the attention of the crown and
Speaker 1: launched their careers as scientific elites financially supported by the king,
Speaker 1: and that plan to get the head of the country
Speaker 1: interested in their balloons actually worked. From the presentation in Paris,
Speaker 1: the brothers headed to Versailles to repeat this balloon display
Speaker 1: for King Louis the sixteenth, but this time they aimed
Speaker 1: for a bigger, more ambitious experiment. They wanted to send
Speaker 1: a more structured balloon up and this time have passengers,
Speaker 1: and to execute the project, the Mongolfier's needed help, so
Speaker 1: they called on the skills of wallpaper maker Jean Baptiste Lavillon,
Speaker 1: and with Lavillan's help, they constructed a balloon that was
Speaker 1: slightly smaller than the previous one. It had a diameter
Speaker 1: of thirty ft about nine meters, but this balloon, which
Speaker 1: was also made from tafida, was varnished with alum to
Speaker 1: fireproof it and it had a decorative painted finish. The
Speaker 1: selection of passengers was also a significant step in the process.
Speaker 1: There were some serious concerns about what flight in a
Speaker 1: balloon might do to a body I'm assuming they were
Speaker 1: also worried about what would happen if it crashed, So
Speaker 1: walk King Louis the sixteenth proposed that prisoners be used
Speaker 1: for the test. The Montolfe has decided to go with
Speaker 1: a different plan, And this is kind of one of
Speaker 1: those things that you'll often see cited as a wacky thing,
Speaker 1: but the reasons for it are pretty cool. So those
Speaker 1: first riders in in the Mongolfier balloon baskets, we're not humans.
Speaker 1: They were a duck, a rooster, and a sheep, and
Speaker 1: the logic was that since the duck was a naturally
Speaker 1: flying animal, it was considered something of a control element,
Speaker 1: and the rooster was selected because it was a bird,
Speaker 1: but it was one which flew only short, short distances,
Speaker 1: very close to the ground, so it was like the
Speaker 1: next level of risk up from the duck in terms
Speaker 1: of what its body might be able to handle. And
Speaker 1: then the sheep was believed to be similar enough to
Speaker 1: a human physiologically that its success or failure as a
Speaker 1: passenger would give a pretty clear indication of whether ballooning
Speaker 1: was safe for humankind. Might be the silliest criteria for
Speaker 1: an experiment we have ever talked about I love it,
Speaker 1: though there's a logic to it. It's kind of silly.
Speaker 1: But I always wonder what kept the duck from flying out,
Speaker 1: but that's never covered. It's just I mean, similarly to
Speaker 1: the one that we had about the volcano that the
Speaker 1: people fought by spraying water at it. This whole idea
Speaker 1: of the balloon animal tests just sounds like child logic
Speaker 1: to me. It's like it's like the brainstorming effort of
Speaker 1: a kindergarten class. However, this occasion was anticipated with great excitement.
Speaker 1: About a hundred and thirty thousand people, including the King
Speaker 1: and Marie Antoinette, were on hand to witness this historic moment.
Speaker 1: And it's very odd. Cargo and those three Barnyard aeronauts
Speaker 1: were successfully launched on September nine, eighty three, and they
Speaker 1: flew for eight minutes. So animal lovers in the crowd
Speaker 1: you may have already guessed because I'm giggly about it,
Speaker 1: We'll be happy to know that the feathered and wally
Speaker 1: trio made a perfectly safe landing, although they had drifted
Speaker 1: a p sxtimately two miles that's about three point two
Speaker 1: kilometers while they were making history in the air. I
Speaker 1: hope they weren't scared. I'm sure they were probably a
Speaker 1: little confused and possibly scared. Like I said, I don't
Speaker 1: know why the duck wouldn't just be like I'm out.
Speaker 1: I'd be like, I'm not having your Shenanigans. A world
Speaker 1: of note to this balloon. As the animal experiment had
Speaker 1: gone so well, the Mongolfier brothers were eager to step
Speaker 1: things up and try a balloon carrying actual humans, and
Speaker 1: after a couple of months of prep, on November one,
Speaker 1: they made a history by launching the first manned, untethered
Speaker 1: balloon flight. And the two men who got to experience
Speaker 1: that exhilarating flight were not the Mongolfie brothers. Uh. The
Speaker 1: brothers stayed on the ground and kind of set up
Speaker 1: the whole thing though the two people were high profile
Speaker 1: balloon enthusiasts. So One of the men was Jean Flancois
Speaker 1: Pila a Rosier who was a chemist and head of
Speaker 1: the count of Countess de Pouvent's Cabinet of Physics, Chemistry
Speaker 1: and natural History, who was known for his very flamboyant
Speaker 1: approaches to communicating science concepts. He would be a really
Speaker 1: fun topic for the future f y, I he might
Speaker 1: be uh and Palapa Rosier had actually been in the
Speaker 1: balloon before, so about a month prior, on October fifte
Speaker 1: the Mongolfies had launched a tethered test flight with him
Speaker 1: as the human occupant, and that lasted just four minutes.
Speaker 1: The other gentleman was Francois Laurent Marquis Darland, who was
Speaker 1: a soldier and a noble. His inclusion in the event
Speaker 1: is said to have been the result of efforts on
Speaker 1: the part of the king to ensure that someone from
Speaker 1: the nobility was part of this historic moment when human
Speaker 1: flight was achieved. And the balloon itself was a rather
Speaker 1: spectacular looking thing. If you do an Internet search for it,
Speaker 1: you'll see many, many pictures, and there are even modern
Speaker 1: balloons that have been designed to replicate it because it's
Speaker 1: it's so iconic and balloon ing. So it was blue
Speaker 1: with intricate gold designs on the exterior, including symbols that
Speaker 1: were associated with King Louis. Remember they were very into
Speaker 1: currying favor with the king. And the passenger area this
Speaker 1: is kind of the part of it that I really love.
Speaker 1: The passenger area was not a basket like you'd see
Speaker 1: on a balloon, today that sat underneath it, but rather
Speaker 1: a ring around the opening at the bottom of the balloon. Uh,
Speaker 1: where heat could be applied to the air within. So
Speaker 1: you have to picture it's sort of like a flanged bottom,
Speaker 1: and then the flange forms this little ring that that
Speaker 1: the the human occupants could be in, and there was
Speaker 1: also a red bunting around the passenger area. It was
Speaker 1: very festive. They flew for less than half an hour,
Speaker 1: about twenty five minutes, and that took them about five
Speaker 1: and a half miles or eight point six kilometers in
Speaker 1: the process. As they rose up into the air, they
Speaker 1: doffed their caps to the spectators below and their balloon
Speaker 1: had started. It's it's lift at Chateau de la Meuette
Speaker 1: on the far western side of Paris landed at LaBute Okaya,
Speaker 1: the crowd, which included Benjamin Franklin, was completely woud. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Ben Franklin wrote about them a bit in his his
Speaker 1: accounts of his time in France, so uh, they're on
Speaker 1: record in his writings and ever looking to the next
Speaker 1: level of achievement, the next plan for the French Brothers
Speaker 1: was to carry larger groups of people by air, and
Speaker 1: to that end, just two months after that first untethered flight,
Speaker 1: and after a failed start that they had tried to
Speaker 1: make which was derailed by rain in a small fire,
Speaker 1: they did launch a balloon carrying Joseph and several passengers
Speaker 1: into the air in Lyon, France, on January nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: This balloon was massive. It was a hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: feet about forty meters in diameter. Uh, and they're landing
Speaker 1: on this one was not ideal because the air in
Speaker 1: the balloon cooled really rapidly and it caused a much
Speaker 1: speedier descent than they were planning. But everyone did make
Speaker 1: it back safely, although they had only been in year
Speaker 1: for about fifteen minutes. However, even with their increasing triumphs,
Speaker 1: the mongolfiers and other ballooning enthusiasts who were attempting their
Speaker 1: own projects at flight started running into the same problems
Speaker 1: over and over. And for one thing, they hadn't figured
Speaker 1: out how to steer the balloons. They would pretty much
Speaker 1: go up and then be at the mercy of the air.
Speaker 1: For another, the altitude that a balloon could reach and
Speaker 1: the distance that it could travel were limited by the
Speaker 1: air in the balloon, which of course was cooling off
Speaker 1: over time, and concerns about fire initially led people away
Speaker 1: from the idea of keeping some sort of onboard flame
Speaker 1: going to stay in the air, and so alternate gases
Speaker 1: were considered. Uh, this is part of why just ten
Speaker 1: days after the Mongolfier sent Pila Rosier and Laurent Aloft
Speaker 1: for the first time, another inventor, Jacques Alexembles ces au Chao,
Speaker 1: launched the first manned hydrogen filled balloon, which is a
Speaker 1: terrible idea. Well, it had its pluses and minus for
Speaker 1: the folks who ultimately yes, yeah for the folks who
Speaker 1: remember our Hindenburg episode, Yeah, Chills had been working with
Speaker 1: hydrogen throughout the time that the mongolf Yer's had been
Speaker 1: developing their balloons. He actually started doing this because he
Speaker 1: thought that was what they were doing. And although the
Speaker 1: brothers barely beat him to manned flight, his December one
Speaker 1: Sight three launch flew twenty seven miles which is forty
Speaker 1: three point five kilometers, and it lasted for two hours.
Speaker 1: This was quickly recognized as a superior way to get
Speaker 1: people into the air. Yeah, so at that point everyone
Speaker 1: was like, hydrogen is where it's at. On June fifteenth, however,
Speaker 1: of seventy five, tragedy struck the ballooning world when Jean
Speaker 1: Francois pla Rosier died in a ballooning accident. He was
Speaker 1: crossing the English Channel in a balloon which was filled
Speaker 1: with a combination of hot air and hydrogen when it exploded,
Speaker 1: and so less than two years after he made history
Speaker 1: in untethered flight, the hobby for which he held so
Speaker 1: much enthusiasm claimed his life and also made him its
Speaker 1: first fatality. Next up, we will talk a little about
Speaker 1: how all this balloon business was affecting the fashion culture
Speaker 1: of France. But before we get into hats and hair news,
Speaker 1: let's pause and talk about one of our fabulous sponsors.
Speaker 1: While all of this amazing stuff was going on, it
Speaker 1: was incredibly exciting to Europe, but especially to France since
Speaker 1: a lot of the big steps were happening there, and
Speaker 1: soon balloon themed items were popping up everywhere. There were
Speaker 1: balloon motifs on almost everything that you could imagine, including clothing.
Speaker 1: I would totally go for a T shirt with that
Speaker 1: first animal crew as balloon passengers, I would too. Everything
Speaker 1: from embroidered motifs to hats designed to look like balloons
Speaker 1: became really trendy and fashionable. The hairstyles that women started wearing,
Speaker 1: especially if they were fans of balloon ing, were sometimes
Speaker 1: styled into these bulbous shapes to look like balloons. People were,
Speaker 1: in shortgoing sort of bananas with balloon fashion, to the
Speaker 1: point that a satirical cartoon entitled lum oh ballon lafolly
Speaker 1: du jour, that's the Man of balloons or the folly
Speaker 1: of the day was published. And this illustration features a
Speaker 1: gentleman wearing basically balloon everything. His shirt and pantaloons are
Speaker 1: drawn to mimic the shape of balloons, and his coat
Speaker 1: is adorned with both balloon cuffs and balloon buttons, and
Speaker 1: his ebulets and shoe buckles and hair adornments are all balloons,
Speaker 1: and in lieu of a cocade, a mini balloon sits
Speaker 1: as a decorative element on his hat. And while all
Speaker 1: of this fascination with balloon fashion started in Ants, it
Speaker 1: quickly started to spread to London and New York over
Speaker 1: the course of seventeen eighty three and sev four. But
Speaker 1: of course fashion is pretty fickle. The more outlandish the trend,
Speaker 1: often the shorter it's lifespan, so By the time balloon
Speaker 1: everything had become popular with the medal class, the trend
Speaker 1: setters who had initially adopted it were done with balloons.
Speaker 1: Balloons over next moving on to ships. Uh, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: started fabulous. There's a if you There was actually a
Speaker 1: hat called him on Golfier hat which was inspired by
Speaker 1: balloon ing has kind of a big poofy crown on it.
Speaker 1: You're into it. But going back to them on golf
Speaker 1: Ye specifically, the issues that they were encountering in their
Speaker 1: balloon development efforts, particularly the flight control, eventually led the
Speaker 1: brothers away from ballooning. They kind of felt like they
Speaker 1: had done as much as they could do, but their
Speaker 1: careers in science and invention did not end there. A
Speaker 1: longside balloon development, the Mongolfier had also been working on
Speaker 1: parachute ideas, which sounds like a good companion to ballooning Joseph.
Speaker 1: Joseph eventually designed one that consisted of a dozen fabric
Speaker 1: panels stitched together and attached to a basket which was
Speaker 1: cushioned with inflatable pig ladders. They tested this parachute by
Speaker 1: dropping a sheep from from a tower in it maybe
Speaker 1: not the most humane like like they were. I mean already,
Speaker 1: I'm a little both children, both charmed and upset by
Speaker 1: sending animals up in the balloon. But I'm more upset
Speaker 1: by throwing a sheep off a tower. I actually was
Speaker 1: too when I was researching this, and I did not
Speaker 1: see anything definitive about how the sheep fared in all
Speaker 1: of that. But in their minds, since they had already
Speaker 1: established that sheep were similar enough to humans to make
Speaker 1: a broad sort of comparison in terms of safety, I
Speaker 1: guess that was the most plausible he or I think,
Speaker 1: when we're done recording, I'm gonna just make a little
Speaker 1: comparison chart of sheep and human figure out how exactly
Speaker 1: are we that similar. But after they stepped away from ballooning,
Speaker 1: Etienne went back to the family business. As you recall,
Speaker 1: he was the one that really had a head for
Speaker 1: businesses and was quite good at it, and he made
Speaker 1: strides in the paper industry when he invented a vellum
Speaker 1: production process. He was also recognized as a leader in
Speaker 1: the field of paper production, and he was given the
Speaker 1: title Manufacturer Royale, which basically meant he was at the
Speaker 1: top of his field, and perhaps his greatest achievement, though
Speaker 1: in this period of his life was keeping that business
Speaker 1: running successfully throughout the turmoil of the revolution and the
Speaker 1: economic tumult that gripped France in the wake of the
Speaker 1: power shift. He also got involved in community and government
Speaker 1: and eventually became the paymaster of the French War Department.
Speaker 1: He was serving in that position at the Lyon office
Speaker 1: when he became ill and decided to travel home to
Speaker 1: ann and A, and en route he got so ill
Speaker 1: that he decided to stop and he actually died on
Speaker 1: August two sev Yeah, he was near Serrere at the time. Uh.
Speaker 1: And as for Joseph, he went on to invent a
Speaker 1: liquid distilling apparatus that could function at reduced pressure and
Speaker 1: temperature compared to others UH. And he also invented an
Speaker 1: application of that device that could be used to dry fruits.
Speaker 1: And he also invented a hydraulic ram that was used
Speaker 1: for raising water. So he really was doing a lot
Speaker 1: of interesting things. And for those accomplishments, he was made
Speaker 1: a member of France's Legion of Honor, and he was
Speaker 1: appointed to the Institute of France. And he basically worked
Speaker 1: constantly as both an inventor and a lecturer until eighteen
Speaker 1: o nine, when he retired due to failing health. In
Speaker 1: June of eighteen ten, he traveled to Balarue, cleban in
Speaker 1: the hopes that the curative waters there would improve his condition,
Speaker 1: but in fact he died there on June. And the
Speaker 1: paper company that was in the Mongolfier family is actually
Speaker 1: still in business, although after changing names to cancel On
Speaker 1: Emmagoulfier and now it is just cancel On. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: kind of love that it's still going on. I read
Speaker 1: a thing but didn't verify it, so don't take this
Speaker 1: as fact that it is in the midst of possibly
Speaker 1: being purchased. So by the end of this year it
Speaker 1: might be owned by a different company, and I don't
Speaker 1: know if it will change names, but right now it
Speaker 1: is cancel Paper and it still exists and has been
Speaker 1: around since the early seventeen hundreds. I was going to
Speaker 1: say Unilever, because it seems like every consumer product we
Speaker 1: talked about ultimately ends up. No, it's an Italian company
Speaker 1: that I think is allegedly buying them. They primarily focus
Speaker 1: on making art papers. It's not like a business paper
Speaker 1: manufacturer nice, so it's a little bit different kind of business.
Speaker 1: Not quite not quite what you might think of when
Speaker 1: you think of business that's being bought by another big business.
Speaker 1: It's a little different. And plus if you like if
Speaker 1: you like art supplies, then they who doesn't like art supplies?
Speaker 1: I do. Even though I'm bad at art. Nobody is
Speaker 1: automatically very few people are automatically really good at art.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of artists. Uh. We actually did
Speaker 1: an interview for House Touff Works. This will be my
Speaker 1: art proselytizing moment that I think everybody should try it.
Speaker 1: We did an interview with Brian Stelfreese, who is a
Speaker 1: well known comic book artist and has been working on
Speaker 1: the Black Panther comic. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: came up in our interview when I asked if he
Speaker 1: just ever has that moment of like, man, I'm super
Speaker 1: good at this, and he said, you know what, I
Speaker 1: don't have natural talent. He has a brother that is very,
Speaker 1: very talented, and he said, mine is just years and
Speaker 1: years of practice and skill and learning that masquerades as
Speaker 1: talent to people that do not know that I have
Speaker 1: put in all that time. But he's kind of like
Speaker 1: the tale of if you love something and you really
Speaker 1: work at it, you can just become skilled at it.
Speaker 1: Here's what happens to me at art Supplas. Stars buy
Speaker 1: beautiful paper and pens. I bring them home and then
Speaker 1: they go into drawer. Uh, you are an artful consumer.
Speaker 1: That kind of am Bay so much for joining us
Speaker 1: on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive,
Speaker 1: if you heard an email address or a Facebook U
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Speaker 1: that could be obsolete. Now. Our current email address is
Speaker 1: History Podcast at i heart radio dot com. Our old
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