First in America’s Skies
President George Washington watched aeronaut Jean Pierre Blanchard
make the first aerial voyage in the New World.
By C.V. Glines

A large crowd gathered outside the walls of the Walnut Street Prison that fronted on what is now Independence Square in Philadelphia at dawn on January 9, 1793. The occasion was not a hanging but a balloon launching, which, if successful, would be the first aerial voyage in the history of the new United States of America and the New World.

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Jean Pierre Blanchard, noted French aeronaut, had advertised in Dunlap’s American Daily Advertiser for several weeks that he would make a hydrogen-filled gas balloon ascension on that day “at 10 in the morning precisely, weather permitting.” He had sold tickets at $5 each, and when not enough seats were reserved, Blanchard offered $2 seats in a special section behind the others. The tickets would admit the bearers inside the prison yard to view his departure. The excitement he generated was so great that almost the entire population of the capital city had turned out, in addition to a large number of visitors from the surrounding countryside.

A number of people wanted to go with him, but Blanchard was not about to share this “first” with anyone. He also discouraged those who wanted to follow him on horseback. In a notice in the Federal Gazette, he noted, “If the day is calm, there will be full time to reach the prison court…as…I will ascend perpendicularly; but if the wind blows, permit me, gentlemen, to advise you not to attempt to keep up with me, especially in a country so intersected with rivers, and so covered with woods.”

Two field artillery pieces positioned at Potter’s Field had been firing every quarter hour since 6 that morning, to remind the citizens of the great event. A brass band played soul-stirring martial music inside the prison yard as the famous Frenchman busied himself around the slowly expanding, varnished yellow silk bag. Dressed in bright-blue knee breeches, matching waistcoat and a hat with white feathers, the short, slender aeronaut looked like a Shakespearean actor readying himself for his role in a great drama.

The handsome, flamboyant Frenchman was confident that he was going to have his name inscribed in the history books of this new nation, just as he had done in Europe. The name Blanchard had completely dominated the aeronautical scene in the decade after Pilatre de Rozier’s epic untethered free flight in a hot-air balloon on November 21, 1783.

This was to be Blanchard’s 45th ascension. He had come to Philadelphia with a well-earned reputation in Europe. With Dr. John Jeffries, an American, he had sailed his balloon across the English Channel from England to France on January 7, 1785, making the pair the world’s first international air travelers.

The future aeronaut was born at Petit Andelys on July 4, 1750. He demonstrated early that he had an inventive mind. At age 12, he invented a rat trap which, when sprung, would cause a pistol to go off, assuring a rodent’s prompt demise. Four years later, he constructed a velocipede that he propelled from Petit Andelys to Rouen. Later, as a professional engineer, he designed a hydraulic pump system that raised water 400 feet from the Seine River to the Château Gaillard.

The young genius became intrigued with the flight of birds in 1781 and constructed an ornithopter with large wings that were flapped by the pilot, using hand and foot levers. Of course, the machine didn’t work. But when the Montgolfier brothers proved on June 5, 1783, that balloon flight was possible, the eager Blanchard turned his attention to this more sensible and attainable means of flight.

Blanchard built his first balloon a few weeks after the Montgolfier success and made his initial flight on March 2, 1784. From that time on he was a confirmed “balloonatic” and traveled all over Europe giving demonstration flights. He was the first to make ascensions in Germany, Poland, the Netherlands and Austria, and he wanted to be first to sail the New World’s skies as well. So it was that Blanchard was in the new nation’s capital city that wintry day after 44 successful ascensions.

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