Some History

The discovery in 1782 that hot air rises was made by the brothers Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier, French paper industrialists. They made plans for constructing balloons, first with a volume of 1 m³, then 3 m³ and, eventually, 800 m³. On September 19^th 1783, they showed king Luis XVI their creation in Paris: for the first time, a sheep, a rooster and a duck would fly with the balloon. It was feared the animals would die due to lack of oxygen, but eight minutes after take-off the animals safely landed three kilometers farther.
Of course, after the first successes, plans were made for a manned flight. On November 21^st of the same year, Pilātre de Rozier and Marquis d'Arlandes ascended in a 2200 m³ balloon manufactured by the Montgolfier brothers. They reached an altitude of 1000m and traveled 10 kilometers in 25 minutes.

Just 10 days later, Professor Jacques Charles launched the first gas balloon. The balloon consisted of a silk envelope that was filled with hydrogen. Since hydrogen is lighter than air, the balloon rose.
The first Belgian balloonist was prince Charles de Ligne, who used a gas balloon a couple of months later than Professor Jacques Charles.

All of this took place some 120 years before the Wright brothers' first flight!

A true balloon-craze had started: just about everywhere balloons took off. Due to a decree by Austrian Emperor Jozef II that disallowed the use of hot air balloons for the fire risks the paper constituted, it is the gas balloon that made rapid progression.

During the war years it was increasingly difficult to obtain hydrogen, and eventually the gas balloons, too, dissapeared.

In the fifties of this century, Ed Yost used the principles of gas balloons for scientific purposes on the hot air balloon. In 1953 he made the first successful flight of a hot air balloon with a burner that uses gas (a roofingburner of a plumber). The military interest in Yost's success sparked years of research and on October 10^th 1960, the modern generation of hot air balloons sees the light of day.