Professor Wellner, of Brunn, brought up the idea of a sailing balloon
in more practical fashion in 1883. He observed that surfaces inclined
to the horizontal have a slight lateral motion in rising and falling,
and deduced that by alternate lowering and raising of such surfaces
he would be able to navigate the air, regulating ascent and descent
by increasing or decreasing the temperature of his buoyant medium in
the balloon. He calculated that a balloon, 50 feet in diameter and
150 feet in length, with a vertical surface in front and a horizontal
surface behind, might be navigated at a speed of ten miles per hour,
and in actual tests at Brunn he proved that a single rise and fall
moved the balloon three miles against the wind. His ideas were further
developed by Lebaudy in the construction of the early French dirigibles.
According to Hildebrandt,[11] the first sailing balloon was built in
1784 by Guyot, who made his balloon egg-shaped, with the smaller end
at the back and the longer axis horizontal; oars were intended to
propel the craft, and naturally it was a failure. Carra proposed the
use of paddle wheels, a step in the right direction, by mounting them
on the sides of the car, but the improvement was only slight. Guyton
de Morveau, entrusted by the Academy of Dijon with the building of a
sailing balloon, first used a vertical rudder at the rear end of his
construction--it survives in the modern dirigible. His construction
included sails and oars, but, lacking steam or other than human
propulsive power, the airship was a failure equally with Guyot’s.
Two priests, Miollan and Janinet, proposed to drive balloons through
the air by the forcible expulsion of the hot air in the envelope
from the rear of the balloon. An opening was made about half-way
up the envelope, through which the hot air was to escape, buoyancy
being maintained by a pan of combustibles in the car. Unfortunately,
this development of the Mongolfier type never got a trial, for those
who were to be spectators of the first flight grew exasperated at
successive delays, and in the end, thinking that the balloon would
never rise, they destroyed it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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