Oblivious of their impending Revolution, Parisians in 1783 indulged a fashionable passion for ballooning. Indeed it was on this very day 215 years ago that the first untethered flight took place. Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes ascended from the grounds of the Chateau de la Muette and, having risen to 500ft, landed safely half-an-hour later near the Butte aux Cailles, several miles to the south of Paris. It was the climax of a hectic year, an annus mirabilis in the history of ballooning.
Two brothers, Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier, had started the craze. Their first public demonstration of the art was on June 5th, at Annonay. Their unmanned hot-air balloon was a crude affair, but the exploit captured the public imagination, and, indeed, the balloons themselves soon came to be called Montgolfieres .
By September they had taken matters a step further, and under a more distinguished patronage. On the 19th of that month, in 1783, they loaded the gondola of their latest craft called Martial with a sheep, a rooster and a duck. The frail edifice of paper and linen took off from Versailles in the presence of King Louis XVI and rose to 1,500 ft before crashing to earth a mile away. The rooster, we are told, was killed; the sheep survived to join Marie Antoinette's menagerie.
It now seemed time for man to fly. On October 21st de Rozier had tried out the Montgolfiers' balloon, but tethered in a captive mode. A "free flight" was seen as a foolhardy exercise, and the original plan was that for the first attempt the passengers should be two condemned criminals, persons in those days generally regarded as expendable. It was only with great difficulty that de Rozier and d'Arlandes succeeded in getting the king's permission to carry out the flight themselves, and they ascended into history on November 21st, 1783 - and survived.
The craze continued in the following years, and by January 1785 the English Channel had been crossed by Jean Pierre Blanchard. But it was to be another 30 years, after many unsuccessful attempts, before the Irish Sea was conquered. On July 22nd, 1817, William Sadler ascended from Portobello Barracks in Dublin, in a balloon 70ft in diameter, and after a trouble-free voyage of six hours he landed in a cornfield two miles from Holyhead on Anglesey. His was the only recorded successful landing after a crossing of the Irish Sea by air until the advent of the aeroplane a century later.