The History of Hot Air Ballooning

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.