JosephMichel Montgolfier Learn English through story level 3

joseph michelle montgomery

the man who helped humans to fly

all my life i was an inventor

i designed the first hot air balloons

my brother etienne and i made it

possible for humans to fly

through the air

[Music]

i was born on the 26th of august

1740 in anonay

in the ardesh region of central france

my father pierre owned a company which

made paper in the town

my mother anne gave pierre sixteen

children and i was the twelfth of them

when i was young i was especially close

to my brother

jacques

we all called him that was the 15th

child he was five years younger than me

but we were interested in the same

things

in later years we worked together

when we were children etienne and i

often watched birds flying

perhaps people could learn to fly too i

sometimes

thought i had the mind of an inventor

at an early age and people called me a

dreamer

i certainly dreamed about flying

etienne’s mind was more practical than

mine

while most of us stayed in anony he

moved to paris

there he studied to become an architect

however he returned to us in 1772

when our eldest brother remo died

ramore had been the manager of the

family’s paper making business

after my father’s retirement

now etienne took that job

etienne was a very successful

businessman

and as a result our family became rich

but my interest in inventing things was

strong

many people thought that my ideas were

strange

but i didn’t listen to them fortunately

etienne didn’t listen to them either

[Music]

in 1777 i had my first

practical idea about human flight

[Music]

one day i was drying some cloth over a

fire

i noticed that the cloth was moving

the hot air from the fire was lifting

parts of it

i knew then that hot air was lighter

than cold air

so i asked myself a question

could hot air inside something that was

heavier than

air lift that thing off the ground

it was an idea that stayed in my mind

in 1782 i was living in avignon

i was interested in military planning at

that time

i started to think about flying soldiers

why was the idea of flying soldiers a

good one

there were several reasons for example

a soldier could fly over a battlefield

he could look down

and see where his enemy’s soldiers were

that could help his own army or perhaps

the soldiers themselves could attack

their enemy from the air

[Music]

i remembered my idea about using hot air

to make something fly

and i shared it with my brother

we agreed that the main difficulty was

the fire

the air inside a flying machine had to

be hot

it had to be lighter than the air around

the machine

so we needed to make something which

could fly

but which contained a fire the fire had

to burn

safely we didn’t want it to burn the

machine

i started to make experiments

[Music]

one day i made a wooden frame with the

shape of a box

it was about one meter by one meter

by one meter in size

i covered the frame with cloth on five

sides

but i didn’t cover the bottom of the box

i placed the box on a metal stand

and i made a fire under it

my experiment was a success the box

the balloon as i called it started to

rise from the ground was this a kind of

flying machine

yes it was i was indoors at that time

so the machine soon hit the ceiling

but i saw that my idea was practical

it was time to build a larger machine

and take it outside

i wrote to my brother i asked him to get

lots more cloth

and some rope he quickly did this

and he came to avignon and joined me in

my work

i told him that he was going to see

something amazing

on the 4th of december 1782

our first outdoor balloon was ready

it was a very basic balloon about three

times as large as the first one

no one could fly in that balloon

i wanted to demonstrate to people what

could be done

in the future a large crowd came to see

what was going to happen

amazingly the balloon ascended

and floated through the air for nearly

two kilometers

[Applause]

the next year 1783 was the most

important time for our work

we made a new balloon which was larger

than the second one

it had thick paper inside the cloth

this balloon held 790

cubic meters of air and it weighed

225 kilograms

on the 4th of june that year we gave a

public demonstration

of this balloon at anony

people from the government came to watch

will the balloon leave the ground

everyone wondered

we were happy when the demonstration

succeeded

the flight lasted 10 minutes and the

balloon reached an altitude

of about 2 000 meters above the ground

like the second balloon it landed about

two kilometers from where it left the

ground

[Music]

so a machine could fly

we already knew that but most of the

people at the demonstration

were amazed news of our success

moved faster than the balloon traveled

soon etienne went to paris to

demonstrate our invention

there

i was always a shy person and i

decided to stay at home

the 11th of september was the date of

etienne’s first demonstration

in the french capital city

jean baptiste reveal

another man whose company made and sold

paper

helped my brother to make the new

balloon

the flight started in reveals garden

this balloon had a name it was called

aerostar reveal the signs of the zodiac

were painted on it

everyone thought that it looked

wonderful

on that occasion the king louis the 16th

had told etienne the two criminals could

fly in the basket

the compartment for passengers at the

bottom of the balloon we wanted to test

the effects of flight on living things

because we wanted our balloons to carry

men and women in the future

but etienne said that criminals didn’t

deserve the honor

however a week after that flight another

flight took place

at the royal palace in versailles

this time a sheep a duck and a chicken

were in the basket

[Music]

the date was the 19th of september

and a huge crowd came to watch the

flight

king louie and queen mary antoinette

themselves

were there and again the flight was

successful

this time the balloon traveled about

three kilometers in eight minutes

it flew at about 500 meters above the

ground

none of the animals was hurt

immediately etienne built a huge new

balloon

which held 1700 cubic meters of air

it was about 24 meters high

and about 16 meters wide the king’s face

as well as the zodiac signs was painted

on this balloon

on the 15th of october in this balloon

my brother became the first human to

ascend into the air

it was a tethered flight the balloon

was tied to the ground with a very long

rope

this was because we still needed a way

to control

the balloon’s direction of flight

later that same day another man ascended

in the machine

he was called jean francois pilatra

de rossier and after that day

he flew in etienne’s balloons on a

number of occasions

soon etienne decided that the tether

rope

wasn’t necessary the balloon could fly

untethered in future

on the 21st of november the marquis

dalond who was a famous soldier

and monsieur pilato de rossier

made the first untethered

controlled the balloons direction on

that day

so you could say that he was the world’s

first

pilot the two men flew

over paris they reached an altitude of

900 meters and they stayed in the air

for 25 minutes

parisians were amazed to see the balloon

sailing across the sky

[Music]

that flight had a moment of danger

a piece of hot wood jumped from the fire

and started to burn the cloth the pilot

had to land the balloon

quickly but no one was hurt

and everyone was happy that the two

aviators

had returned safely to earth

much more work was needed to improve the

balloons

etienne and i made many more experiments

the academy decions recognized our

achievements

however our work was interrupted by the

french revolution

in 1789 the streets of

paris were dangerous places

especially for the rich people

survival in the streets became more

important than survival in the air

so we stopped flying

but we’d shown that human flight was

possible

we changed the way people thought about

travel

soon after our machines first flew other

inventors started to make balloons

which were filled with hydrogen not

hot air hydrogen

a gas which had recently been discovered

was lighter than air

it didn’t need to be heated

but balloons continued to be people’s

only way of flying

long after my own death on the 26th of

june

1810 it was almost a hundred years later

when a different kind of flying machine

moved the history of aviation

forward again