{"id":496,"date":"2011-07-04T09:13:49","date_gmt":"2011-07-04T07:13:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/balloon.hu\/new\/?p=496"},"modified":"2017-07-04T08:11:54","modified_gmt":"2017-07-04T06:11:54","slug":"258th-birthday-of-jean-pierre-blanchard-who-made-the-first-balloon-flight-over-the-english-channel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/balloon.hu\/new\/2011\/07\/04\/258th-birthday-of-jean-pierre-blanchard-who-made-the-first-balloon-flight-over-the-english-channel\/","title":{"rendered":"258th birthday of Jean-Pierre Blanchard who made the first balloon flight over the English Channel"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"137117dde994ef920366dbf34e4e7cff\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\r\ngoogle_ad_client = \"ca-pub-2865779868887008\";\r\n\/* Android box *\/\r\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"1345074415\";\r\ngoogle_ad_width = 336;\r\ngoogle_ad_height = 280;\r\n\/\/-->\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\r\nsrc=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"width: 210px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Jean_Pierre_Blanchard\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/3\/35\/Jean_Pierre_Blanchard.jpg\/200px-Jean_Pierre_Blanchard.jpg\" alt=\"Jean Pierre Blanchard\" width=\"200\" height=\"226\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jean-Pierre Blanchard (1753 &#8211; 1809)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Blanchard made his first successful balloon flight in\u00a0Paris on 2 March 1784, in a\u00a0hydrogen gas balloon launched from the\u00a0Champ de Mars.<\/p>\n<p>Blanchard moved to London in August 1784, where he took part in a flight on 16 October 1784 with John Sheldon (anatomist), just a few weeks after the first flight in Britain (and the first outside France), when Italian\u00a0Vincenzo Lunardi flew from\u00a0Moorfields to\u00a0Ware on 15 September 1784. Blanchard&#8217;s propulsion mechanisms &#8211; flapping wings and a windmill &#8211; again proved ineffective, but the balloon flew some 115\u00a0km from the military academy in\u00a0Chelsea, landing in\u00a0Sunbury and then taking off again to end in\u00a0Romsey. Blanchard took a second flight on 30 November 1784, taking off with an American, Dr\u00a0John Jeffries, from\u00a0Rhedarium Garden west of\u00a0Grosvenor Square in\u00a0London to\u00a0Ingress in\u00a0Kent.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright\" title=\"the first balloon flight over the English Channel\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/3\/33\/Early_flight_02562u_%287%29.jpg\/220px-Early_flight_02562u_%287%29.jpg\" alt=\"the first balloon flight over the English Channel\" width=\"220\" height=\"322\" \/>A third flight, again with Jeffries, was the first flight over the\u00a0English Channel, taking about 2\u00bd hours to travel from England to France on 7 January 1785,\u00a0flying from\u00a0Dover Castle to\u00a0Gu\u00eenes. Blanchard was awarded a substantial pension by Louis XVI.<\/p><!--CusAds0-->\n<p>Blanchard toured Europe, demonstrating his balloons. Blanchard holds the record of first balloon flights in\u00a0Belgium,\u00a0Germany, the\u00a0Netherlands, and\u00a0Poland. Among the events that included demonstrations of his abilities as a balloonist was the coronation of Holy Roman Emperor\u00a0Leopold II as king of\u00a0Bohemia in\u00a0Prague in September 1791.<\/p>\n<p>Following the invention of the modern\u00a0parachute in 1783 by\u00a0S\u00e9bastien Lenormand in\u00a0France, in 1785 Jean-Pierre Blanchard demonstrated it as a means of safely disembarking from a\u00a0hot air balloon. While Blanchard&#8217;s first parachute demonstrations were conducted with a dog as the passenger, he later had the opportunity to try it himself when in 1793 his hot air balloon ruptured and he used a parachute to escape. Subsequent development of the parachute focused on it becoming more compact. While the early parachutes were made of\u00a0linen stretched over a wooden frame, in the late 1790s, Blanchard began making parachutes from folded\u00a0silk, taking advantage of silk&#8217;s strength and light\u00a0weight.<\/p>\n<p>On 10 January 1793, Blanchard conducted the first balloon flight in\u00a0North America, ascending from\u00a0Philadelphia,\u00a0Pennsylvania and landing in\u00a0Deptford,\u00a0Gloucester County,\u00a0New Jersey. One of the flight&#8217;s witnesses that day was President\u00a0George Washington, and the future presidents\u00a0John Adams,\u00a0Thomas Jefferson,\u00a0James Madison, and\u00a0James Monroe. Blanchard left the United States in 1797.<\/p>\n<p>He married Marie Madeleine-Sophie Armant (better known as\u00a0Sophie Blanchard) in 1804. In 1809, Blanchard had a\u00a0heart attack while in his balloon at the\u00a0Hague. He fell from his balloon and died some weeks later from his severe injuries<\/p>\n<!--CusAds0-->\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Blanchard made his first successful balloon flight in\u00a0Paris on 2 March 1784, in a\u00a0hydrogen gas balloon launched from the\u00a0Champ de Mars. Blanchard moved to London in August 1784, where he took part in a flight on 16 October 1784 with John Sheldon (anatomist), just a few weeks after the first flight in Britain (and the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12,15,20,24,25],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/balloon.hu\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/balloon.hu\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/balloon.hu\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balloon.hu\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balloon.hu\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/balloon.hu\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2368,"href":"https:\/\/balloon.hu\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions\/2368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/balloon.hu\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balloon.hu\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balloon.hu\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}