Joseph-Michel Montgolfier

Joseph and Étienne were 2 of the 16 children of Pierre Montgolfier, whose prosperous paper factories in the small town of Vidalon, near Annonay, in southern France, ensured the financial support of their balloon experiments. While carrying on their father’s paper business, they maintained their…

In 1783 Joseph and Étienne Montgolfier at Annonay, France, confirmed that a fabric bag filled with hot air would rise. On June 4 of that year they launched an unmanned balloon that traveled more than 1.5 miles (2.4 km). At Versailles they repeated the experiment with a…

…a pair of 18th-century brothers, Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier of Annonay, a small town just south of Lyon, France. According to one, possibly apocryphal, story, the brothers took inspiration from watching Joseph’s wife’s skirts as they billowed in the kitchen from the heat of a charcoal burner being used to…