An Air Balloon, 1st March, 1789. This 18th century hand-colored print illustrates the craft originally described by the Italian Jesuit Francesco Lana de Terzi in his Prodomo (1670). The first actual description of buoyant flight, the craft featured four evacuated copper spheres, as shown. Lana reasoned that, evacuated of the weight of the air, the spheres might be light enough to lift their own weight and that of the craft. In fact, they would have been crushed by air pressure. Lana may have been inspired by the recent studies of the physics of the atmosphere that had been conducted since the introduction of the air pump by Otto von Guericke in 1640. Created by Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Date Created 11/23/2021 Source Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Keywords Art; Aviation Rights and Restrictions Not determined
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