The History of Hot Air Balloons:

The history of hot air balloons starts in the Asia. Literary references in China date back to 180ce and cite Chu Ko Liang as the inventor of lighter than air flight (1). Early unmanned balloons were used in China as military signaling lanterns (2). Today ethnic Chinese communities celebrate the end of the Lunar New Year Holidays (3) by launching small hot air balloons ( known as Kung-Ming Lanterns ).

http://www.livius.org/gi-gr/greeks/scientists.html

The first recorded mathematical description of buoyancy (and thus hot air balloon behavior) was developed by Archimedes over 2000 years ago in Greece (4). The bouncy force is summarized by Archimedes's principle , “the magnitude of the buoyant force is always equal the weight of the fluid displaced by the object.” (5)

http://www.eballoon.org/history/history-of-ballooning.html

The use of hot air balloons as vehicles for human transportation was developed by Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier (6). The first manned flight of a hot air balloon occurred on November 21, 1783 . The flight lasted less than a half hour and spanned a total distance of 7 miles (7) .

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Created by John Rowley 2005.