1783

— (Inventing Flight: The Centennial Celebration Series #4) —

The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Joseph and Et?enne de Montgolfier, brothers living in France in the 1700s, took the next steps toward reaching the skies. They realized they could create lift from the heat of combustion. The brothers constructed a 309-foot diameter balloon made of linen and paper and launched it with heat from a fire on the ground. The balloon rose over 6,000 feet.

King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were on hand for the second experiment. To see whether the skies could sustain life, the Montgolfiers sent a duck, a sheep, and a rooster successfully skyward. The next step was inevitable. Though the King refused to attend, two men climbed aboard the Montgolfier balloon. They rose to 3,300 feet and floated silently above Paris for nearly half an hour.

Though it would be 120 years before another pair of brothers would achieve heavier-than-air flight, people had finally propelled themselves into the skies. Neither they nor their dreams would ever leave.

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