Pneumatics
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Description: 

This image comes from a text called, Illustrations of Natural Philosophy, which depicts the many properties of air. The central images feature a rendering of all of the highest mountain ranges in the world and a tiny hot air balloon above them. The caption below the pictures lists the elevations of the mountains and the height of Mr. Green's balloon. The invention of hot air balloons allowed human beings to fly above the highest places on earth.

Copyright: 

Copyright 2009, Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Primary Works: 

Illustrations of Natural Philosophy

Accession Number: 

THORD T3349

Height (in centimeters): 

28

Width (in centimeters): 

23

Printing Context

Image appeared in a book of natural philosophy.

Associated Events

The fascination with ballooning had been triggered by the efforts of the Montgolfier brothers in France. In June 1783, they had launched the first ever flight, carrying a sheep, a cock, and a duck, in front of 60,000 spectators and the Royal Family. On October 15, 1783, they launched the first ever human flight, this time in front of 100, 000 spectators and the Royal family. Numerous flights soon followed, both in France, England, and elsewhere.

Associated Places

The Montgolfiers launched their first balloons at Varsailles; Vincento Lunardi ascended from London. By its nature, however, balloon flights soon proliferated across both countries, as well as much of Europe and America.

Associated Texts

Numerous books and pamphlets suggested means of steering balloons. A pamphlet entitled Thoughts on the Farther Improvement of Aerostation, or the Art of Travelling in the Atmosphere (1785), suggested that they should adopt “an oblong form, constructed in such a mannerthat it may be sharpened at one end, in order to divide the resisting fluid . . . while the tail steers its course” (12, 15). Another publication entitled The Air Balloon urged that it be designed “in the form of a fish” with wings “to be made of the opurest elastic steel ever wrought in this country, and the whole . . . to be to be worked and directed by a person who is going up in a basket attached to the machine” (24).

Subject

An illustration in a book of natural philosophy that demonstrates the many properties of air such as air pressure, floatation, hot air balloons. It also shows that the elevation achieved in a hot air balloon surpasses the highest mountains on earth.

Theme

This image from a book on natural philosophy focused primarily on scientific equipment associated with the study of air, but itrs inclusion of both an image of a balloon in the upper right-hand corner and, in the centre, a dramtic illustration highlighting the ability of balloon’s to reach higher heights than even the tallest mountains, an achievement that was widely hailed as something that would make groundbreaking research on the nature of air possible.

Significance

By their very nature, balloons coincided with well-known experiments on air being conducted by scientists such as Joseph Priestley and Henry Cavendish. Montgolfier cited Priestley’s Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air (1774) as an inspiration for his discovery of the balloon; Cavendish, whose discovery of the specific gravity of hydrogen helped to facilitate ballooning, supplied an aeronaut named John Jeffries with empty beakers to retrieve air samples. The October 1785 edition of Monthly Review insisted that “from the rapid progress which this infant art has already made, it may reasonably be hoped that the time is approaching, when aerostatic vehicles will be fitted out on purpose for philosophical discoveries, for ascertaining many of the general laws of nature, and exploring the productions of the unknown regions of the atmosphere.”

Function

This illustration, by its very nature, highlighted ballooning’s important role within the most advanced research on the nature of air in this period.

Bibliography

Baldwin, Thomas. Airopaida. London: J. Fletcher, 1786.


Burke, Edmund. “Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful,” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, Ed. Leitch, Vincent, B. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001.


Cavallo, Tiberius. The History and Practice of Aerostation. London : printed for the author, and sold by C. Dilly; P. Elmsly; and J. Stockdale, 1785.


Cosgrove, Denis. Apollo’s Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination. JHU Press, 2001


Cruikshank, George. George Cruikshank’s Table Book, Abbot Beckett, Editor. London: Punch Office, 1845.


De Bolla, Peter. The Education of the Eye: Painting, Landscape, and Architecture in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003.


Harley, J.B. The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.


Holmes, Richard. The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. UK: Harper Collins, 2008.


Illustrations of Natural Philosophy. London: Reynolds. 1850.


Keats, John. Complete Poems. Stillinger, Jack, Ed. Cambridge, MA and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982.


Keen, Paul. “The ‘Balloonomania’: Science and Spectacle in 1780s England,” Eighteenth-Century Studies - Volume 39, Number 4, Summer 2006, pp. 507- 535




Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. 2004-9. (http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/view/article/18434)


Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. 2004-9.


(http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/view/article/11379?docPos=15)


Stewart, Susan. On Longing. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993.


The Juvenile Library, Vol. 2. London, 1800-01. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale. University of Wisconsin - Madison. 12 May 2009 


The Juvenile Library, Vol. 3. London 1800-01. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale. University of Wisconsin - Madison. 12 May 2009 


The London Packet ; Or, New Lloyd’s Evening Post, Issue 2310. London, 1785.


The New Spectator with the Sage Opinions of John Bull, No. 1 (3 February 1784) - No. 25 (17 January 1786) London: T. Rickaby.


Wakefield, Priscilla. Mental improvement: or, the beauties and wonders of nature and art. In a series of instructive conversations. Dublin: 1800.


Wolf, Norbert. Romanticism. Koln: Tanshen, 2007.


The Busy Body; A Collection of Periodical Essays, No. 15 (3 February 1787) - No. 25. London: C. Stalker, 1787.


Long Title

Pneumatics

Featured in Exhibit: 

'Philosophical Playthings': The Spectacle of Air-Balloons

From the Collection: 

Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Artist Unknown

Image Date: 

10 December 1850

Publisher: 

James Reynolds

Style: