Volume 30, Number 17 · November 10, 1983
Very Heaven
By J.H. Plumb
The Montgolfier Brothers and the Invention of Aviation, 1783-1784
by Charles Coulston Gillispie
Princeton University Press, 210 pp., $35.00
One day last summer, the Place de la Concorde was a riot of color as a cloud of hot-air balloons rose majestically and blew eastward across Paris to mark the bicentenary of the achievement of the Montgolfier brothers: the first men to construct a hot-air balloon, in whose invention the first manned flight was made. The balloons were so beautiful as they drifted over Paris that they appeared more a piece of living art than a scientific experiment. Balloons have always been a part of the theater of science from their invention, indeed more theater than science.
Review, 2319 words
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