Just about everyone who dried laundry over a fire — a common habit in the 1700s — had seen this before: the drying fabric billowed upward over the flames.
It just so happened that Joseph Montgolfier was thinking about air travel as he sat watching the fire. An idea clicked into place. That common practice suggested a solution to an uncommon question: How man might move through the air.
He got to work constructing a lightweight wooden box, fitted it with a piece of taffeta cloth. He then lit some paper on fire under the box, which quickly lifted off and hit the ceiling. In a letter to his brother, he called it one of the most 'astonishing sights in the world.'
In 1782, Joseph and his brother Etienne had built a much larger model and lit wool and hay under it. The contraption took off and promptly floated utterly out of their control for more than a mile before it landed and was destroyed by a — doubtlessly horrified — bystander.
By June 4, 1783, the brothers had completed their newest globe balloon, held together with 1,800 buttons, and sent out the equivalent of a 18th century press release announcing their balloon test. Dignitaries arrived and the balloon did not disappoint, rising about 5,000 feet up on a 10 minute flight across about a mile and a half.
Etienne pursued a vigorous and successful publicity campaign, claiming the invention of flight. There were other claimants. Brazilian priest Bartolomeu de Gusmao was said to have demonstrated similar flight 74 years earlier.
