Montgolfier brothers filled balloon he had developed. In early 1784, the Flesselles balloon, named after the unfortunate Jacques de Flesselles, later to be an early casualty at the Bastille, gave a rough landing to its passengers. In June 1784, the Gustave (a hot air balloon christened La Gustave in honour of King Gustav III of Sweden's visit to Lyon ) saw the first (singing) female aeronaut, Élisabeth Thible. Both brothers invented a process to manufacture transparent paper looking like vellum, reproducing the technique of the English, followed by the papermakers Johannot and Réveillon. In 1796, Joseph Michel Montgolfier invented the first self-acting
Ballooning at the 1900 Summer Olympics Hot air balloons for manned flight were invented in 1783, but requiring fuel, they proved less practical than the hydrogen balloons that followed almost immediately. Hot air ballooning soon died out, and gas balloons dominated ballooning for nearly 200 years. Gas balloons used hydrogen or coal gas until switching to helium well into the 20th century. The height or altitude of a gas balloon is controlled with ballast weights that can be dropped if the balloon gets too low. In order to land some lifting gas must be vented through a valve. Gas balloons have greater lift for a given