My fascination with hot air balloons dates back to childhood, and the first time I saw one in the movie The Wizard of Oz. I’m not sure if it was because of my youth or because the balloon belonged to the “Wizard of Oz,” but it seemed pretty magical to me that there existed balloons so big you could actually fly away in them. Of course, it’s science that makes them fly, not magic, and inventors have been taking these flights of fancy for hundreds of years.
The eighteenth century saw many advances in ballooning, among them pioneering flights by the Montgolfiers, two French brothers, including a public demonstration of their unmanned hot air balloon at Annonay, France in June 1783. This demonstration is captured in one of the collecting cards below (bottom row, second from left), along with other events in ballooning history from 1783 to 1883.