The History of Hot Air Ballooning
History Pages
- Brief History
- 1783 - Birth of Flight
- 1784 - English Aeronaut
- 1785 - Conquering the Channel
- 1793 - America Takes Off
- 1800 - Death of the Hot Air Balloon
- 1812 - The Irish Question
- 1898 - Balloons to Airplanes
- 1931 - A Stratospheric Achievement
- 1935 - Highest Men in the World
- 1960 - Balloons and Parachutes
- 1960s - Renaissance of Hot Air
- 1978 - Transatlantic Challenge
- 1981 - Transpacific Challenge
- 1987 - Richard Branson
- 1999 - The Last Frontier
- 2005 - Altitude Record Broken Again
1898 – Balloons to Airplanes
The Brazilian engineer and inventor Alberto Santos-Dumont took his first balloon flight. He went on to build motorised airships, and in France in October 1906 he became one of the first ever pilots to fly an airplane.
‘Villages, woods and meadows pass across the moving scene... human beings look like ants along the white lines that are highways; and the rows of houses look like children's playthings.’
Alberto Santos-Dumont,
‘My Air-Ships’, New York, the Century Company, 1904
