Balloonomania
[1] The science of lighter-than-air gases, and specifically the properties of oxygen, had been discovered as early as 1774 by Joseph Priestley, who noted its lightness and explosive qualities when heated.
"[4] Regardless of these negative reactions, which were not in the majority, ballooning quickly caught the imagination of the general populace, with a crowd of up to 400,000 clamoring to see Jacques Charles make a manned ascent in Paris on December 1, 1783.
The costly spending by nobles and the wealthy on balloon-related entertainment and fashion was viewed by ordinary people as a waste of money and resources, further fueling the demand for political, social, and economic reforms.
Even Johnson recognized the potential for exploration, stating, "How easily shall we trace the Nile through all its passages; pass over to distant regions and examine the face of nature, from one extremity of the Earth to the other.
"Many sexually suggestive cartoons soon appeared: the inevitable balloon-breasted girls lifted off their feet, monstrous aeronauts inflated by gas enemas, or 'inflammable' women carrying men off into the clouds.
"[12] Balloonomania, merely as a novelty, served as the inspiration for various poets, such as Edward Nares, author of the Ballooniad,[13] a street ballad about ballooning, which mentioned the notion of flying to the moon.
Yet it ought not to be altogether condemned, It promises prodigious faculties for locomotion, and will allow us to traverse vast tracts with ease and rapidity, and to explore unknown countries without difficulty.
"[17] Shelley also wrote a sonnet entitled "To a balloon, laden with Knowledge" which reads: Bright ball of flame that thro the gloom of even Silently takest thine etherial way And with surpassing glory dimmst each ray Twinkling amid the dark blue Depths of Heaven Unlike the Fire thou bearest, soon shall thou Fade like a meteor in surrounding gloom Whilst that unquencheable is doomed to glow A watch light by the patriots lonely tomb A ray of courage to the opprest & poor, A spark tho' gleaming on the hovel's hearth Which thro the tyrants gilded domes shall roar A beacon in the darkness of the Earth A Sun which oer the renovated scene Shall dart like Truth where Falshood [sic] yet has been Balloonomania was not universal amongst the Romantic poets, however.
In contrast to Coleridge, Wordsworth and Shelley, William Blake mocked and satirized the idea of manned flight in his unfinished prose work "An Island in the Moon".
[20] The military applications of balloons were recognized early, with Joseph Montgolfier jokingly suggesting in 1782 that the French could fly an entire army suspended underneath hundreds of paper bags into Gibraltar to seize it from the British.
[22] After that victory, Napoleon started an air balloon corps based in Meudon, and there were fears in England of an aerial invasion, though this never came to pass.
