Kind: captions
Language: en
it's one of Humanity's oldest dreams to
leave the surface of the Earth far
behind and to soar into the clouds like
a bird it took many centuries to realize
that dream of course and there were many
Milestones along the way the wri
brothers flight Apollo 11 landing on the
moon but the date I'm thinking of was a
couple of centuries ago November the
21st
1783 that was the date of the world's
first voyage in a hot air balloon that
carried human beings Aloft
[Music]
the hot air balloon was invented by two
French brothers Joseph and etian
Mongolia who ran a highly successful
paper making business and The Story Goes
that Joseph got the idea one evening
when he was watching his wife's laundry
specifically his wife's blouse billowing
in the hot air rising from the fireplace
the mongolia's first experiments
involved little paper bags with candles
suspended underneath that they launched
from their their porch at night they
experimented with bigger and bigger
balloons until finally they made one out
of paper and canvas that was seven
stories high and fully capable of
lifting a human being there was just one
complication by this time their flights
had created such a sensation in France
that their base of operations had been
moved to the Palace of versailes under
the watchful eye of King Louis V 16th
himself who was reluctant to have human
beings risk their lives so the king
decreed that had to be a guinea pig or
rather a rooster a sheep and a duck all
crammed all crammed into a wicker cage
slung underneath the balloon it seems
that even back then passenger legum was
an issue now the Curious Thing about the
mongolas is that although they built
increasingly successful hot air balloons
they had no real idea at all of why
their balloons worked now a hot air
balloon Rises because hot air is less
dense than the surrounding air and so it
Carri ra the balloon upwards but the
mongolas didn't realize that they
thought that the smoke from the fire
burning underneath the balloon was a
special lifting gas and the smokier the
fire the more powerfully the balloon
would rise into the sky so it said that
they shoveled all kinds of things into
the fire to make more smoke such as wool
old shoes even decomposing meat as the
balloon got ready to lift off the stench
was so overpowering that it said that
King Lou and Mar antoinet fled the scene
in disgusted but the story has a happy
ending the Plucky animals after a
8-minute 2m flight landed safely and
scampered out of their cage
unscathed the first human balloon
flights would soon follow for more about
those pioneering flights fed by a power
source even smellier than a rocket fuel
be sure to tune in to Nova's Ben
Franklin's balloons
so Karen did you ever hear the one about
the Sheep the rooster and the duck no
w't clean up your mess