“Balloon Madness”: Politics,Public Entertainment,the Transatlantic Science of Flight,and Late Eighteenth-Century America

Air balloon, broadside (New York, 10 June 1789). Joseph Deeker, also known as Joseph Decker, remains a rather mysterious figure, but the broad contours of his career can be traced through the press, beginning with the assistance he lent to Jean-Pierre Blanchard in crossing the Channel by balloon and his first attempts at an ascension in England, through to his death by drowning while returning home in 1790. See “London, January 11”, Maryland journal, 29 March 1785; [ Deeker Joseph , The royal balloon (Norwich, 1785); “Extract of a letter from Norwich”, Maryland journal, 13 August 1785; [ Deeker Joseph ], “Air balloon”, Daily advertiser, 16 June 1789; “Mr Deeker's balloon”, Daily advertiser, 8 August 1789; “New-York, September 24”, Connecticut journal, 30 September 1789; “New-York, February 18”, New-York packet, 18 February 1790.

“To the air-balloon maker”, Freeman's journal, 29 July 1789.

“Baltimore, June 22”, Salem gazette, 20 July 1784.

Williams Jonathan Jr , Letter to Benjamin Franklin, 4 May 1785, http://www.franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedVolumes.jsp.

The carrier of the American Herald's congratulations to his customers, presenting the following balloon wish! (Boston, 1 January 1785).

See Schaffer Simon , “Natural philosophy and public spectacle in the eighteenth century”, History of science, xxi (1983), 1–43; Golinski Jan , Science as public culture: Chemistry and enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820 (New York, 1992); Stewart Larry , The rise of public science: Rhetoric, technology, and natural philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660–1750 (New York, 1992); Sutton Geoffrey V. , Science for a polite society: Gender, culture, and the demonstration of enlightenment (Boulder, CO, 1995); Delbourgo James , A most amazing scene of wonders: Electricity and enlightenment in early America (Cambridge, MA, 2006); and Lynn Michael R. , Popular science and public opinion in eighteenth-century France (New York, 2006).

Golinski , Science as public culture (ref. 6), 8.

Appleby Joyce , Capitalism and a new social order: The Republican vision of the 1790s (New York, 1984); Wood Gordon S. , The radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1992); Grasso Christopher , A speaking aristocracy: Transforming public discourse in eighteenth-century Connecticut (Chapel Hill, NC, 1999).

Lynn , Popular science and public opinion in eighteenth-century France (ref. 6), 136, 126.

Hallion Richard P. , Taking flight: Inventing the aerial age from Antiquity through the First World War (New York, 2003), 58.

Persons Stow , “The cyclical view of history in eighteenth century America”, American quarterly, vi (1954), 147–63; Howe John R. , The changing political thought of John Adams (Princeton, 1966); McCoy Drew R. , The elusive republic: Political economy in Jeffersonian America (Chapel Hill, NC, 1980), 13–47; Appleby Joyce , Liberalism and Republicanism in the historical imagination (Cambridge, MA, 1992).

Miller Samuel , A brief retrospect of the eighteenth century (New York, 1803), i, 6.

Emerson Ralph Waldo , “Nature”, in Essays and lectures, ed. by Porte Joel (New York, 1983), 554.

Emerson Ralph Waldo , “The transcendentalist”, in Essays and lectures (ref. 13), 194.

Ibid.; de Tocqueville Alexis , Democracy in America, transl. by Reeve Henry , ed. by Bowen Francis (Cambridge, 1864), ii, 91.

Stewart , The rise of public science (ref. 6), p. xxvii.

Benedict Barbara , Curiosity: A cultural history of early modern inquiry (Chicago, 2001), 205.

Wood , The radicalism of the American Revolution (ref. 8), 362.

[ Timothy Ann ], The travels of fancy: Being a political, historical, and moral account of her adventures during the late war (New Brunswick, NJ, 1784), 24.

Irving Washington , A history of New York , ed. by Black Michael L. Black Nancy L. (Boston, 1984), 148; Irving Washington , A history of New York, in History, tales, sketches, ed. by Tuttleton James W. (New York, 1983), 363–729, p. 397.

For representative examples dealing with the Enlightenment era see Shapin Steven , “Pump and circumstance: Robert Boyle's literary technology”, Social studies of science, xiv (1984), 481–520; Cantor Geoffrey , “The rhetoric of experiment”, in The uses of experiment: Studies in the natural sciences, ed. by Gooding David Pinch Trevor Schaffer Simon (Cambridge, 1989), 159–80; Bazerman Charles , “How natural philosophers can cooperate: The literary technology of coordinated investigation in Joseph Priestley's History and present state of electricity (1767)”, in Textual dynamics of the professions: Historical and contemporary studies of writing in professional communities, ed. by Bazerman Charles Paradis James G. (Madison, 1991), 13–44.

Cantor , “The rhetoric of experiment” (ref. 21), 161.

Golinski , Science as public culture (ref. 6), 4.

Delbourgo , A most amazing scene of wonders (ref. 6), 6, 7. The lack of detailed attention paid to the transatlantic currents and public dimensions of natural philosophy by earlier historians of American science is evident in Brooke Hindle's discussion of ballooning in his seminal survey of science in the colonies, where — After insisting that “America was not able to keep abreast of all the scientific advances made in Europe” — He simply dismisses aerostation as one of a number of “scientific fads” popular in the late eighteenth century. See Hindle , The pursuit of science in Revolutionary America, 1735–1789 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1956), 339. Happily there are signs of a revival of interest in the scientific dimension of the American Enlightenment, though as yet these works largely concentrate on natural history. See, for example, the essays collected in Empire's nature: Mark Catesby's New World vision, ed. by Meyers Amy Pritchard Margaret Beck (Chapel Hill, NC, 1998); Parish Susan Scott , American curiosity: Cultures of natural history in the colonial British Atlantic world (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006); Gronim Sara Stidstone , Everyday nature: Knowledge of the natural world in colonial New York (New Brunswick, NJ, 2007).

For a detailed account of how the Montgolfiers made their breakthrough, and its initial impact, see Gillespie Charles Coulston , The Montgolfier brothers and the invention of aviation, 1783–1784 (Princeton, 1983).

The experience of early American witnesses of ballooning in France, and the initial flow of aerostatic information across the Atlantic, is described in Crouch Tom D. , The eagle aloft: Two centuries of the balloon in America (Washington, DC, 1983), 13–41. The process of knowledge transferral described in the American press a few months after the first manned flight in Paris seems to have been typical. “Extract of a letter”, Independent gazette, 20 March 1784, notes that: “A gentleman in Boston, a few weeks ago, received from his friend in France, who is a native of Boston, a model of an air balloon, which, we are told, is exceeding curious, and gives the beholder a just idea of the construction of this new invented machine”.

Hopkinson Francis , Letter to Benjamin Franklin, 24 May 1784, in The life and works of Francis Hopkinson, ed. by Everett George (Chicago, 1926), 338. The initial reception of ballooning in America and Foulke's involvement in it is discussed in Pomerantz Sidney I. , “George Washington and the inception of aeronautics in the young Republic”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, xcviii (1954), 1954–8.

For a detailed sketch of Carnes's career see Crouch , The eagle aloft (ref. 26), 60–70.

“Foreign intelligence”, New-Jersey gazette, 22 November 1784; “Foreign advices”, New-York packet, 22 February 1785.

“Philadelphia, April 6”, Massachusetts Mercury, 16 April 1793.

For useful accounts of how the vogue for ballooning manifested itself in Europe see Gillespie Richard , “Ballooning in France and Britain, 1783–1786: Aerostation and adventurism”, Isis, lxxv (1984), 249–68; Alexander John T. , “Aeromania, ‘fire-balloons,’ and Catherine the Great's ban of 1784”, The historian, lviii (1996), 1996–516; Brown Barbara Traxler , “French scientific innovation in late eighteenth century Dublin: The hydrogen balloon experiments of Richard Crosbie (1783–1785)”, in The French enlightenment and eighteenth-century Ireland, ed. by Gargett Graham Sheridan Geraldine (London, 1999), 107–26; Keen Paul , “The ‘balloonomania’: Science and spectacle in 1780s England”, Eighteenth-century studies, xxxix (2006), 2006–35.

“London”, Providence gazette, 3 September 1785; “Extract of a letter from London”, South-Carolina weekly gazette, 5 February 1785.

“Boston, March 28”, New-York gazetteer, 1 April 1785.

An account of Count D'Artois and his friend's passage to the moon, in a flying machine, called an air balloon (Litchfield, CN, 1785), 1. Such fake stories have a long afterlife in American culture. See, for example, Lynda Walsh's discussion of the excitement caused by Edgar Allan Poe's “The unparalleled adventure of one Hans Pfall” (1835) and “The balloon hoax” (1844) in Sins against science: The scientific media hoaxes of Poe, Twain, and others (New York, 2006), 60–97.

“London, October 22”, Pennsylvania packet, 20 March 1784.

“Amérique”, Journal de Paris, 13 May 1784. For more background on the Journal de Paris hoax and its subsequent influence see Hastings George E. , “Notes on the beginnings of aeronautics in America”, The American historical review, xxv (1919), 68–72.

For a detailed account of Blanchard's early life and career see Roult L. T. C. , The balloonists: The history of the first aeronauts (Gloucestershire, 2006), 82–90.

Blanchard Jean-Pierre , “A description of a machine, proper to be navigated through the air”, Massachusetts centinel, 12 May 1784.

“For the Federal Gazette”, Federal gazette, 17 December 1792.

“Aerostatism”, New-York diary, 17 January 1793.

The forty-fifth aerial flight of the universally celebrated Mr. Blanchard, at Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1793), 7.

Quoted in Frey Carroll , The first air voyage in America: The times, the place, and the people of the Blanchard balloon voyage of January 9, 1793 (Philadelphia, 1943), 24.

Blanchard Jean-Pierre , “Plan of the voyage”, in The principles, history, and use of air-balloons: Also, a prospectus of Messrs Blanchard and Baker's intended aerial voyage from the city of New York (New York, 1796), 44.

The initial influence of these works in America can be traced through Smith Edgar F. , Chemistry in America: Chapters from the history of the science in the United States (New York, 1914), 1–146; Duveen D. I. Klickstein H. S. , “The introduction of Antoine Lavoisier's chemical nomenclature into America”, Isis, xlv (1954), 1954–92; Siegfried Robert , “An attempt in the United States to resolve the differences between the oxygen and the phlogiston theories”, in Early American science, ed. by Hindle Brooke (New York, 1976), 151–60; Conlin Michael , “Joseph Priestley's American defence of phlogiston reconsidered”, Ambix, xliii (1996), 1996–45.

“For the London Magazine”, New-Haven gazette, 29 July 1784.

Blanchard Jean-Pierre , “Balloon”, Independent gazetteer, 9 April 1794.

Jeffries John , A narrative of the two aerial voyages of Doctor Jeffries with Mons. Blanchard (London, 1786), 13.

Golinski Jan , British weather and the climate of enlightenment (Chicago, 2007), 5.

See Schaffer Simon , “Measuring virtue: Eudiometry, enlightenment and pneumatic medicine”, in The medical enlightenment of the eighteenth century, ed. by Cunningham Andrew French Roger (Cambridge, 1990), 281–318.

The most detailed study of this controversy (and those that followed) is still to be found in Antonello Gerbi's The dispute of the New World: The history of a polemic, 1750–1900, transl. by Moyle Jeremy (Pittsburgh, 1973), but insightful recent contextualizations can be found in Golinski , British weather (ref. 48), 170–202, and Bewell Alan , “Jefferson's thermometer: Colonial biogeographical constructions of the climate of America”, in Romantic science: The literary forms of natural history (New York, 2003), 111–38.

Jefferson Thomas , Notes on the State of Virginia , in Writings, ed. by Peterson Merrill D. (New York, 1984), 171.

Jefferson Thomas , Letter to Philip Turpin, 28 April 1784, in Writings (ref. 51), 796.

“Preface”, Encyclopedia; or, A dictionary of arts, sciences, and miscellaneous literature (Philadelphia, 1798), i, p. iii; “Aerostation”, Encyclopedia, i, 205.

Mercier Louis Sebastien , The night cap (Philadelphia, 1788), 152, 154.

“London, September 22”, Salem gazette, 27 November 1783.

“Preface”, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, i (1769–71), p. i.

Miller , A brief retrospect (ref. 12), i, 47.

Ibid.

Mercier , The night cap (ref. 54), ii, 151.

Jefferson , Letter to Turpin, in Writings (ref. 51), 796.

“London, September 22”, Salem gazette, 27 November 1783.

“For the London Magazine”, New-Haven gazette, 29 July 1784.

“Reflections on balloons”, National gazette, 19 January 1793.

Nicholson William , An introduction to natural philosophy (Philadelphia, 1788), ii, 336.

“Following extraordinary advertisement”, Charleston evening gazette, 28 June 1786.

“Philadelphia, 19 December 1792”, Federal gazette, 19 December 1792.

“Aerostation”, Providence gazette, 12 January 1793.

Daggett David , Sun-beams may be extracted from cucumbers, but the process is tedious (New Haven, 1799), 7.

“London, Sept. 24”, Independent journal, 13 November 1784.

Hopkinson Francis , Letter to Benjamin Franklin, 24 May 1784, in Life and works (ref. 27), 338.

“Aerostation”, Encyclopedia, i, 207.

“Baltimore, June 22”, Salem gazette, 20 July 1784.

These figures are drawn from Miller Richard G. , “The federal city, 1783–1800”, in Philadelphia: A 300 year history, ed. by Weigley Russell (Philadelphia, 1982), 172; Leary Lewis , “Phaeton in Philadelphia: Jean-Pierre Blanchard and the first balloon ascension in America, 1793”, Pennsylvania magazine of history and biography, lxvii (1943), 1943–60, p. 54; Rigal Laura , The American manufactory: Art, labor, and the world of things in the early Republic (Princeton, 1998), 24.

“Philadelphia”, Federal gazette, 9 January 1793.

“Philadelphia, June 7”, Daily advertiser, 10 June 1793. Blanchard is often credited with inventing (or at least perfecting) the parachute. For a more detailed account of his early experiments with this piece of technology see “Mr Blanchard”, Independent gazetteer, 8 June 1793.

“An explanation of the plate”, in Weatherwise's town and country almanack, for the year of Our Lord, 1785 (Boston, 1784), n.p.

“Further particulars respecting M. Pilatre de Rozier”, Pennsylvania packet, 15 September 1785.

“For the National Gazette”, National gazette, 17 July 1793. Importantly, the press often emphasized that the risks of frustrating the fickle public were almost as great as the risks of ballooning itself. “Extract of a letter from Gibraltar”, South-Carolina weekly gazette, 30 July 1785, for example, notes that: “A person who offers to go up in a balloon for the entertainment of the public, has a double chance of meeting with death. If he does not go up at the time appointed, he must fly to avoid being knocked on the head by the mob. And if he does go up he has the one chance of succeeding to balance all the dangers of the voyage.” For a more detailed account of the socio-cultural significance of public disorder in eighteenth century America see the essays collected in Riot and revelry in early America, ed. by Dennis Matthew Newman Simon P. Pencak William (Philadelphia, 2002).

“Philadelphia, January 23”, National gazette, 23 January 1793. Interestingly, although this mode of treating Blanchard's exploits as farce became more persistent in the mid-1790s it had some prehistory. He had been painted in an equally ridiculous light almost a decade earlier, for example, when an article in the Rhode Island press described his being forced to lighten his craft by throwing everything overboard, causing him to descend “without any clothes on but his breeches and stockings”. See “London, January 8”, Newport Mercury, 23 April 1785.

“Theatre”, Gazette of the United States, 28 December 1793.

“From the Farmer's Weekly Museum”, Otsego herald, 8 September 1796. For a more detailed discussion of the forms of popular entertainment with which ballooning was often compared see Sellers Charles Coleman , Mr. Peale's Museum: Charles Willson Peale and the first popular museum of natural science and art (New York, 1980); Withington Ann Fairfax , Toward a more perfect union: Virtue and the formation of American Republics (New York, 1991); Schmidt Eric Leigh , Hearing things: Religion, illusion, and the American enlightenment (Cambridge, MA, 2000), 135–98; Nathans Heather S. , Early American theatre from the Revolution to Thomas Jefferson: Into the hands of the people (Cambridge, 2003).

“Extract of a Letter from Edinburgh”, Columbian herald, 10 March 1785. Given my later argument about the intersections between ballooning and radical politics it is perhaps worth noting that Tytler subsequently became a militant republican before fleeing from the Scottish authorities to Boston in 1795, where he fades into obscurity. See Durey Michael , Transatlantic radicals and the early American Republic (Lawrence, KA, 1997), 70–71. Tytler was also the editor of the second edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and so may have written its entry on “Aerostation”, largely reprinted by Thomas Dobson in his Encyclopedia.

“A discourse on popular magic”, Litchfield monitor, 16 March 1791. Importantly, changes in communal structures and economic relations during the eighteenth century mark it out as the first period when the confidence man becomes a figure of concern in American culture. For further discussion of the emergence of this figure see Bullock Steven C. , “A mumper among the gentle: Tom Bell, colonial confidence man”, William and Mary quarterly, lv (1998), 231–58; Mihm Stephen , “The alchemy of the self: Stephen Burroughs and the counterfeit economy of the early Republic”, Early American studies, ii (2004), 2004–59.

“For the General Advertiser”, General advertiser, 26 December 1792.

“Reflections on balloons”, National gazette, 19 January 1793.

Blanchard Jean-Pierre , “Address to the citizens of New York”, Daily advertiser, 25 July 1794. Balloonists often seem to have exhibited automatons alongside their aerial contraptions, perhaps as a way of drawing in paying customers to see a machine that they could otherwise see for free on the day of the flight. Joseph Deeker, for example, as well as placing notices for his balloon, advertised a wax automaton which could move (thanks to air pressure) and speak (thanks to a colleague hidden behind it). See “Speaking figure”, Connecticut courant, 16 March 1784. Blanchard's other extra-aerial attractions are mentioned in “Curious carriage”, General advertiser, 28 April 1784; “Aerostatical laboratory”, Columbian centinel, 6 February 1793.

For more detail about this dispute see Baker Gardiner , “Extract of a letter”, Daily advertiser, 14 November 1796, and Jean-Pierre Blanchard, “Observations on Mr Baker's letter”, ibid. Baker's career is usefully discussed in Robert M. McClung and Gale S. McClung, “Tammany's remarkable Gardiner Baker: New York's first museum proprietor, menagerie keeper, and promoter extraordinaire”, New York Historical Society quarterly, xlii (1958), 1958–69. Blanchard, it should be added, had a history of promoting himself at the expense of his co-pilots and subscribers. Shortly after crossing the channel with John Jeffries, for example, he was displaying a painting in which “Dr Jeffries is seen emptying his bottles of brandy in order to forget the danger, whilst his captain is calculating and working”. See “Curious carriage”, General advertiser, 28 April 1785.

“Communication”, New-York diary, 11 May 1797.

“Foreign intelligence”, Pennsylvania packet, 13 December 1784.

The independent citizen, or, The majesty of the people asserted against the usurpations of the legislature of North-Carolina (New Bern, NC, 1787), 17. Tellingly, a writer using the pseudonym “Daniel Shays” (in honour of the Massachusetts farmer whose rebellion in August 1786 had exposed the weakness of the Articles of Confederation) warned those who supported state power against the proposed Constitution “you may depend upon it your wheelbarrow, and the new flying machine, cannot travel along the same road together”. See “To the Anti-Federal Junto in Philadelphia”, Independent gazetteer, 25 September 1787. For a useful account of the role of such mechanical imagery in the ratification debates see Witt John Fabian , Patriots and cosmopolitans: Hidden histories of American law (Cambridge, MA, 2007), 62–70.

Just published, a new, humorous copperplate print … Zion beseieg'd and attacked 1787 (Philadelphia, 1787).

Buel Richard , Securing the Revolution: Ideology in American politics, 1789–1815 (Ithaca, NY, 1974); Sharp James Roger , American politics in the early Republic: The new nation in crisis (New Haven, 1993); Kramer Lloyd S. , “The French Revolution and the creation of American political culture”, in Global ramifications of the French Revolution, ed. by Klaits Joseph (New York, 2002), 26–54.

The impact of Burke and Paine's debate on Anglo-American political thought can be traced through Boyd Julian P. , “The Rights of Man: The ‘Contest of Burke and Paine in America’”, in Papers of Jefferson, ed. by Boyd Julian P. (Princeton, 1982), xx, 268–313; Kaye Harvey J. , Thomas Paine and the promise of America (New York, 2005), 91–117; Claeys Gregory , The French Revolution debate in Britain: The origins of modern politics (Basingstoke, 2007).

Burke Edmund , Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. by Mitchell L. G. (New York, 1993), 248.

Paine Thomas , Rights of man , in Collected writings, ed. by Foner Eric (New York, 1995), 472.

The development of the term can be traced via the essays collected in Enthusiasm and enlightenment in Europe, 1650–1850, ed. by Klein Lawrence E. La Vopa Anthony J. (San Marino, 1998).

Darnton Robert , Mesmerism and the end of Enlightenment in France (Cambridge, MA, 1968), 15, 12.

Burke Edmund , A letter from the Right Honourable Edmund Burke to a noble lord (London, 1796), 62. For a comprehensive discussion of such passages see Crosland Maurice , “The image of science as a threat: Burke versus Priestley and the ‘Philosophic Revolution’”, The British journal for the history of science, xx (1987), 1987–307.

Paine Thomas , The age of reason, in Collected writings (ref. 95), 670. Interestingly, Paine frequently uses technological metaphors and scientific methodology to make his case. This aspect of his discourse is further explored in Larkin Edward , Thomas Paine and the literature of revolution (Cambridge, 2005), 114–48.

See, for example, Williams Thomas , The age of infidelity (Boston, 1794), 37; Wakefield Gilbert , An examination of the age of reason (Worcester, MA, 1794), 24; and Winchester Elhanan , Ten letters addressed to Mr Paine (Boston, 1794), 24. On the general impact and influence of Deism and The age of reason in the United States see Smylie James H. , “Clerical perspectives on Deism: Paine's The age of reason in Virginia”, Eighteenth-century studies, vi (1972), 1972–20; Nash Gary B. , “The American clergy and the French Revolution”, William and Mary quarterly, xxii (1965), 1965–412; Walters Kerry S. , Rational infidels: The American deists (Durango, CO, 1993); MacDonald Robert M. S. , “Was there a religious revolution of 1800?”, in The revolution of 1800: Democracy, race, and the new Republic, ed. by Horn James Lewis Jan Ellen Onuf Peter S. (Charlottesville, VA, 2002), 173–98.

Snyder G. W. , The Age of Reason unreasonable, or, The folly of rejecting revealed religion (Philadelphia, 1798), 98, 116.

Priestley Joseph , Letters to the inhabitants of Northumberland on subjects interesting to the author (Northumberland, PA, 1799), 9.

Blanchard Jean-Pierre , “Preface”, in The forty-fifth aerial flight of the universally celebrated Mr. Blanchard, at Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1793), 3.

“Echo no. XI”, National gazette, 12 January 1793.

“Mr Fenno”, Gazette of the United States, 22 May 1794.

Brackenridge Hugh Henry , Modern chivalry, ed. by Newlin Claude M. (New York, 1937), 370. Brackenridge's depiction of O'Regan's adventure probably owes something to the hugely popular and widely reprinted narratives about Baron Munchhausen, in which that Quixotic figure shoots down a balloon and “finds a French experimental philosopher suspended from it”, before going on to construct a machine of his own, which he uses to play various tricks on the public. See Baron Munchhausen's narrative of his marvellous travels (Newport, RI, 1787), 2, 30–31.

For a perceptive discussion of the ideological tensions over fashion during the late eighteenth century see Breen T. H. , The marketplace of revolution: How consumer politics shaped American independence (New York, 2004). The socio-cultural significance of fashions in clothing is explored in Baumgarten Linda , What clothes reveal: The language of clothing in colonial and federal America (Williamsburg, VA, 2002).

“For the London Magazine”, New-Haven gazette, 29 July 1784.

Cobbett William , The bloody buoy thrown out as a warning to the political pilots of America (Philadelphia, 1796), 170.

The eighteenth-century stereotype of French frivolity and excess, and Anglo-American reaction to it, are further discussed in Jones Howard Mumford , America and French culture, 1750–1848 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1922); Simpson David , Romanticism, nationalism, and the revolt against theory (Chicago, 1993), 64–83; Branson Susan , These fiery Frenchified dames: Women and political culture in early national Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 2001), 55–101.

“On air balloons”, Independent ledger, 11 October 1784.

“New-Brunswick, December 7”, Political intelligencer, 7 December 1784.

“Anecdote”, Connecticut courant, 16 March 1784. Something of this English pride is evident in a song reprinted in the Independent ledger in the same year, which begins: “That Blanchard's been puffing and puffing again, / I hope my good friends you'll agree, / He promis'd maneuv'ring, alas! all in vain! / The duce of maneuv'rer is he. / So Lunardi's balloon, the English / Balloon, Lunardi's balloon for me.” See “Lunardi's balloon”, Independent ledger, 13 December 1784.

“Extract from a letter”, Massachusetts spy, 29 January 1784.

“Boston”, Pennsylvania gazette, 28 July 1784; “December 14”, Independent journal, 16 February 1785.

“Extract of a letter”, Virginia journal, 23 September 1784; “Advertisement”, United States chronicle, 9 December 1784.

“Foreign intelligence”, New-Jersey gazette, 22 November 1784.

This stereotype is further explored in Chew William L. , “‘Straight’ Sam meets ‘Lewd’ Louis: American perceptions of French sexuality, 1775–1815”, in Revolutions and watersheds: Transatlantic dialogues, 1775–1815, ed. by Verhoeven W. M. Kautz Beth Dolan (Amsterdam, 1999), 61–86.

“London, September 17”, Massachusetts centinel, 24 November 1784.

“Foreign advices”, New-York packet, 21 February 1785.

“Boston”, Pennsylvania gazette, 28 July 1784.

“Extract of a letter from London”, South-Carolina weekly gazette, 5 February 1785.

For more detailed discussion of the emergence of consumerism in the eighteenth-century Anglo-American world see the essays collected in The birth of a consumer society: The commercialization of eighteenth-century England, ed. by McKendrick Neil Brewer John Plumb J. H. (London, 1982); Consumption and the world of goods, ed. by Brewer John Porter Roy (London, 1993); Of consuming interests: The style of life in the eighteenth century, ed. by Carson Cary Hoffman Ronald Albert Peter J. (Charlottesville, 1994).

Lynn Michael R. , “Consumerism and the rise of balloons in Europe at the end of the eighteenth century”, Science in context, xxi (2008), 73–98.

Banks Joseph Sir , Letter to Benjamin Franklin, 13 September 1783, in The letters of Sir Joseph Banks: A selection, 1768–1820, ed. by Chambers Neil (London, 2000), 62.

Banks Joseph Sir , Letter to Benjamin Franklin, 7 November 1783, http://www.franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedVolumes.jsp. The Royal Society was not alone in treating ballooning with suspicion. Its New World equivalent, the American Philosophical Society, also sought to distance itself from the more populist aspects of the phenomena in order to preserve its scientific authority. See Connaughton Michael E. , “‘Ballomania’: The American Philosophical Society and eighteenth century science”, Journal of American culture, vii (1984), 71–74. That the Philosophical Society had good reason to fear ballooning would damage its reputation is evident in a fictional letter to the American herald by “Democritus” about one Dr Bubble, who is obsessed with testing “the inflammability of bowel air” for possible use in balloons. Accompanying Bubble to a meeting of the American Philosophical Society, Democritus is perplexed to see Bubble and his colleagues crowd around a volunteer who has “been fed upon PEAS for a fortnight”, only for this human guinea pig to give “such premature and precipitate compression to his bowels, as to produce an expulsive explosion equal to that of an eight and forty pounder. Seven white periwigs lay smoking on the floor. This disaster, however, had no effect on their enthusiastic proprietors, who, regardless of cold or ridicule, remained eagerly intent on the catching each his respective quantum of the precious effluvium.” See “From the Pennsylvania Journal”, American herald, 5 April 1784.

Franklin Benjamin , Letter to Sir Joseph Banks, 21 November 1783, in The writings of Benjamin Franklin, ed. by Smyth Albert H. (New York, 1907), ix, 117.

Ewell Thomas , Plain discourses on the laws or properties of matter (New York, 1806), 8.

Hindle , The pursuit of science in Revolutionary America (ref. 24); Greene John C. , American science in the age of Jefferson (Ames, IO, 1984); Delbourgo James , A most amazing scene of wonders: Electricity and enlightenment in early America (Cambridge, MA, 2006).

Miller , A brief retrospect (ref. 12), i, 11; Daggett , Sun-beams (ref. 68), 17.

Tappan David , Christian thankfulness explained and enforced (Boston, 1795), 23.

Adams John , “Discourses on Davila: A series of papers on political history”, in The works of John Adams, ed. by Adams Charles Francis (Boston, 1851), vi, 274.

Jaffee David , “The village enlightenment in New England, 1760–1820”, William and Mary quarterly, xlvii (1990), 327–46.

Bushman Richard L. , The refinement of America: Persons, houses, cities (New York, 1992), 326.

Gordon William , The history of the rise, progress, and establishment, of the United States of America (New York, 1789), iii, 356.

[ Blanchard Jean-Pierre , “Aerostation”, National gazette, 22 December 1792.

[ Dennie Joseph , “Levity”, The port-folio, ii (1802), 322.

Banks Joseph Sir , Letter to Benjamin Franklin, 28 November 1783, http://www.franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedVolumes.jsp.

“The lunar travellers”, South-Carolina weekly gazette, 3 November 1785.

Daggett , Sun-beams (ref. 68), 7, 16. A useful variation on this argument for those who were not completely opposed to ballooning was to claim that contemporary philosophers had simply stolen the technology of flight from their more illustrious predecessors (and subsequently debased it). The Daily advertiser, for example, argued that “our modern virtuosi frequently assume the merit of invention which properly belongs to the ancients”, and that the Trojans had actually created the balloon. See “New York, July 24”, Daily advertiser, 24 July 1786.

Gardiner John , An oration, delivered July 4, 1785, at the request of the inhabitants of the town of Boston (Boston, 1785), 10.

Kinnersley Ebenezer , “Notice is hereby given to the curious”, Boston evening post, 7 October 1751.

Hooper William , Rational recreations, in which the principles of numbers and natural philosophy are clearly and copiously elucidated, by a series of easy, entertaining, interesting experiments (London, 1782–83), i, p. ii.

“The dangers of delay”, Weekly museum, 17 June 1797.

Jeffries , Narrative (ref. 47), 5, 8.

Riskin Jessica , Science in the age of sensibility: The sentimental empiricists of the French enlightenment (Chicago, 2002), 1. The relation between self and scientific fact in the eighteenth century is also usefully explored in Simon Schaffer, “Self evidence”, Critical inquiry, xviii (1992), 1992–62, and Stuart Walter Strickland, “The ideology of self-knowledge and the practice of self-experimentation”, Eighteenth-century studies, xxxi (1998), 1998–71. For a compelling discussion of the emergence of the idea of scientific detachment in the nineteenth century see Daston Lorraine Galison Peter , Objectivity (Boston, 2007).

Jeffries , Narrative (ref. 47), 16, 52.

Strickland , “The ideology of self-knowledge” (ref. 146), 454.

Jeffries , Narrative (ref. 47), 52.

[ Barbauld Anna Letitia , “Washing day”, Federal observer, 6 December 1798. This poem's response to ballooning is further explored in Elizabeth Kraft, “Anna Letitia Barbauld's ‘Washing day’ and the Montgolfier balloon”, Literature and history, iv (1995), 25–41.

Crouch , Eagle aloft (ref. 26), 26.

Adams John , Letter to Abigail Adams, 9 January 1793, in Letters of John Adams, addressed to his wife, ed. by Adams Charles Francis (Boston, 1861), ii, 119; Adams , Diary and autobiography of John Adams, ed. by Butterfield L. H. (Cambridge, MA, 1961), iii, 169. For a more general discussion of Adams's attitude toward science see Cohen I. Bernard , Science and the founding fathers: Science in the political thought of Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and Madison (New York, 1995), 196–236.

“Extract of a letter from London”, South-Carolina weekly gazette, 5 February 1785.

“A dialogue between two modern wives”, Continental journal, 4 January 1787.

For an exhaustive account of ballooning in the nineteenth century see Crouch , The eagle aloft (ref. 26), 119–529. The fact that from 1800 onward the creation of balloons in exotic shapes begins to proliferate perhaps confirms that the problem of navigation is no longer central, that ballooning has become a mere entertainment, and that impresarios needed something new to attract a jaded public. “The Great Mustapha, … a Wonderful Aerostatique Machine in the Shape of A GIANT, Thirty Feet high, dressed in a Turkish Habit”, promoted in the Daily advertiser, 11 July 1800, is typical of this new breed of balloons.

Blanchard's financial situation had always been somewhat precarious. As noted in “Philadelphia, Saturday, June 6”, General advertiser, 6 June 1793, it was difficult for Blanchard to fulfil the subscriptions he offered to support his flights when they could be seen by anyone who happened to be nearby, his ascensions often taking place “in the presence of … few paying, but a vast concourse of non-paying spectators”. The New-York diary, however, blamed his departure on his own financial delinquency, observing that “Blanchard has at last taken his flight — Not in the air, as he had proposed, but on dry land…. [A]nd this circumstance is proof that his conduct toward Mr Baker lost him the confidence of the citizens”. See “Communication”, New-York diary, 11 May 1797.

For a detailed discussion of the circulation and influence of Franklin's maxim see Chapin Seymour L. , “A legendary bon mot?: Franklin's ‘What is the good of a newborn baby?’”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, cxxix (1985), 278–90. Faraday concluded an 1816 lecture on chlorine by declaring that: “I will point out its history, as an answer to those who are in the habit of saying to every new fact, ‘What is its use?’ Dr Franklin says to such, ‘What is the use of an infant?’” See The life and letters of Faraday, ed. by Jones Bence (London, 1870), i, 218. The changes which took place in American science during the nineteenth century are discussed in Daniels George H. , American science in the age of Jackson (Tuscaloosa, 1994). 158. Henry James, “Preface to the New York edition of The American”, in The American, ed. by Tuttleton James W. (New York, 1978), 10.