wo miles in the air. Most of the
fittings of the modern hydrogen balloon, the hoop and netting, for
instance, from which the car is suspended, and the valve at the top of
the balloon for the release of the gas, were devised by Charles. The
unfortunate Pilatre de Rozier met his death on the 15th of June 1785, in
an attempt to cross from Boulogne to England. In order to avoid a
constant wastage of hydrogen in controlling the height of the balloon,
he devised a double balloon; the larger one, above, was filled with
hydrogen, the smaller one, below, was worked with hot air from a
brazier, on the Montgolfier principle. At a height of some three
thousand feet, while it was still over French territory, the double
balloon caught fire and fell flaming to the earth.

The earliest balloon ascents in England followed close upon the French
experiments. On the 25th of November 1783 Count Francesco Zambeccari
sent up an oil-silk hydrogen balloon, ten feet in diameter, from the
Artillery Ground in Moorfields; it travelled forty-eight miles, and fell
at Petworth in Sussex. On the 22nd of February 1784 a balloon of five
feet in diameter, liberated at Sandwich in Kent, travelled seventy-five
miles, and after crossing the Channel, fell at Warneton in Flanders. To
inflate a bag with gas and let it take its chance in the air is no great
achievement, but these were flights of good promise. The first person in
Great Britain to navigate the air was James Tytler, a Scot, who on the
27th of August 1784 ascended in a fire-balloon, that is, a balloon
filled with hot air, from Comely Gardens, Edinburgh, and travelled about
half a mile. Tytler had been employed by the booksellers to edit the
second edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, of which he wrote the
greater part, at a salary of seventeen shillings a week; he passed his
life in poverty, and his balloon adventure attracted little attention.
The public mania for ballooning as a spectacle began with the ascents of
Vincenzo Lunardi, secretary to the Neapolitan ambassador in England.
Lunardi's first ascent, which was well advertised, was made from the
Artillery Ground in Moorfields on the 15th of September 1784, in the
presence of nearly two hundred thousand spectators. His hydrogen
balloon, of about thirty-two feet in diameter, sailed high over London,
and descended near Ware in Hertfordshire. His record of his sensations,
written in imperfect English, and published in 1784 under the title of