red
what he designated "inflammable air," though no one had as yet given it
its later title of hydrogen gas. Moreover, in treating of this gas--Dr.
Black of Edinburgh, as much as fifteen years before the date we have now
arrived at, had suggested that it should be made capable of raising a
thin bladder in the air. With a shade more of good fortune, or maybe
with a modicum more of leisure, the learned Doctor would have won
the invention of the balloon for his own country. Cavallo came almost
nearer, and actually putting the same idea into practice, had succeeded
in the spring of 1782 in making soap bubbles blown with hydrogen gas
float upwards. But he had accomplished no more when, as related, in the
autumn of the same year the brothers Montgolfier conceived the notion of
making bodies "levitate" by the simpler expedient of filling them with
smoke.

This was the crude idea, the application of which in their hands was
soon marked with notable success. Their own trade supplied ready and
suitable materials for a first experiment, and, making an oblong bag of
thin paper a few feet in length, they proceeded to introduce a cloud
of smoke into it by holding crumpled paper kindled in a chafing dish
beneath the open mouth. What a subject is there here for an imaginative
painter! As the smoky cloud formed within, the bag distended itself,
became buoyant, and presently floated to the ceiling. The simple trial
proved a complete success, due, as it appeared to them, to the ascensive
power of a cloud of smoke.

An interesting and more detailed version of the story is extant. While
the experiment was in progress a neighbour, the widow of a tradesman who
had been connected in business with the firm, seeing smoke escaping into
the room, entered and stood watching the proceedings, which were not
unattended with difficulties. The bag, half inflated, was not easy to
hold in position over the chafing dish, and rapidly cooled and collapsed
on being removed from it. The widow noting this, as also the perplexity
of the young men, suggested that they should try the result of tying
the dish on at the bottom of the bag. This was the one thing wanted to
secure success, and that good lady, whose very name is unhappily
lost, deserves an honoured place in history. It was unquestionably the
adoption of her idea which launched the first balloon into space.

The same experiment repeated in the open air proving a yet more
pronounced success, more elabo