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Brothers Montgolfier
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French inventor , Joseph-Michel and his brother Jacques Étienne, were ballooning pioneers. In 1783, they conducted tests and then supervised the first untethered, manned hot-air balloon flight.
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Quotes by others about Brothers Montgolfier (1)
That which the sciences can add to the privileges of the human race has never been more marked than at the present moment. … The air seems to become as accessible to him as the waters…. The name of Montgolfier, the names of those hardy navigators of the new element, will live through time; but who among us, on seeing these superb experiments, has not felt his soul elevated, his ideas expanded, his mind enlarged?
As quoted by François Arago, in a biography of Bailly, read to the Academy of Sciences (26 Feb 1844), as translated by William Henry Smyth, Baden Powell and Robert Grant, published in 'Bailly', Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men (1859), Vol. 1, 124.
See also:
- The Montgolfier Brothers - pioneer balloonists, Joseph and Étienne Montgolfier.
- Montgolfier and Charles Balloons - from Encyclopædia Britannica (1911)
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
