Inventions & Discoveries · Transport and navigation
Hot air balloon
A hot air balloon is a lighter-than-air aircraft whose envelope holds heated air, with a basket or gondola for passengers and a source of heat hung beneath it. The French brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier developed one at Annonay in Ardèche and flew it unmanned in public in September 1783. On 21 November 1783 Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes made the first untethered manned flight, in Paris, in a Montgolfier balloon. The French used a balloon for observation at the battle of Fleurus in 1794, and Ed Yost and Jim Winker developed modern balloons with an onboard heat source from the 1950s.
On the inventions tree
- First known
- 1783
- Where
- Annonay, Ardèche, France
- Credited to
- Joseph-Michel Montgolfier · Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier
NoteSky lanterns, used for military signals by Zhuge Liang in the Three Kingdoms era, were a precursor; in 1709 Bartolomeu de Gusmão showed an unmanned demonstration of his Passarola to John V of Portugal at the Casa da Índia.
See also
Cite this entry
- APA
- The Epoch Institute. (2026). Hot air balloon. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/hot-air-balloon
- MLA
- “Hot air balloon.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/hot-air-balloon. Accessed .
- Chicago
- The Epoch Institute. “Hot air balloon.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/hot-air-balloon.
- Harvard
- The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Hot air balloon’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/hot-air-balloon (Accessed: ).
Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻