Michel-Gabriel Paccard 1784, he made several attempts with Jacques Balmat before they made the first ascent of Mont Blanc together on 8 August 1786. Balmat and Paccard's ascent of Mont Blanc was a major accomplishment in the early history of mountaineering. C. Douglas Milner wrote "The ascent itself was magnificent; an amazing feat of endurance and sustained courage, carried through by these two men only, unroped and without ice axes, heavily burdened with scientific equipment and with long iron-pointed batons. The fortunate weather and a moon alone ensured their return alive." Eric Shipton wrote "Theirs was an astounding achievement of courage and
Horace-Bénédict de Saussure Chamonix men, Michel Paccard and Jacques Balmat, attained the summit in 1786, by way of the Grands Mulets, and in 1787 Saussure himself made the third ascent of the mountain. His achievements did much to attract tourists to places such as Chamonix. Obsessed by the measurement of meteorological phenomena, Saussure invented and improved many kinds of apparatus, including the magnetometer, the cyanometer for estimating the blueness of the sky, the diaphanometer for judging the clarity of the atmosphere, the anemometer and the mountain eudiometer. Of particular importance was a hair hygrometer that he devised and used for a series of