![]() ![]() The new equipment allowed him to actually maneuver the thing through the skies. So Giffard elongated the shape of the balloon, strapped a steam-powered engine to a propeller, and took off. The hydrogen balloons were great, but you couldn’t really steer them anywhere. It seems the French were certainly on the cutting edge of air transport. Airships floated into existence in 1852, thanks to French engineer Henri Giffard. Of course, those were just balloons, not the complicated dirigibles we know and love today. Fill a balloon up with hydrogen, and it should go higher than anything filled with just hot air. But as all inventors surely knew at the time, hydrogen is lighter than air. The Montgolfier brothers had invented it six months earlier that same year, but up to that point, the flying contraptions had only been filled with (you guessed it) hot air. In December 1783, French inventor Jacques Charles tried to make the hot air balloon better. ![]()
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