In 1785, a Frenchman, Jean-Pierre Blanchard, and an American, Dr. John Jeffries, traveled by balloon across the English Channel, conducting the first significant and symbolic flight traversing a geographic obstacle by air. Afterward, crossing the oceans and circumnavigating the globe became the next barriers to be overcome.

From its inception the balloon’s potential military applications were apparent.  They were used for observation by the Revolutionary Armies of France in 1784 at the Battles of Fleurus and Charleroi. For the next century and a half (or 150 years) militaries used the balloon to varying degrees of success.

Lighter-than-air flight grew out of the scientific revolution. Studies of atmospheric physics during the 17th century culminated in Robert Boyle’s description of the relationship between volume, temperature, and pressure and inspired lighter-than-air flight. Chemists in the 18th century began identifying the gases in our atmosphere. Once hydrogen was isolated, the idea of filling a bag with this light gas followed naturally. The inventors of the balloon based their work on the scientific method, a new concept.

Human beings first took to the sky in balloons. Jacques and Etienne Montgolfier, two paper makers from Annonay, France, designed and built a hot air balloon that carried the first passengers aloft on November 21, 1783. Days later, the chemist Jacques Charles and a companion, Nicolas-Louis Robert, flew in a hydrogen balloon from the Tuileries Palace in Paris. The techniques and technologies of ballooning discovered in the 18th century remain the guiding principles of lighter-than-air flight today.