Timeline of aviation - 18th century

1783: First flight at Annonay.

1783: First manned voyage at Paris.

1783: First gas balloon flight.

1783: Sebastian Lenormand performs a parachute jump.

1785: First crossing of the Channel.

1794: First use in battle.

1797: First high-altitude parachute jump from a balloon.

18th century aviation

• 1700-1799
  • The kite is popular during the century.
• 1709
  • Father Bartolomeu de Gusmão designs a model hot air balloon and demonstrates it to King John V of Portugal.
• 1716
  • Well thought-out glider-project of the Swedish scholar Emanuel Swedenborg. Basis for his construction are bird flight and the glider kite.
• 1738
  • In his Hydrodynamica the Swiss scholar Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782) formulates the principle of the conservation of energy for gases (Bernoulli's principle), the relationship between pressure and velocity in a flow.
• 1746
  • English military engineer Benjamin Robins (1707-1751) invented a whirling arm centrifuge to determine drag.
• 1766
  • British chemist Henry Cavendish determines the specific weight of hydrogen gas.
• 1772
  • Abbé Desforges unsuccessfully tries to fly an apparatus with a basket and oars made of bird feathers.
• 1777
  • In St.Louis, the prisoner Dominikus Dufort jumps from a high building with a parachute garment and is rewarded with a spontaneous collection of money.
• 1781
  • Italian scientist Tiberiua Cavallo, then living in England, sends up soap bubbles filled with oxygen.
• 1783
  • June 5, unmanned flight of the Montgolfier brothers hot-air-balloon (Montgolfière) in Vivarais, France. The Montgolfiers demonstrate a hot air balloon in public, at Annonay.
  • August 27, flight of an unmanned experimental hydrogen-balloon in Paris (built by Professor Charles and the brothers Roberts). It flies 25 km (15 miles) from Paris to Gonesse and is destroyed by frightened peasants.
  • September 19, the Montgolfiers launch a sheep, duck, and rooster in a hot-air balloon in a demonstration for King Louis XVI of France. The balloon rises some 500 m (1,700 ft) and returns the animals unharmed to the ground.
  • October 15, Pilâtre de Rozier and Marquis d'Arlandes rise into the air in a Montgolfière tethered to the ground in Paris. de Rozier becomes the first human passenger in a hot-air balloon, rising 26 m (84 ft).
  • November 21, in a flight lasting 25 minutes, de Rozier and d'Arlandes take the first untethered ride in a Montgolfière in Paris, the first human passengers carried in free flight by a hot-air balloon.
  • December 1, Charles and his assistant Robert make the first flight in a hydrogen-filled balloon (Charliere). On his second flight, Charles reached an altitude of 2,700 m over Vivarais. They travel from Paris to Nesles, a distance of 43 km (27 miles).
  • Sebastian Lenormand does several parachute jumps from the tower of the observatory in Montpellier.
• 1784
  • September 19, the brothers Robert and Colin Hullin take a balloon ride over 186 km from Paris to Beuvry.
  • Jean-Pierre Blanchard fits a hand-powered propeller to a balloon, the first recorded means of propulsion carried aloft.
  • Pilâtre de Rozier and the chemist Proust rise with a Montgolfière up to 4,000 m.
  • Jean Baptiste Meusnier makes an oblong balloon to explore unknown areas, with an airscrew driven by muscle power.
• 1785
  • June 15, Pilâtre de Rozier and Pierre Jules Romain become the first known aeronautical fatalities when their balloon crashes during an attempt to cross the English Channel.
  • July 1, Jean-Pierre Blanchard and the American meteorologist John Jeffries cross the English Channel from Dover to Guînes in a balloon.
  • Richard Crosbie makes several unsuccessful attempts to cross the Irish Sea in a hydrogen-filled balloon.
• 1793
  • Jean-Pierre Blanchard makes the first balloon ascent in the United States
• 1794
  • April 2, establishment of the first airship company in the French Army who use a balloon named l'Entreprenant for reconnaissance of the Austrian forces at the Battle of Fleurus. Two companies of balloon observers are formed, but disband the following year.
• 1797
  • October 22, André-Jacques Garnerin jumps from a balloon from 3,200 feet over Parc Monceau in Paris in a 23-foot-diameter parachute made of white canvas with a basket attached. He was declared "official French aeronaut of the state".
• 1799
  • Englishman Sir George Cayley (1773-1857) sketched a glider with a rudder unit and an elevator unit. His manuscript is considered to be the starting point of the scientific research on heavier than air flying machines.

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