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.
  
   
• 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.
  
   
• Explorer II - Launched on November 11, 1935, from the Stratobowl near Rapid City, South Dakota, Explorer II carried Albert Stevens, Orvil Anderson, and an assortment of instruments to a world record altitude of 72,395 feet.