The history of modern hot-air balloons began in France in 1783. Two brothers, Joseph Michel and Jacques Etienne Montgolfière, launched the first hot air balloon, in September 1783 with an odd trio of passengers – a sheep, a duck and a rooster. The king and his court turned to see the show, and they were not disappointed. The balloon rose to over 1,000 feet and then floated down safely returning to his three passengers on the ground.

But the two brothers who became the inventors of the modern globe certainly did not begin life as inventors. His father owned a paper mill, and made sure her two children receive a good education. Joseph went to a private school and later began a chemicals business before returning home to work at the mill with his father. Etienne studied as an architect, but also returned to the family business when his father retired.

In 1782, he became interested in understanding why smoke rose and if it can used to lift the man in the sky. Started experimenting, going from small balloons for the largest. When she raised farm animals in heaven, who had already successfully launched an unmanned balloon full size.

After a successful flight corral a trio of the brothers moved to human spaceflight. In November 1783, it launched the first manned balloon flight. Pilate de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes were pilots silk-and-paper balloons, and the two stayed aloft for about 25 minutes, climbing about 500 feet and traveling about 5 1 / 2 miles from its source in a park Paris.

The legend says that the pilots were champagne after landing at the local farmers to alleviate their fears of the suspicious vessel down from heaven, but the National Balloon Museum in Iowa history disputes this, saying that research shows that the balloon actually landed in a vineyard empty without witnesses.

The first flight in a hot air balloon was quickly followed by the first gas balloon flight. With just 10 days after the Montgolfier balloon carried two human passengers in the sky, the French physicist Jacques Charles Alexander launched the first manned gas balloon on December 1. He also began in Paris, but it lasted much longer, the balloon stayed aloft 2 1 / 2 hours and traveled 25 miles.

Balloon flight out of there quickly. Aeronaut Frenchman Jean Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries were the first to cross the English Channel in a hydrogen balloon. The crossing took two and a half hours, and nearly ended in disaster – the drivers had to pull most of their ballast overboard after unexpectedly lost the ball of gas and almost fell into the canal. Months later, Pilate de Rozier, one of the two drivers on the first manned flight Montgolfière, became the first person to die in a balloon accident while trying to cross the Channel.

Blanchard later flew the first hot air balloon in North America in 1793. But it was not until 1830 that Charles Ferson Durant became in the first American to pilot a hot air balloon in North America. It took off from New York's Castle Garden to drop leaflets containing a poem he had written about the joys of flight.

The sport never took off, however, until 1960, when advances in balloon technology led to new interest hot air balloon. Paul Yost, who became known as the father of modern hot air balloons, piloted the first flight of a balloon sporting a new allocation and new propane burner system he developed. Suddenly, the sport took off. In 1963, balloons sport has become popular enough that the first U.S. National Hot Air Balloon Championships were held in Michigan.

Today there are approximately 5,000 balloon pilots in the U.S. and a National Balloon Museum in Indiana.

Lisa Howard writes about the first hot air balloon and other topics at Squidoo.

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