First Published Dirigible Design

Meusnier, M.

[ Dirigible Design ] Mémoire sur l'équilibre des machines aérostatiques, sur les différents moyens de les faire monter et descendre, et spécialement sur celui d'exécuter ces manœuvres, sans jeter de lest, et sans perdre d'air inflammable, en ménageant dans le ballon une capacité particulière, destinée à renfermer de l'air atmosphérique

Paris: Au Bureau du Journal de Physique 1784. First Edition. 480 pages. 4to. (7 3/5 inches x 10 inches) Recent 3/4 leather over marbled boards. Bright and clean internally, with very occasional spotting. We offer the entire Volume XXV [25] (July-December 1784) of Observations sur La Physique, Sur L'Histoire Naturelle et sur les Arts, Avec des Planches en Taille-Douce Dediees A Mgr. Le Comte D'Artois; Par M. l'Abbe Rozier, M. J. A. Mongez. The article by Meusnier is on pp. 39-47. INCLUDES a followup-article pages 48-69. Text in French. Near Fine. Boards. [26349]


In 1783 Joseph Michel and Jacques Etienne Montgolfier constructed a full sized hot air balloon and demonstrated it for King Louis XVI - one of the very first balloon ascensions. A detailed report was made 'immediately after the attempt with the aerostatic machine' and signed by members of the Academie de Sciences Francaise. The machine was 70 feet high, and stayed up for twenty to twenty five minutes. "This first passenger flight was a spectacular success." Other Frenchmen Jacques Alexandre Cesar Charles and Pilatre de Rozier quickly built variations - some successful, some tragic.

The only real control these pioneering balloonists had was buoyancy - how far up or down they soared. Steering was a mighty wish, but the wind was the real master without active steering control coupled with propulsion. Propulsion and control experiments quickly became the rage, including gunpowder charges, movable wings, riggings of sails, rotating screws, and oarsmen with silk covered oars. None worked very well.

Enter Jean Baptiste Meusnier, who on leave of absence from his work as a military engineer at the Cherbourg harborworks was fascinated by this new field, "aerostation". After some study, on December 1783 he read before the Academy the paper offered here, the first published on these "machines", and the next month was elected a full member, immediately appointed to a committee on aerostation along with Lavoisier, Berthollet, and Codorcet. The results of his work on this committee were presented ina follow-on report read in November 1784 which included a theory and detailed construction plans for dirigible balloons. Although it "led to no practical results at the time", the new work was important and pioneering. Some of his ideas were tested by the Roberts brothers who flew a dirigible shaped balloon for seven hours during 1784, but the real test of the designs really required a means of propulsion that wouldn't exist for nearly 100 years - a small, lightweight engine. As with many innovators and futurists, Meusnier was well ahead of the technology his time afforded. Meusnier unfortunately died before he could test out his own theories.

Other articles in the volume include work by Franz Karl Achard ("sur les altérations que le feu de fusion fait éprouver à la terre des végétaux, mêlée avec les autres terres pures" and "sur la vitrification de la terre alumineuse mêlée en proportions differentes & connues avec des sels" and one other), chemist M. Pelletier on salts, an article by Cavallo on an air pump, de Fouchy on measuring densities of the atmosphere, an article by Woulfe "nouveau procede pour faire l'ether nitreux", experiments on the air by cavendish, etc. etc. Beautifully engraved plates accompany some articles.

The title of this paper translates to: "On the balance of aerostatic machines, on different ways to move them up and down, and especially on that of executing these maneuvers without throwing ballast and without losing inflammable air, providing in particular the ball capacity , for containing atmospheric air" and is a pioneering work on the subject.

See "The Zeppelin Story" by W. Robert Nitske (A.S. Barnes & Company, 1977) and DSB IX, pp. 342-44 for more details.

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