Enterprise (balloon)

It was the second balloon built by Lowe at his Hoboken, N.J. facility and named with the express approval of his wife Leontine because of the money and time they put into creating it.

The Enterprise was built with Indian silk, lightweight cording, and Lowe's patent (recipe kept secret) varnish which could keep the balloon envelope gassed up for as long as two weeks.

[1] The Enterprise was one in a set of smaller balloons taken to Cincinnati in March 1861 for use as a pre-flight test for a proposed transatlantic flight planned to take place in June 1861.

Lowe had already made a successful test flight in his super-gigantic balloon, the City of New York (renamed Great Western), in June 1860.

At 4 a.m. on April 19, 1861, Lowe boarded the Enterprise with a container of hot coffee wrapped in a blanket, another of water, and a batch of freshly printed Cincinnati newspapers which would be proof of his flight should he succeed.

There he was taken under house arrest as a Yankee spy,[2] and it was a few days deliberating his fate until which time a local college professor could vouch for Lowe's work as a scientist.