Books Full of Hot Air: Part III Armchair History

Post Date: March 6th, 2011

I’m going to make a confession. I hated history in school. The closest I ever came to came to being entralled with history was in college, I believe it may have been my sophomore year, when I read a thrilling book on a little-known period of Byzantine history. Even though I can’t recall the name of the book (it was not published widely, probably only about fifteen copies exist, as it was originally a doctoral dissertation), it fired up my curiousity enough to put my big toe into history a bit more. I ended up taking a pre-WWII German history class, and even though it was well-taught and fascinating, I eventually dropped-out.

So it may come as a surprise that my love of history is a rather new thing, suddenly inspired by ballooning, of all things. Now it seems that all roads lead to history and begin with the tethers of a hot air balloon. In fact, I’m almost on the verge of daring people to give me a topic that they believe I can’t relate to hot air ballooning. It’s a fantastic world, really, and has convinced me that the most fun way to learn about history, the most engaging way, is to explore it. Textbooks are oftentimes presumptuous and stuffy and seem to do all the work for you – leaving no room for any real investigation. And that’s what history is, and what these blogs are all about – investigation! Yes, Watson!

If you’re in the mood for reading more about ballooning history and make a little money investing on the side, you can take a trip to South Cerney, Gloucestershire in July and attend a book auction by Dominic Winter. Apparently there are some rare finds to be had including many volumes written in the 19th century. Apparently these rare finds are worth a pretty penny too. If for some reason you can’t make it to Britain, why you can start with a visit to your local library or just go wild with about $50 on Amazon. By all means, investigate and have fun doing so.

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Books Full of Hot Air: Part II For the Photographer

Post Date: March 5th, 2011

Ever since balloons and photography were married (see blogs from February 24th and 25th), folks have been snapping pictures of this beautiful little planet while suspended high above the ground in wicker baskets. There are some gorgeous photography books out there containing both pictures of hot air balloons and photos taken from hot air balloons. In fact, while that great coffee book that’s gathering dust in your living room may be about the Sarahan desert, chances are the photos were taken either from a hot air balloon or a helicopter (you’d definitely want the latter for photographing stampeding wildebeests or faster-than-a-Prius cheetahs).

While we don’t really take time to think about it, but most gorgeous aerial photography is neither done from an airplane, nor from a helicopter (although quite a bit is), but from a hot air balloon. All you need as proof of this is to Google “hot air balloon photography” to see what I mean. In fact, it’s a whole other industry that’s sprung out of ballooning. You can hire balloon photographers to take aerial pictures of just about anything and you can find a thousand peices of advice on how to become a really good wicker basket photographer. There are certain telephoto zoom lenses that are recommended, forums for discussion, and endless amateur photos to rifle through. One could spend hours taking it all in (yes, I’m speaking from personal experience).

Your next ride with Asheville Hot Air Balloon Rides can be your opportunity to test out the zoom capacity on your camera. It’s going to be spring soon in Asheville, and if you’re lucky you just might pass over a field of daffodils in bloom, or backyard gardens just getting underway. At the very least, you can take pictures of the moulding on the windows of the Biltmore Estate main house. Bring along your best digital camera and snap away – and don’t worry if you forget yours: Commander Brown has a camera set up every flight so you won’t miss a thing.

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Books Full of Hot Air – Part I For the Kids

Post Date: March 4th, 2011

While you won’t see a section devoted to hot air ballooning in your local library, you may be surprised to discover just how many books there are on the history, art, sport, and science of this great worldwide pastime. There are children’s books, books written in French, photography books, how-to books, history books, biographies, and tomes written about everything in between. 

I was most interested in children’s books on the subject, and began my search wondering if anyone had written about those famous farmyard animals that I wrote about in my blog about ten days ago: the rooster, the duck and the sheep. Of course someone had, and I admit feeling a little disappointed as I was beginning to daydream about writing my own book on the topic complete with little cartoons of the threesome going up in the balloon that belched black smoke. Anyway, not that I won’t write one someday, but in the meantime I thought I’d list a few of the notable children’s books on ballooning, just in case you, my dear readers, are interested in telling some fabulous stories to your kids at bedtime. Here are three in no particular order, with short descriptions. 

Hot Air: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Hot-Air Balloon Ride – written by Caldecott Honor-winning author Marjorie Priceman. The book I’ve mentioned above that burst my writing balloon, as it were.

The Mystery of the Hot Air Balloon – this is #47 in the Boxcar Children’s Mysteries where four friends try to solve the mystery of who’s trying to ruin a balloon rally.

Curious George and the Hot Air Balloon – George and the man with the great big yellow hat fly in a hot air balloon and see Mt. Rushmore.

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I Think We May Need a Bigger Sewing Machine – Part V In Conclusion

Post Date: March 3rd, 2011

I really meant for this series of blogs to be highly technical, yet once again, I see that I’ve been led into the alleyways of historic trivia and French drama. I apologize. If this series were to be compared to a double-needled stitch on a Singer 212 domestic industrial sewing machine, I think it would be quite crooked…

In conclusion, I think it’s safe to say that we can be thankful that there are 1) sewing machines, 2) hot air balloon manufacturers, 3) French tailors, 4) the American patent system, and 5) champagne (we’re always grateful for that in the ballooning world). If you’re really bent on sewing your own balloon, well let me know how it goes. I’m thinking of maybe starting off small and sewing one that’s about the size of a basketball. That seems (no, that wasn’t intentional) to be a reasonable size.

Speaking of hot air balloon manufacturers – a special thanks goes out to Cameron Balloons based out of the UK. They’re going to be celebrating their 40^th birthday on April 1^st, having gotten their start in 1971. They have since become the world’s largest balloon manufacturers and they certainly know what they’re doing. I’ll do a nice blog for them on their birthday, so I won’t go into more detail here on the company’s history, but let’s just say that they’re greatly responsible for our not having to agonize over sewing and folding French fells for our own envelopes in the dim light of our living room television sets.

 As a side note, Commander Addison Brown of Asheville Hot Air Balloon Rides would also like to express his gratitude for not having to sew his own balloons; he much prefers flying!

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I Think We May Need a Bigger Sewing Machine – Part IV Patent Wars

Post Date: March 2nd, 2011

Americans learn well from the French, or at least we like to think that we do. For years after Bartelemy’s near-demise at the hands of outraged French tailors, American inventors were skittish when it came to pursuing the invention of the sewing machine. Fearing that the widespread use of sewing machines would cause massive unemployment and public backlash, Walter Hunt gave up seeking a patent for his machine, which after all could only sew straight seams.

Finally, in 1846, Elias Howe received the first American patent for a sewing machine; Later, however, his patent ended up in court, as he tried to defend it against other inventors, namely Isaac Singer and Allen Wilson. Isaac Singer used a foot treadle for his up and down needle motion (with which those of us who have ever sewn are familiar with), while others, including Howe, used a hand crank method. All kinds of different approaches were tried and tested, and even though Singer is known world-wide now, Howe actually won the patent wars in 1854 – a full 24 years after poor Bartelemy’s factory was burnt to a crisp. So fully did Howe win, in fact, that Singer had to pay him patent royalties and Howe made millions of dollars in the mid-nineteenth century! I’m sure Sky Engineer Brown of Asheville Hot Air Balloon Rides would agree that an ounce of foresight is most desirable.

 There are many twists and possible turns to this story. One that I’m currently researching is whether the inventor of the first zig-zag stitch machine, Helen Blanchard from Maine, is related to Jean-Pierre Blanchard – Jean being the first hot air balloon pilot to ascend the skies of America in 1793. If anyone has any skills navigating the somewhat subterranean online world of genealogy forums, please let me know, as the link between these two would be really fun (well, for people like me, at least).

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I Think We May Need a Bigger Sewing Machine – Part III More Fire and Rioting in France

Post Date: March 1st, 2011

In order to sew your hot air balloon you’ll need a domestic industrial sewing machine. While sewing is possible by hand, after all, this is how folks did it back in the day, why would you really want to? Singer sewing machines are widely suggested for the DIY experience, and apparently those built in the 50s and 60s are recommended. These machines come with double needles and can sew fabric at a goodly clip for hours and upon hours – hence the ‘industrial’ part. They’re heavy, virtually indestructible and often for sale on Craigslist.

 So, (my favorite way of beginning paragraphs in this particular blog series, in case you haven’t noticed) you may be wondering, when were those poor people who had to hand sew hot air balloons first gifted with the invention of a sewing machine? The history, again, is much more bizarre than you might think. And again, it begins with the French. And riots. 

Many attempts were made at creating a machine that emulated hand-stitching during the first thirty years of the 19^th century. They all failed. Then along in 1830, Barthelemy Thimonnier, from France, invented one that finally worked. All hell broke loose. French tailors rioted and Bartelemy – a tailor himself – was nearly killed when they burnt down his factory. They feared unemployment. We’ve been loving and hating technology ever since. We’re not sure if some of these tailors sewed hot air balloons, but I have to imagine that some of them did. In fact, in my version of the story, one or two had even been present at the first launching of a hot air balloon in Paris in 1782 when they were in their youth. Maybe even one of them knew the tailor – or seamstress – who sewed the Montgolfier’s first manned balloon and thought to themselves, “That’s what I want to do when I grow up!” Maybe not. Maybe Barthelemy could have learned a lesson from history and introduced his invention to the public with lots of champagne on hand. (You can be sure that Commander Brown of Asheville Hot Air Balloon Rides would have served champagne!) If Bartelemy had, sewing would have been revolutionized a good 24 years earlier than it was. More on that in tomorrow’s blog.

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I Think We May Need a Bigger Sewing Machine – Part II

Post Date: February 28th, 2011

One website I visited in preparation for writing this blog refers to sewing hot air balloons as one of the great mysteries of life. Well, I suppose that depends on what one’s definition of ‘mystery’ is; however, I can tell you that it certainly is an art and one could probably devote an entire lifetime to the process. In fact, people do, and thankfully so, otherwise all of us balloonatics would be burning the midnight oil in our homes, our living rooms filled with miles of nylon. Our pets would be lost for days (“Fluffy, where are you??”) and our neighbors would surely wonder what we’re plotting.

The art of hot air balloon sewing begins with the French Fell seam. There are a lot of other names for this seam, but this was the original name and certainly the classiest. Yes, it comes from the French – again – but we shouldn’t be surprised now, as we’ve discovered most things ala hot air balloons are indeed French. So (no pun intended), what is so special about this seam? To keep hot air from leaking out. The French Fell is a folded, double-sewn seam that is durable and leak resistant. Two pieces of cut material (panels) are sewn together so that the cut edges are protected between the folds. The stitches – made with a double-needle sewing machine – pass through three layers in the fold, trapping the cut edges between. If you can’t visualize this (I would worry if you could), there are plenty of diagrams online.

 The techniques used for sewing these panels are complex and there are instructions on how to do it left-handed, right-handed, standing up, sitting down, whilst eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and so on. The ultimate gist is that it takes a long time and it takes practice. Just organizing which panels are going to be sewn together can be a complete mind-boggler, which is why computers are handy for making sure the patterning gets done correctly. After all, we wouldn’t want that one stray pink panel next to the orange one when it’s supposed to be next to the white one…or was it supposed to be next to the black one?

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I Think We May Need a Bigger Sewing Machine – Part I Extreme Quilting

Post Date: February 27th, 2011

The early days of ballooning were thrilling and fraught with figuring out how to stay aloft longer, how to land safely, navigate the varying currents of air, and simply what would work and what wouldn’t. However, not much emphasis and sympathy has been given to those who had to sew the envelopes for these balloons. In an earlier blog, I mentioned that taffeta, a kind of silk, was used almost exclusively for balloon envelopes, at least by those who could afford it. Although other fabrics were used, as well as paper, it was found that silk held up to the strains of heat and expansion better.

Still, someone had to sew these mammoth pieces of cloth together – by hand! Can you imagine hand-sewing panels of silk together, often lavishly embroidered, that stretched out would cover many hundreds of yards? This is extreme quilting! And who were these tailors of hot air balloons? Well, that information is not readily available, so I’ll have to get back with you. Fortunately, today, we have balloon manufacturers that do the job.

The first step in creating an envelope is design. This is the fun part. There are many sizes, and even for the standard light-bulb shaped balloon, there are uncountable subtleties in shape. Envelopes can differ in circumference and length, and still manage to be the same overall volume as another balloon. The second step is to determine what pattern is desired. Popular designs are often geometric, with many panels of different colors repeating in patterns. Bright colors are often preferred as they can readily be identified at a distance. Once a pilot or balloon owner picks out his or her favorite pattern, or creates their own pattern, with the colors they want, they send it end for building…and how is a balloon actually built? Stay tuned…

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Our Feathered and Furry Firsts

Post Date: February 26th, 2011

No, it’s not possible for you to bring along your pet on your next adventure with Asheville Hot Air Balloon Rides. We’re sorry. Not that we don’t respect the right of every animal to fly, especially those who are not naturally winged, but as a matter of safety and room, we have to ask that your pets stay at home. This being said, however, we completely respect the great strides that animals have made for us in the history of balloon flight. Let me explain.

In the 1780’s, when the Montgolfier brothers of France first experimented with hot air balloons, their first success was an unmanned, empty balloon. They used a bizarre and highly unsafe means of creating lift, by setting hay and other flammable naturally occurring substances on fire. For a time, in fact, people believed that what expanded the envelope (the large fabric part that inflates) was smoke – and the blacker the smoke, the better. It was a while before they figured out that it was really just heat. Anyway, I digress. So here the brothers are, burning lots of stuff to create the blackest, sootiest smoke they can, and voila! their balloon experiment literally takes off.

Next though, and we find this time and time again in history, there needed to be a way to experiment with this new contraption without risking or endangering the lives of human beings. In the 1940’s and 1950’s we sent up fruit flies (alas, they remain unnamed), followed by Baker, the monkey, then Laika, the first dog to be put into orbit. These brave animals that paved the way for us to explore space had predecessors: animals who went soared to not-so-tremendous heights because man was to chicken (pardon the pun) to do it first. These animals: a rooster, a duck, and a sheep, were the first animals to fly in the Montgolfier brothers’ balloon. With the burning of straw and horse manure filling their lungs, these farmyard heroes remained aloft for eight minutes and landed just fine, although no one I doubt, took the time to ask them how they felt about it!

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Art from Above – Part II

Post Date: February 25th, 2011

Aerial photography hasn’t always been as easy as pulling a digital camera from your pocket and pushing a button. Back in the 1850’s when Nadar first took a camera to the skies in France, photography hadn’t yet matured to the point where camera images could be ‘stored’ for later development using Collodion (wet) plates. Instead, picture development had to happen immediately, meaning that everything necessary to take and develop a photo-in other words, a portable darkroom-had to be packed into the balloon’s basket. Sadly, after all that hard work, Nadar’s photo taken in 1858 of houses in the village of Petit-Becetre, France, has since been lost. (If you have it, please notify the French government, as I’m sure they’d be most grateful to recoup it and might even possibly pay you a tidy sum for its return.)

 No, even though we have French balloons, French balloonists, and French aerial photographers, the oldest aerial photograph (that we humans haven’t misplaced) is of good ole Boston, USA from 1860, taken by American photographer James Wallace Black. James was not a balloonist, but after Nadar’s success in aerial photography, Wallace collaborated with balloonist Samuel King, and on October 13^th took this picture of Boston in King’s hot-air balloon, “Queen of the Air”. Wallace, besides being noted for this picture, was also known for his famous photographic portraits. The famous shots of Walt Whitman and abolitionist John Brown are his handiwork as well.

 After Wallace’s success, the U.S. used aerial photography in the Civil War. Those reconnaissance missions described in earlier blogs were assisted by pictures taken of enemy territory. Early use of aerial photography had other applications too, especially in cartography, as the earth’s geography could finally be seen from above for the first time, allowing for much greater accuracy.

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