The first people to fly did it in a paper-lined bag inflated over a straw fire. Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier ran their family's paper mills in Annonay, a small town south of Lyon, and in the winter of 1782 they began experimenting with hot air trapped in fabric. Within a year their invention went from a workshop curiosity to a machine that carried two men across Paris. Everything happened in 1783, and it happened fast.
A market square full of witnesses
On 4 June 1783 the brothers staged their first public demonstration in the market square of Annonay. Their balloon of sackcloth and paper, about ten metres across, climbed well over a thousand metres, drifted for around ten minutes and came down roughly two kilometres away. Local officials signed a formal report, and the news raced to Paris and the Academy of Sciences. The strange part is that the brothers did not understand their own machine. They believed the lift came from a special gas hidden in smoke, which admirers called Montgolfier gas. In fact it was ordinary air, thinned by heat; the real explanation is on our page about the science of hot air. People had dreamed of flight for centuries, and a few had come close, as our page on lanterns and flying priests shows. The Montgolfiers were the first to build something that worked at human scale.
A sheep, a duck and a rooster
The next question was whether living creatures could survive the upper air. On 19 September 1783, before Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and an enormous crowd at Versailles, the brothers sent up a balloon carrying a round cage with three passengers: a sheep, a duck and a rooster. The sheep was named Montauciel, roughly climb to the sky. The duck and the rooster were there as controls, since both already knew what altitude felt like. The flight lasted about eight minutes and ended gently in the woods nearby. All three animals came down alive, and Montauciel is said to have retired to the royal menagerie.
Tethered tests over a wallpaper garden
A human flight needed a bigger and far better built balloon. Jean-Baptiste Reveillon, a famous Parisian wallpaper manufacturer, offered his workshop garden in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, his craftsmen and his taste: the new envelope, about 21 metres tall, was decorated in blue and gold with royal ciphers and signs of the zodiac. In October 1783 Etienne stepped into the gallery during a tethered test and rose above the rooftops, which arguably makes him the first human ever lifted off the ground by a machine. He never flew again. The training passed to Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier, a young chemistry teacher who made repeated tethered ascents through October to learn how to feed and manage the fire.
Twenty-five minutes over Paris
On 21 November 1783 the balloon was brought to the Chateau de la Muette, on the western edge of Paris. Around two in the afternoon Pilatre de Rozier and an infantry officer, the marquis d'Arlandes, cast off and rose free. For about 25 minutes they drifted across the city, stoking the fire with straw and sponging out small scorch holes in the fabric, before landing between the windmills of the Butte-aux-Cailles, roughly nine kilometres from their start. No human being had ever made a free flight before. Benjamin Franklin, then the American envoy in France, watched the ascent. When a bystander asked what possible use this new invention could have, Franklin is reported to have given the reply below. It survives as an anecdote rather than a verbatim record, but it stuck.
What is the use of a new-born child?
What happened next
Ten days later, on 1 December 1783, Jacques Charles flew from the Tuileries in a hydrogen balloon, and the two technologies raced each other for the next century. Pilatre de Rozier kept flying and died in 1785 trying to cross the Channel, a story we tell on pioneers and daredevils. The Montgolfiers themselves stepped back almost at once. Joseph flew a single time, aboard the giant Le Flesselles at Lyon on 19 January 1784. Etienne never made a free flight at all. The brothers returned to making paper, and their name stayed in the sky: montgolfiere is still the everyday French word for a hot air balloon.
Fly the modern version
Today's balloon burns propane instead of straw and lands where the pilot chooses, but the physics is pure 1783. Here is what a first flight actually feels like, from wake-up call to landing toast.
Montgolfier brothers FAQ
When did the Montgolfier brothers fly the first hot air balloon?
Their first public demonstration, with nobody aboard, was at Annonay on 4 June 1783. The first free manned flight followed on 21 November 1783, when Pilatre de Rozier and the marquis d'Arlandes flew about 25 minutes across Paris.
What animals flew on the Montgolfier balloon at Versailles?
A sheep named Montauciel, a duck and a rooster flew for about eight minutes on 19 September 1783 before Louis XVI at Versailles. All three landed safely, which suggested the upper air would not harm humans.
Who was the first human to leave the ground?
In free flight, Pilatre de Rozier and the marquis d'Arlandes on 21 November 1783. On a tether, Etienne Montgolfier had already risen during tests at Reveillon's workshop garden in October 1783, so he is arguably the first human off the ground.
Did the Montgolfier brothers fly their own invention?
Barely. Etienne only ever rose on a tether. Joseph flew once, aboard the huge Le Flesselles at Lyon on 19 January 1784, and never repeated it. Both brothers spent the rest of their careers in the family paper business.