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Carlotta, the Lady Aeronaut

and sewing together the fabric segments to form the balloon, "doping" the seams so they would not leak, and studying with her husband the literature on meteorology and ballooning.

Apparently the Myers hired a professional aeronaut to take up their first balloon in 1878, since it was not until two years later that either Carl or Mary made a first ascension.  Carl's first flight was not made from idle curiosity.  He had an idea he wanted to try out, an idea too daring even for his hired aeronaut.

From the start of his interest in ballooning Carl's ultimate objective was to make a craft which could be propelled through the air rather than a free balloon which only drifted with the wind.  This brought up the question whether a balloon shape which tapered to a point would not go through the air more easily than a spherical shape, and whether such a tapered gas bag holds its shape when traveling rapidly through the air.  To try this out, Carl had the idea of building a tapered pear-shaped balloon with no basket, and letting it descend rapidly, point first, from a high altitude.  But Carl felt that he had to go along to see how it performed.

He built the special balloon just large enough to carry him (115 pounds), ballast (25 pounds), an aneroid barometer, a notebook, a compass, and a watch.  Here is his report as he gave it some years later at a conference on air navigation at the World's Fair in Chicago, as published in September 1984 in the magazine Aeronautics, volume I, No. 12:

No basket was attached, but I sat simply astride of a folded band of cloth, hung like a saddle from the concentrating ring.  Thus my feet extended below, while the balloon neck, tied down beside me, made us all one machine for cleaving the air.  The air was calm and the ascent nearly perpendicular, reaching finally to two miles in height.  Then, noting time and altitude, I pulled the valve wide open.  The balloon responded immediately and the speed accelerated till the first downward mile was made in one minute.

The neck of the balloon formed a sharp prow

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