Otto Lilienthal, the brutal fall of a strange bird

HASBefore planes, there were balloons. Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, a renowned and experienced balloonist, knows hot air balloons well, since he took part in the first manned flight of this kind of machine, on November 21, 1783. And it is also in a hot air balloon that he flies the altitude record (3,000 m), the distance record (52 km) and the speed record (over 68 km/h on average). It must be said all the same that at that time, the competitors who were reckless enough to hang their lives on a ball of hot air remained quite few.

But when the plan to cross the English Channel germinated in his mind, Pilâtre de Rozier understood that hot air would not be enough. He therefore turns to hydrogen, which provides a much higher lift, and which we are beginning to know how to produce in…