Ballooning > Interests > History

• The Early Years of Sport Ballooning - An affectionate look at hot-air sport balloons in the 1960s and 1970s. Focus is on differences among different manufacturers' products, and differences between early hot-air balloons and those available today. There's a lot of info here not available elsewhere on the web. Photos of obscure builders' balloons. Recommended.
  
   
• USAF Museum - Japanese Balloon Bombs in WWII - Japanese balloon bombs of WWII - USAF Museum display. How the Japanese use balloon bombs to reach the US coast.
  
   
• Don Piccard Balloons - Ballooning's senior statesman's page on a lifetime of flying both hot air and gas balloons. This is the man who popularized hot air ballooning, earned the first balloon license after WWII and continues to influence our sport.
  
   
• Flight Without Wings: Balloonists - History of ballooning concentrating on the development of the principles involved and details of early flights. Starts long before the Montgolfier brothers are born.
  
   
• Nazca Balloon Project - In 1974, Julian Nott and Jim Woodman built a balloon from native cotton and reed to prove the Inca's could have used balloons to design the giant drawings in the desert of Peru. Pictures from building and flying it.
  
   
• Dawn Patrol History - Dawn Patrol flights launch in the dark, and fly until sunrise, landing in daylight. Learn how it started in 1978, what it's like to fly a balloon in the dark, and where you can see a dawn patrol flight this year.
  
   
• A Brief History of Ballooning - A fun easy to read piece on how ballooning started and grew to what it is today, from Virgin Balloon.
  
   
• A Short History of Ballooning - Bristol University Hot Air Balloon Society outlines the origins of ballooning.
  
   
• Abbreviated history of ballooning - Balloonzone's concise time-line of ballooning's early history.
  
   
• Airtime Balloon Co. History of Ballooning - An engaging summary of the origins of ballooning, from the invention of the first hot air balloon to the beginning of the modern era.
  
   
• America's First Space Capsule - The Piccard Gondola was used to break high-altitude flight records in the 1930s. Pictures and the story.
  
   
• Ancient Chinese Technology - Miniature Hot Air Balloon - Chinese globe lanterns made of paper or eggs shells were being flown as miniature hot-air balloons as early as the second century.
  
   
• Auguste & Jean Piccard - Aeronautical Learning Library article on the lives of these high-altitude balloon pioneers who first designed high-altitude balloon capsules in the 1930s.
  
   
• Ballooning over Thebes (Egypt) - In the early 1980s, and again in 1996-1997, the Theban Mapping Project made extensive use of hot-air balloons to take aerial photographs of the monuments at Thebes. They were perfect for our purposes...
  
   
• Balloons Rest In Peace - A collection of old hot-air-balloons that are not in use anymore. They are kept in good condition by inflating and putting them up at least once a year. If you have a balloon that's out of use, get more info on donating it to the collection. Based in the Netherlands, site in English, Dutch, and French.
  
   
• Coupe Gordon Bennet Race Tragedy - A dozen articles chronicling the Belarus military shooting down the gas balloon flown by Alan Fraenckel and John Stuart-Jervis in the international Gordon Bennett Race despite the Belarus government granting the balloon entry into its airspace.
  
   
• Don Piccard - 50 Years - Don Piccard's list of firsts is impressive - and almost endless. So start's Peter Stekel's detailed story on an amazing balloonist in this Balloon Life article.
  
   
• Don Piccard - Balloonmeister - September 1998 - Short biography of Don Piccard's amazing life by Tom Hamilton, as published in Balloon Life magazine.
  
   
• Double Eagle II - National Air & Space Museum article on the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by balloon.
  
   
• Early Hot Air Ballooning in Australia - This covers the revival of HA Ballooning in Australia around 1960. Building, flying, crashes. Large section on flight theory and airships.