The decade between 1783 and 1793 witnessed the unprecedented balloon craze which swept Europe and reached across the Atlantic. The aftermath of Mongolfiers’ invention has grown to become a veritable European mania, a consumer fashion reported by newspapers as well as a tool of search for technological applications and improvement. Tethered and unmanned flights, followed by ascents with animals on board, gave way to first aeronauts who, like Pilastre and d’Arlandes, the pioneers, captured the imagination of the multitudes watching from below. The first flights stimulated an intense debate — particularly in France — about the potential use of the new invention as well as numerous attempts to correct the obvious handicap: inability to guide the balloon, and its dependence on the forces of nature, namely the winds, which proved
a lethal danger to many aeronauts (like Pilastre). Ballooning created new airborne heroes, both fame and career seekers, like Lunardi and Blanchard, and aristocrats, who did it for fun (like Potocki or Vernon).The study is informed by a quarter of a century of research centered on the debate of how to assess the first vertical human ascent: as a commercially based show-business — seemed to have been a perception dominant in Britain (and elsewhere), or as rationally-based achievement of Enlightenment’s mind, prevalent among the French, who followed the Mongolfiers’ initial success. Press reports in British newspapers about Lunardi’s achievements reflect the ambiguity surrounding the aerial experiments: on the one hand fascination with technology and human bravery, on the other a commercially minded bias against a foreigner (Italian) ready to pursue a career an English gentleman was likely to sponsor, but not necessarily to follow. This line of analysis, first proposed by Gillispie is applied to the ballooning experience in late XVIIIth century Poland, a country where the “mania” caught on quite early. It inserts the Polish balloon flights into the European (and American) contexts. While the Warsaw flights of Blanchard — a man who made a living out of flying — with Jan Potocki, a nobleman ready to experience new challenges were supported by the king and gained aristocratic support, relevant to the “English” model which placed emphasis on commercial and public show dimensions, the Kraków academics who were in the forefront of scientific debate on the merits and potential of flying along the French lines of “serious” research failed to generate wider interest and financial support for their (unmanned) experiments.
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Język Polski
English