Jean-Pierre Blanchard
Jean -Pierre François Blanchard ( born July 4, 1753 Les Andelys, † March 7, 1809 in Paris) was a French balloonist.
Life
Blanchard initially experimented unsuccessfully with their own flying machines, which were based on the basis of flapping wings. After the development of the balloon by the Montgolfier brothers and the gas balloon by Jacques Alexandre César Charles in 1783 he turned to the balloon ride; on March 2, 1784, he started from the Champ de Mars in Paris during his first balloon ride with a hydrogen-filled balloon. He drove back across the Seine and again. On July 18, 1784 Blanchard and his companion were after a successful balloon flight in Normandy during the landing approach. Anecdotally, it is reported that the balloonist by crowds wild gesticulating induced current farmers were put disbelieving in reception. Some fell to their knees, clasped their hands in prayer, others ran away in horror. One of the men on the ground is said to have called up "Are you human or gods? Give yourselves to recognize " -" We are people like her, " the aviation pioneers should have replied and have been thrown down to prove their coats.
Already on January 7, 1785, he crossed first with the doctor Dr. John Jeffries the English Channel from Dover to Calais in 2:25 hours in an adventurous journey with a gas balloon. The balloon driver finally had to throw ( except for their underpants) and climb from the gondola in the tethers to not crash every weight. In Calais they expected an enthusiastic reception. Blanchard was named an honorary citizen of Calais by the French king and received a lifetime payment of 1200 livres a year.
After that he appeared in public as a balloon showman. On 3 October 1785, he started in Frankfurt at the Autumn Fair to the first air travel in Germany and drove from the Bornheimer heath near Bornheim to Weilburg an der Lahn. Blanchard claimed the invention of the parachute to complete and let rise for the first time in this his dog with the parachute drift down to Earth, which reached its destination safely.
This parachute saved Blanchard on November 21, 1785 life. Blanchard's balloon threatened to burst due to overpressure; Blanchard met with some holes in the shell to prevent this. The gas flowed but now as fast, that a crash was imminent and he could only save his parachute. This was the first authentic - albeit involuntary - parachute jump from a height of a man; Louis -Sébastien Lenormand was 2 years previously jumped from the observatory of his home city of Montpellier. In addition, this represented the first air rescue in the history of aviation dar.
On July 23, 1786, he launched another time in Germany and grew up in Hamburg, where he levitated the parachute safely to earth a sheep. Two years later, on September 27, 1788, he climbed into Berlin on the parade ground in the zoo and landed in what is now part of the city Karow -Nord, where today the balloon place at this event is commemorated. After a demonstration in 1790 in Hanover, the magistrate of the city made him an honorary citizen. A further rise with his hydrogen balloon he performed on July 6, 1791 in Vienna. He took off from a meadow in the Prater and landed in the eastern suburb Grossenzersdorf.
At Nuremberg Blanchard led his 28 gas balloon ride by on 12 November 1787. After starting thousands of the estimated 50,000 to 60,000 people to crowd over the harvested fields ran away behind the balloon. To date, in Nuremberg, saying: "No show 'ner here, which runs like the Blenscherd. " Get.
Blanchard also launched the first balloon flight in the New World. He climbed in Philadelphia on January 9, 1793 in the presence of George Washington into the air and landed in Deptford, Gloucester County, New Jersey.
In 1804 he married the twenty-six- Marie Madeleine Sophie Armant, which also became the enthusiastic balloonist. So Sophie Blanchard crossed the English Channel with her husband in the opposite direction from Calais to Dover.
As Blanchard died on March 7, 1809 during a balloon flight from a stroke, put his wife first balloonist continues the line of sight screenings.
According to Jean -Pierre Blanchard, a 40 km by measuring lunar crater is named.