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