Louis Blériot of 1909. Like some of the other prizes offered by the paper, it was widely seen as nothing more than a way to gain cheap publicity: the Paris newspaper "Le Matin" commenting that there was no chance of the prize being won. The English Channel had been crossed by an unmanned hydrogen balloon in 1784 and a manned crossing by Jean-Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries followed in 1785. Blériot, who intended to fly across the Channel in his Type XI monoplane, had three rivals for the prize, the most serious being Hubert Latham, a French national of English extraction flying
Rozière balloon Rozière balloon A Rozière balloon (or simply Rozière) is a type of hybrid balloon that has separate chambers for a non-heated lifting gas (such as hydrogen or helium) as well as for a heated lifting gas (as used in a hot air balloon or Montgolfière). The design was created by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier (1754–1785). A Rozière-type balloon has the advantage of partial control of buoyancy with much less use of fuel than a typical hot air balloon. This reduction of fuel consumption has allowed Rozière balloons and their crew to achieve very long flight times, as much as several