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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: of money were granted for experiments by means of balloons ; but no good results were obtained. This want of success ought neither to discourage nor astonish us ; captive ascents, though easy enough when directed by experienced aeronauts with proper appliances, present inextricable difficulties to novices unaccustomed to the disappointments of aerial navigation. In the year 1850 MM. Bixio and Barral conceived the project of ascending to a height of 30,000 to 40,000 feet, in order to study the many atmospheric phenomena as yet imperfectly known. On June 29th in that year, a balloon was filled in the garden of the Observatory at Paris with pure hydrogen yas. The weather was bad—a torrent of rain fell; MM. Bixio and Barral, and the aeronaut, placed themselves in the car without testing the ascending power of the balloon, and darted into the air like an arrow, as described by the spectators, so that in two minutes they were lost in the clouds. At a height of 5,000 feet the gas in the balloon expanded with great force against the netting, which proved to be too small. The balloon became full, and descending upon the voyagers covered them completely as they were seated in the car, which unfortunately was suspended by cords much too short. In this difficult situation, one of them, in his efforts to disengage the cord from the valve, made an opening in the lower part of the balloon, from which the gas escaping at the height of their heads, occasioned them continued illness. Then they found that the balloon was torn and they were falling fast. They threw away everything they could, and came to the earth in a vineyard, having left it only forty-seven minutes previously. A mass of clouds 9,000 feet in thickness was passed through. The decrease of temperature up to 19,000 feet, the highest...
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