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1860
In the civil war,union troops,like the french army before them, used balloons to spy behind enemy lines to see how battles were going. -
1875
three french scientists, exploring the atmasphere, soared to 25,000 feet in a balloon.The men took bottles of oxygen with them, butwhen the balloon landed only one scientist had survived. -
1900
The early 1900s brought the dirigible, or blimp. Made of severalballoons, it fitted with motersand propellers that let the pilot steer.A cabin on the underside held more than a 100 people on the antlantic crossing. -
1932
the man who invented a wayto travel saftly into theatomasphrere was a swiss named Auguste Piccard who built a ball shaped aluminum gondula.Sealed inside with oxogen tanks he safely reached a height of 54,000 feet. -
1961
Brave men kept going higher and higher. Two u.s Navy officers, Malcom D. Ross and Victor Prather, Jr., wentup 113,740 feet in an open gondola to test space suits for astronauts. -
1999
Others had crossed the oceons, but Bertrand Piccard (grandson of Auguste) and Brian Jones were the first to balloonnon-stop around the world, covering 30,000 miles in 20 days. Their balloon was a cross between a hot air balloon and a gas balloon. -
present day
Planes have long been the wat to travel air, but you often see a dirigiblr carrying a TV crew above football games or other sports event. -
every day
Hundreds of small weather balloons explore the atmospere and transmit their findings to earth every single day.