Lighter than Air

In vintage prints, hot air balloons bob cheerfully in the sky like diaphanous Fabergé eggs, silken spheroids levitating as they puff up with gas from a primitive, sputtering burner below. Leaning over the sides of wicker baskets that resemble improbable old-fashioned cradles, impeccably attired gentlemen look down to see upturned faces, aghast in terror as if sighting UFOs. This was, briefly, the Golden Age of lighter-than-air flight, whose fate was sealed by the heavier-than-air counterparts to those early contraptions – first, airplanes and, now, jets that embroider our skies with no-nonsense contrails. Two and a half centuries later, ballooning has lost none of its allure, its esthetic of carefree lightness. Donald Campbell recalls the effervescent years when humankind first floated free of Earth, the influence that glamorous Montgolfiers had on early merchandising, and the triumphs and catastrophes of those magnificent men in their floating machines.