Those who have witnessed the reckless manner in which the modern balloonist mounts thousands of feet into the air, seated on a trapeze or clinging to flying rings attached to an old balloon, patched and frequently rotten, may be inclined to sneer at the brave Rozier. But it should be remembered that in 1783 people had not learned nineteenth-century contempt for altitude. Furthermore, no one could tell what might be the effect upon the human system of ascending to a great height when away from a building or other terrestrial object. Fainting, hemorrhages, heart-failure, and death had been predicted, and could not be practically refuted. In short, it was an absolutely new and untried field; and it required far greater courage on the part of Rozier to mount eighty feet in a captive balloon than for a modern aeronaut to sail thousands of feet skyward. In proof of this is Rozier's subsequent record of ascents in free balloons, and dangerous voyages, in the last of which he lost his life. To France, therefore, belongs the honor of inventing the balloon and being first to test it with a human passenger. On this last point, however, France only eclipsed America by a few days. For while the craze for balloon-making was at its height in France during the summer of 1783, a somewhat similar craze on a small scale had started in some of the American cities. Two members of the Philosophical Academy of Philadelphia, Rittenhouse and Hopkins, constructed a peculiar balloon having forty-seven small bags inflated with hydrogen attached to a car. On November 28th, six weeks after Rozier's ascent, this balloon was sent up, with James Wilcox, a carpenter of Philadelphia, as passenger. Everything was going well with the voyager until he suddenly discovered that the wind was wafting him toward the Schuylkill River, which so alarmed him that in attempting to descend quickly he punctured the bags so freely that he came to the ground with considerable force, escaping, however, with a dislocated wrist. Meanwhile, in Europe, a new danger to balloonists had arisen. Fanaticism was rife, particularly in the vicinity of Paris, and many members of the cloth were tireless in denouncing this "tampering with God's laws by invading the inviolability of the firmament." Fortunately, the king took a broader view, and his soldiers were supplied freely for protecting balloonists and their property; but even with this protection both were roughly handled at times. By this time England had become aroused; balloon-making became popular across the Channel, and some new records for time and distance were soon made. One balloon sent up in London landed in Sussex, forty-eight miles away, making the voyage in two hours and a half. A few days later a small balloon sent up in Kent was blown across the Channel and landed in Flanders. But neither of these balloons carried passengers.