Berlin scientific balloon flights
The flights were organized by Richard Aßmann, Professor at the Meteorological Institute of Berlin, who also developed the most important of the measurement instruments employed by them.
The execution lay primarily in the hands of the military airship pilot Hans Groß and the meteorologist Arthur Berson.
[3] In the following year, the chemist Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier established on behalf of the Académie française a program for scientific aviation, that was eventually not realized.
[4] The first balloon flight with the aim of making meteorological observations was undertaken on 30 November 1784 by the American medical doctor John Jeffries together with the professional balloonist Jean-Pierre Blanchard.
[5] Some of the first systematic investigations into the upper atmosphere was performed between 1862 and 1866 by the English meteorologist and important pioneer aerologist James Glaisher.
[6][7] As his instruments were not sufficiently protected from solar radiation, and as he placed them inside the basket, his temperature measurements were particularly high and affected by errors.
In the following years, most scientific balloon flights were made by French scientists such as Camille Flammarion, Gaston Tissandier and Wilfrid de Fonvielle.
[9] He profoundly restructured the institute, and hired three scientific commissioners on 1 April 1886, among whom was the physician and meteorologist Richard Aßmann from Magdeburg.
In 1887, Aßmann joined the Society for Promotion of Aeronautics (founded in 1881) together with other early Berlin meteorologists, where he got to know the engineer Hans Bartsch von Sigsfeld.
[10] The temperature profiles made by Glaisher had long stood as secure knowledge, although there had been isolated doubts about their validity, as they conflicted with theoretical predictions.
[11] In this speech, he sketched a program of cooperation between meteorology and aviation in the investigation of the upper atmosphere, that was well received by members of the Society.
Through donations from Society members (Rudolph Hertzog, Werner von Siemens, Otto Lilienthal), the tethered balloon Meteor was purchased.
Premierleutnant (senior lieutenant) Groß was intermittently released from his official duties and responsible for the construction of the balloons used for the main flights.
As observer, he flew with Otto Baschin (five flights) Richard Börnstein (three), Victor Kremser (two), Hans Bartsch von Sigsfeld (with whom he also flew once as pilot), and Edmund Köbke, as well as once each with Hermann Stade (1867–1932), Börnstein's assistant Becker, the physician Braehmer and Abbott Lawrence Rotch, the director of the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory in Boston.
It contained two valves of different sizes: the smaller was to allow the release of filling-gas during manoeuvres in flight, while the larger was to empty the balloon after landing.
Aviators breathed in oxygen through tubes from steel gas cylinders during high-altitude flights to avoid altitude sickness.
To make these measurements, the following instruments were generally used:[20] Furthermore, the ground facilities had a compass, a watch and a Moment-Apparat (camera) made by C. P. Goerz after a design by Ottomar Anschütz.
These were arranged so as to cover as wide a spectrum of weather situations at different times of day and periods of the year as possible, in order to get a complete picture of the physical relationships of the free atmosphere.
On 18 February 1897, Süring took rabbits as experimental animals in the balloon basket to research acute altitude sickness (balloonist's disease), and corresponded about this with the Austrian physiologist and flight physician Hermann von Schrötter.
[21][22] The first flight was made on 23 June 1888 with the balloon Herder, which belonged to the military balloonist and Society member Hans Bartsch von Sigsfeld.
[23] The Society purchased the Meteor, in an attempt to compensate for Sigsfeld's move to Munich and its accompanying loss of its only suitable balloon.
Berson started alone on this day with the Phönix from Leopoldshall (near Staßfurt), partly because there was a convenient supply of hydrogen there, and also because the greater distance to the sea allowed a longer flight with a southerly wind direction.
Kaiser Wilhelm II, who had attended several balloon ascents, again put up a sum of money for additional flights and for the publication of the results.
[30] The Berlin meteorologists regularly participated in simultaneous flights organized by the Commission, beginning with the first on 14 November 1896, with both manned and unmanned balloons.
After the first preliminary results of the main flights were published, which contained a criticism of Glaisher's measurement method, there was dissent from some specialists in the field.
The Berlin flights set quality standards for regular probing of the upper atmosphere with balloons and weather kites.
Through international simultaneous flights, it pioneered a synoptic view of the upper atmosphere, and the use of three-dimensional data for the improvement of weather forecasting.
Simultaneous measurements of temperature, pressure, and humidity could be combined with observations on horizontal and vertical wind movements and cloud formations and layering.
However, the stratosphere was not discovered during this project, as the manned flights did not penetrate into this region, and because Aßmann thought that the temperature measurements from unmanned balloons above 10,000 m were an error caused by incomplete shielding from solar radiation.
The third contained the summary account and scientific discussion of the observational data, divided by temperature, distribution of water vapor, could formations, wind speed and direction, solar radiation, and air electricity.
