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1 Charles, Jacques Alexandre César
SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace[br]b. 12 November 1746 Beaugency, Franced. 7 April 1823 Paris, France[br]French physicist who developed the first hydrogen balloon, in 1783.[br]In 1783, following the early experiments with small hot-air balloons by the Montgolfier brothers, there was a growing interest in the prospect of a balloon flight with people on board. The Paris Académie des Sciences encouraged one of their physicists, Charles, to carry out experiments and produce a balloon. Charles enlisted the assistance of two brothers, Anne-Jean and Marie-Noël Robert, who were practical craftsmen with experience of coating silk fabric with rubber to make it impermeable to gases. Charles decided to use the recently discovered lighter-than-air gas, hydrogen, for his experiments rather than hot air. After making several unmanned balloons, he had a manned balloon ready for testing on 1 December 1783. Despite the fact that a Montgolfier balloon had already flown with two passengers, there was enormous public interest in the flight: one estimate suggested that 400,000 people turned out to watch. Charles and Marie-Noël Robert ascended from the gardens of the Tuileries and landed after two hours, having covered 45 km (28 miles). Technically the "Charlière" was far superior to the "Montgolfière" and was therefore used by most subsequent balloonists until the introduction of the modern hot-air balloon by the American Paul E. Yost in the 1960s. Following Meusnier's proposals for a dirigible (steerable) balloon, put forward during 1783–5, Charles and the Robert brothers built an elongated balloon incorporating Meusnier's ballonnet principle. It had a rudder but the method of propulsion, by opening and closing parasols used as paddles, was totally ineffective.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsMember of the Académie des Sciences 1795.Further ReadingL.T.C.Rolt, 1966, The Aeronauts, London. C.Dollfus, 1961, Balloons, trans. C.Mason, London. J.B.F.Fourier, 1825, Notice.JDSBiographical history of technology > Charles, Jacques Alexandre César
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2 Giffard, Baptiste Henry Jacques (Henri)
[br]b. 8 February 1825 Paris, Franced. 14 April 1882 Paris, France[br]French pioneer of airships and balloons, inventor of an injector for steam-boiler feedwater.[br]Giffard entered the works of the Western Railway of France at the age of 16 but became absorbed by the problem of steam-powered aerial navigation. He proposed a steam-powered helicopter in 1847, but he then turned his attention to an airship. He designed a lightweight coke-burning, single-cylinder steam engine and boiler which produced just over 3 hp (2.2 kW) and mounted it below a cigar-shaped gas bag 44 m (144 ft) in length. A triangular rudder was fitted at the rear to control the direction of flight. On 24 September 1852 Giffard took off from Paris and, at a steady 8 km/h (5 mph), he travelled 28 km (17 miles) to Trappes. This can be claimed to be the first steerable lighter-than-air craft, but with a top speed of only 8 km/h (5 mph) even a modest headwind would have reduced the forward speed to nil (or even negative). Giffard built a second airship, which crashed in 1855, slightly injuring Giffard and his companion; a third airship was planned with a very large gas bag in order to lift the inherently heavy steam engine and boiler, but this was never built. His airships were inflated by coal gas and refusal by the gas company to provide further supplies brought these promising experiments to a premature end.As a draughtsman Giffard had the opportunity to travel on locomotives and he observed the inadequacies of the feed pumps then used to supply boiler feedwater. To overcome these problems he invented the injector with its series of three cones: in the first cone (convergent), steam at or below boiler pressure becomes a high-velocity jet; in the second (also convergent), it combines with feedwater to condense and impart high velocity to it; and in the third (divergent), that velocity is converted into pressure sufficient to overcome the pressure of steam in the boiler. The injector, patented by Giffard, was quickly adopted by railways everywhere, and the royalties provided him with funds to finance further experiments in aviation. These took the form of tethered hydrogen-inflated balloons of successively larger size. At the Paris Exposition of 1878 one of these balloons carried fifty-two passengers on each tethered "flight". The height of the balloon was controlled by a cable attached to a huge steam-powered winch, and by the end of the fair 1,033 ascents had been made and 35,000 passengers had seen Paris from the air. This, and similar balloons, greatly widened the public's interest in aeronautics. Sadly, after becoming blind, Giffard committed suicide; however, he died a rich man and bequeathed large sums of money to the State for humanitarian an scientific purposes.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsCroix de la Légion d'honneur 1863.Bibliography1860, Notice théorique et pratique sur l'injecteur automoteur.1870, Description du premier aérostat à vapeur.Further ReadingDictionnaire de biographie française.Gaston Tissandier, 1872, Les Ballons dirigeables, Paris.—1878, Le Grand ballon captif à vapeur de M. Henri Giffard, Paris.W.de Fonvielle, 1882, Les Ballons dirigeables à vapeur de H.Giffard, Paris. Giffard is covered in most books on balloons or airships, e.g.: Basil Clarke, 1961, The History of Airships, London. L.T.C.Rolt, 1966, The Aeronauts, London.Ian McNeill (ed.), 1990, An Encyclopaedia of the History of Technology, London: Routledge, pp. 575 and 614.J.T.Hodgson and C.S.Lake, 1954, Locomotive Management, Tothill Press, p. 100.PJGR / JDSBiographical history of technology > Giffard, Baptiste Henry Jacques (Henri)
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3 Green, Charles
SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace[br]b. 31 January 1785 London, Englandd. 26 March 1870 London, England[br]English balloonist who introduced the use of coal gas for balloons.[br]Charles Green lived in London at a time when gas mains were being installed to supply coal gas for the recently introduced gas lighting. He was interested in the exploits of balloonists but lacked the finance needed to construct a balloon and fill it with expensive hydrogen. He decided to experiment with coal gas, which was very much cheaper, albeit a little heavier, than hydrogen: a larger balloon would be needed to lift the same weight. Green made his first ascent on 19 July 1821 to celebrate the coronation of King George. His large balloon was prepared in Green Park, London, and filled from the gas main in Piccadilly. He made a spectacular ascent to 11,000 ft (3,350 m), thus proving the suitability of coal gas, which was readily available and cheap. Like many balloonists, Green was also a showman. He made ascents on horseback or with fireworks to attract spectators. He did, however, try out some new ideas, such as cemented fabric joints (instead of stitching) for a huge new balloon, the Royal Vauxhall. On its first flight, in September 1836, this impressive balloon carried Green plus eight passengers. On 7 November 1836 Green and two friends ascended from Vauxhall Gardens, London, to make a long-distance flight. They landed safely in the Duchy of Nassau, Germany, having covered a record 480 miles (772 km) in eighteen hours. To help control the height of the balloon on this flight, Green fitted a long, heavy rope which trailed on the ground. If the balloon started to rise, then more of the "trail rope" was lifted off the ground, resulting in an increase in the weight to be lifted and a reduction in the rate of ascent. This idea had been suggested earlier by Thomas Baldwin in 1785, but Green developed it and in 1840 proposed to use if for a flight across the Atlantic: he later abandoned this plan.Charles Green made over five hundred ascents and died in bed at the age of 85, no small age for a balloonist.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsMember of the (Royal) Aeronautical Society, founded in 1866.Bibliography1836, Authentic Narrative of the Great Balloon Voyage and Descent in Germany, London (a pamphlet).Further ReadingL.T.C.Rolt, 1966, The Aeronauts, London (provides a full account of Green's achievements).J.E.Hodgson, 1924, the History of Aeronautics in Great Britain, London.T.Monck Mason, 1838, Aeronautica, London.JDS -
4 Meusnier, Jean Baptiste Marie
SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace[br]b. 1754 Tours, Franced. 1793 Mainz, Germany[br]French designer of the "dirigible balloon" (airship).[br]Just a few days after the first balloon flight by the relatively primitive Montgolfier hot-air balloon, a design for a sophisticated steerable or "dirigible" balloon was proposed by a young French army officer. On 3 December 1783, Lieutenant (later General) Jean Baptiste Marie Meusnier of the Corps of Engineers presented to the Académie des Sciences a paper entitled Mémoire sur l'équilibre des machines aérostatiques. This outlined Meusnier's ideas and so impressed the learned members of the Academy that they commissioned him to make a more complete study. This was published in 1784 and contained sixteen water-colour drawings of the proposed airship, which are preserved by the Musée de l'Air in Paris.Meusnier's "machine aérostatique" was ellipsoidal in shape, in contrast to those of his unsuccessful contemporaries who tried to make spherical balloons steerable, often using oars for propulsion. Meusnier's proposed airship was 79.2 m (260 ft) long with the crew in a slim boat slung below the envelope (in case of a landing on water); it was steered by a large sail-like rudder at the rear end. Between the envelope and the boat were three propellers, which were to be manually driven as there was no suitable engine available; this was the first design for a propeller-driven aircraft. The most important innovation was a ballonnet, a balloon within the main envelope that was pressurized with air supplied by bellows in the boat. Varying the amount of air in the ballonnet would compensate for changes in the volume of hydrogen gas in the main envelope when the airship changed altitude. The ballonnet would also help to maintain the external shape of the main envelope.General Meusnier was killed in action in 1793 and it was almost one hundred years from the date of his publication that his idea of ballonnets was put into practice, by Dupuy de Lome in 1872, and later by Renard and Krebs.[br]Bibliography1784, Mémoire sur l'équilibre des machines aérostatiques, Paris; repub. Paris: Musée de l'Air.Further ReadingL.T.C.Rolt, 1966, The Aeronauts, London (paperback 1985). Basil Clarke, 1961, The History of Airships, London.JDSBiographical history of technology > Meusnier, Jean Baptiste Marie
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5 Montgolfier, Joseph-Michel
SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace[br]b. 26 August 1740 Vidalon-lès-Annonay, Franced. 26 June 1810 Balaruc-les-Bains, France[br]French ballooning pioneer who, with his brother Jacques-Etienne (b. 6 January 1745 Vidalon-lès-Annonay, France; d. 2 August 1799, Serriers, France), built the first balloon to carry passengers on a "free" flight.[br]Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier were papermakers of Annonay, near Lyon. Joseph made the first experiments' after studying smoke rising from a fire and assuming that the smoke contained a gas which was lighter than air: of course, this lighter-than-air gas was just hot air. Using fine silk he made a small balloon with an aperture in its base, then, by burning paper beneath this aperture, he filled the balloon with hot air and it rose to the ceiling. Jacques-Etienne joined his brother in further experiments and they progressed to larger hot-air balloons until, by October 1783, they had constructed one large enough to lift two men on tethered ascents. In the same month Joseph-Michel delivered a paper at the University of Lyon on his experiments for a propulsive system by releasing gas through an opening in the side of a balloon; unfortunately, there was not enough pressurefor an effective jet. Then, on 21 November 1783, the scientist Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes ascended on a "free" flight in a Montgolfier balloon. They departed from the grounds of a château in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris on what was to be the world's first aerial journey, covering 9 km (5/2 miles) in 25 minutes.Ballooning became a popular spectacle with initial rivalry between the hot-air Montgolfières and the hydrogen-filled Charlières of J.A.C. Charles. Interest in hot-air balloons subsided, but was revived in the 1960s by an American, Paul E. Yost. His propane-gas burner to provide hot-air was a great advance on the straw-burning fire-basket of the Montgolfiers.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsLégion d'honneur.Further ReadingC.C.Gillispie, 1983, The Montgolfier Brothers and the Invention of Aviation 1783–1784, Princeton, NJ (one of the publications to commemorate the bicentenary of the Montgolfiers).L.T.C.Rolt, 1966, The Aeronauts, London (describes the history of balloons). C.Dollfus, 1961, Balloons, London.JDSBiographical history of technology > Montgolfier, Joseph-Michel
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6 Renard, Charles
SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace[br]b. 23 November 1847 Damblain, Vosges, Franced. 13 April 1905 Chalais-Meudon, France[br]French pioneer of military aeronautics who, with A.C.Krebs, built an airship powered by an electric motor.[br]Charles Renard was a French army officer with an interest in aviation. In 1873 he constructed an unusual unmanned glider with ten wings and an automatic stabilizing device to control rolling. This operated by means of a pendulum device linked to moving control surfaces. The model was launched from a tower near Arras, but unfortunately it spiralled into the ground. The control surfaces could not cope with the basic instability of the design, but as an idea for automatic flight control it was ahead of its time.Following a Commission report on the military use of balloons, carrier pigeons and an optical telegraph, an aeronautical establishment was set up in 1877 at Chalais-Meudon, near Paris, under the direction of Charles Renard, who was assisted by his brother Paul. The following year Renard and a colleague, Arthur Krebs, began to plan an airship. They received financial help from Léon Gambetta, a prominent politician who had escaped from Paris by balloon in 1870 during the siege by the Prussians. Renard and Krebs studied earlier airship designs: they used the outside shape of Paul Haenlein's gas-engined airship of 1872 and included Meusnier's internal air-filled ballonnets. The gas-engine had not been a success so they decided on an electric motor. Renard developed lightweight pile batteries while Krebs designed a motor, although this was later replaced by a more powerful Gramme motor of 6.5 kW (9 hp). La France was constructed at Chalais-Meudon and, after a two-month wait for calm conditions, the airship finally ascended on 9 August 1884. The motor was switched on and the flight began. Renard and Krebs found their airship handled well and after twenty-three minutes they landed back at their base. La, France made several successful flights, but its speed of only 24 km/h (15 mph) meant that flights could be made only in calm weather. Parts of La, France, including the electric motor, are preserved in the Musée de l'Air in Paris.Renard remained in charge of the establishment at Chalais-Meudon until his death. Among other things, he developed the "Train Renard", a train of articulated road vehicles for military and civil use, of which a number were built between 1903 and 1911. Towards the end of his life Renard became interested in helicopters, and in 1904 he built a large twin-rotor model which, however, failed to take off.[br]Bibliography1886, Le Ballon dirigeable La France, Paris (a description of the airship).Further ReadingDescriptions of Renard and Kreb's airship are given in most books on the history of lighter-than-air flight, e.g.L.T.C.Rolt, 1966, The Aeronauts, London; pub. in paperback 1985.C.Bailleux, c. 1988, Association pour l'Histoire de l'Electricité en France, (a detailed account of the conception and operations of La France).1977, Centenaire de la recherche aéronautique à Chalais-Meudon, Paris (an official memoir on the work of Chalais-Meudon with a chapter on Renard).JDS
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