A sheep, a rooster, and a duck were the passengers on the first hot air balloon flight that was launched on September 19, 1793, in France. Concerned about the impact of the high altitude flight on humans, it was decided to use the animals. Moreover, the physiology of the sheep was thought to be similar to that of a human. The flight lasted nearly 8 minutes before landing safely with the passengers.
The next step for Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier was to put a person in the basket. In October of 1783, they launched a balloon connected to the ground by a guideline, and carrying a brave professor of chemistry and physics, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, who remained aloft some four minutes.
As often happens in the geometry of anecdotes, the first human passenger was also the first victim of a balloon crash. Pilâtre de Rozier died on June 15, 1785, when his balloon, inflated with a combination of hydrogen and hot air, exploded during an attempt to fly across the English Channel.
Shortly after these free flights (untethered to the ground), the limitations of using hot air became evident: when the air cooled, the balloon was forced to descend. Maintaining a fire came with the risk that sparks could ignite the balloon itself. Thus, a man named Jacques Alexandre César Charles, a famous inventor and mathematician, launched a balloon containing only hydrogen.
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