allow for the weight of a man and a very light apparatus--he
estimated that 126 square feet would be necessary for support.
His pamphlet, published at Basle in 1784, shows him to have been
a painstaking student of the potentialities of flight.

Jean-Pierre Blanchard, later to acquire fame in connection with
balloon flight, conceived and described a curious vehicle, of
which he even announced trials as impending. His trials were
postponed time after time, and it appears that he became
convinced in the end of the futility of his device, being
assisted to such a conclusion by Lalande, the astronomer, who
repeated Borelli's statement that it was impossible for man ever
to fly by his own strength. This was in the closing days of the
French monarchy, and the ascent of the Montgolfiers' first
hot-air balloon in 1783--which shall be told more fully in its
place--put an end to all French experiments with heavier-
than-air apparatus, though in England the genius of Cayley was
about to bud, and even in France there were those who understood
that ballooning was not true flight.



III. SIR GEORGE CAYLEY--THOMAS WALKER

On the fifth of June, 1783, the Montgolfiers' hot-air balloon
rose at Versailles, and in its rising divided the study of the
conquest of the air into two definite parts, the one being
concerned with the propulsion of gas lifted, lighter-than-air
vehicles, and the other being crystallised in one sentence by
Sir George Cayley: 'The whole problem,' he stated, 'is