The Montgolfiers wasted no time testing out their conclusion that smoke rose because it was lighter than the air. They built a great paper bag 35 feet high, hung a brazier of burning charcoal under it, and off it went. Annonnay is a small town but the story of that miracle spread far and wide. The Academy of Science invited them to the capital to repeat the experiment. But while they were building a new bag a French physicist, Prof. J. A. C. Charles, stole a march on them. He knew that hydrogen was also lighter than air, so constructed a bag of silk, inflated it with hydrogen, sent it aloft before the Montgolfiers were ready. Still the countrymen were not to lose their hour of glory. Merely to repeat what had already been done was not enough. Their balloon was to be flown from the grounds of the Palace of Versailles, before the king and court and all the great folk of Paris, with half the people of the city craning their necks to watch it pass over. So they loaded aboard a basket containing a sheep, a duck and a rooster, and these three became aircraft’s first passengers. When the U. S. Army Air Corps years later sought an appropriate insignia for its lighter-than-air division, it could think of nothing more fitting than a design which included a rooster, a duck and a sheep. Everyone was ready for the next step. A French judge had the solution. He offered the choice to several prisoners awaiting execution—a balloon flight or the guillotine. Two volunteered, felt they had at least a chance with the balloon, whereas the guillotine was distressingly final. They had nothing to lose. That word rang through Paris. A young gallant named De Rozier objected. “The chance might succeed,” he said. “The honor of being the first man to fly should not go to a convict, but to a gentleman of France. I offer my life.” Even the king protested at this needless risk, but De Rozier took off the following month, flew half way over Paris, landed safely. This happened on Nov. 21, 1783. Among the witnesses to these experiments was Benjamin Franklin, the American ambassador, himself a scientist of no small renown. He predicted great things for aeronautics. “But of what use is a balloon?” asked a practical-minded friend. “Of what use,” replied the American, “is a baby?” A little later, on January 7, 1785, Jean Pierre Francois Blanchard, a Frenchman, and Dr. John Jeffries, an American, practicing medicine in England, inflated a balloon, took off from the cliffs of Dover at one o’clock in the afternoon, arrived safely in Calais three hours later. [Illustration: Santos Dumont startled Paris in 1910, when he let an American girl fly one of his airships over the city. To descend she threw her weight forward, to climb she moved back a step.] [Illustration: A dramatic meeting of two rivals for the honor of making the first Atlantic crossing. The Navy’s NC flying boats and the non-rigid C-5, photographed shortly before their take-off.]