The history of ballooning runs on a handful of dates, and they reward being read in order.
- 1709: the priest Bartolomeu de Gusmao raised a small hot air device to a palace ceiling in Lisbon, the first documented hot air lift. The long prehistory of lanterns and impossible airships is in before the Montgolfiers.
- 4 June 1783: the Montgolfier brothers, paper makers from Annonay, flew their first public balloon over the town square.
- 19 September 1783: a sheep, a duck and a rooster survived eight minutes above Versailles, watched by Louis XVI.
- 21 November 1783: Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes made the first manned free flight, about 25 minutes over Paris. The whole impossible year is in the Montgolfier story.
- 1785: Blanchard and Jeffries crossed the English Channel on 7 January; on 15 June, Pilatre de Rozier died attempting the reverse crossing, aviation's first fatal crash. Both flights are in pioneers and daredevils.
- 1870-71: during the Prussian siege, some 66 balloons carried roughly 2.5 million letters out of Paris, the first large-scale airmail. The war record is in balloons at war.
- 22 October 1960: Ed Yost flew a nylon envelope heated by a propane burner at Bruning, Nebraska, and every balloon you can ride today descends from that machine. The full account is in 1960: the second birth.
- March 1999: Breitling Orbiter 3 carried Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones around the world nonstop in just under 20 days. In 2016 Fedor Konyukhov did it alone in about eleven days. Both flights are in records and adventures.
Notice the gaps. The balloon is the oldest aircraft and the most frequently written off. Hydrogen eclipsed hot air within months of 1783, aeroplanes eclipsed everything after 1903, and by 1950 ballooning barely existed. It kept returning because it kept finding work: high-altitude science, observation in war, then sport, and finally the dawn ride industry that now defines it. The machinery itself has no secrets; our guide to how hot air balloons work takes it apart piece by piece.
Notice the shape of that list: a century of firsts, a long stretch of war work and records, then a modern rebirth the same age as the Beatles. Below are the six chapters in order. Each stands alone, so start wherever the story pulls you, and expect a cast stranger than fiction: flying priests, a trouserless Channel crossing and a sheep with a stage name.
Six chapters of flight
From paper lanterns to the stratosphere, in chronological order.
Before the Montgolfiers
Sky lanterns over ancient China, a hot air model rising in a Lisbon palace in 1709, and the vacuum airship physics forbids.
The Montgolfier brothers
Annonay, the Versailles animal flight and 25 minutes over Paris: how 1783 became the year humans left the ground.
Pioneers and daredevils
Sophie Blanchard's fatal fireworks, a trouserless Channel crossing and the balloon the Arctic kept hidden for 33 years.
Balloons at war
Fleurus 1794, telegrams from the sky, the siege of Paris airmail and the fire balloons that crossed the Pacific.
1960: the second birth
Ed Yost, a Navy contract and the propane burner that created every balloon you can ride today.
Records and adventures
21 kilometres straight up, around the world in twenty days, over Everest, and a jump from 41,419 metres.
One detail worth keeping: the balloon in your sunrise photos is younger than the Boeing 707. What looks like the most antique machine in the sky is a 1960 invention wearing an eighteenth-century silhouette, and the traditions that surround it, from the champagne toast to the great festivals, are still being written.
Add yourself to the timeline
Three centuries of stories end the same way every good flight does: a basket, a burner and somebody aloft at dawn for the first time. Here is how yours goes.