Montgolfier, << mont GAHL fee uhr or mawn gawl FYAY, >> brothers were French papermakers who invented the hot-air balloon. Jacques Etienne Montgolfier (1745-1799) and Joseph Michel Montgolfier (1740-1810) experimented with large bags filled with hot gases produced by burning wool and moist straw.
The Montgolfier brothers were born in Annonay. They first launched small balloons in 1782 and demonstrated a larger balloon in June 1783. In September, they launched a balloon carrying a sheep, a duck, and a rooster as King Louis XVI looked on. The next month, a French scientist, Jean F. Pilatre de Rozier, ascended in a Montgolfier balloon anchored to the ground. On Nov. 21, 1783, he and a French nobleman, the Marquis d’Arlandes, made the first human free flight in history. They drifted over Paris for about 25 minutes in a Montgolfier balloon.
