Books and Manuscripts

Saint-Fond, Faujas de
Description des Experiences de la Machine Aerostatique de MM. de Montgolfier...
Paris: Chez Cuchet, 1784. Second edition. 8vo. xl, 302, (2) pp. Illustrated with an engraved frontispiece, eight engraved plates, one folding table, and woodcut head- and tail-pieces. Full contemporary tree calf, black morocco spine label, stamped in gilt; armorial book-plate of Sir Michael Robert Shaw Stewart, 7th Baronet, on front paste-down. Printing and the Mind of Man 229

Second edition of the first contemporary chronicle of the first aerial voyage--"the first serious treatise on aerostation as a practical possibility." (PMM) In June of 1783, the Montgolfier brothers launched a balloon over Annonay. "This feat, however, was surpassed…in September when they successfully launched a balloon carrying a sheep, a cock and a duck, and even more sensationally in November when, after some tethered experiments, Pilâtre de Rozier, accompanied by the Marquis d'Arlandes, made the first aerial voyage in history. They ascended from the Château de la Muette in the Bois de Boulogne, sustained their flight for five-and-a-half miles across Paris and descended after twenty-five minutes on the outskirts of the city." (PMM). The experiment, which was witnessed by Benjamin Franklin, the Dauphin, amongst many others, marks the real beginning of the history of manned flight. This account by Faujas de Saint-Fond details both the event itself and the theoretical and practical science which went into making the flights a success.