Balloon (aeronautics) balloon filled with hydrogen would be able to rise in the air. The first recorded manned flight was made in a hot air balloon built by the Montgolfier brothers on 21 November 1783. The flight started in Paris and reached a height of 500 feet or so. The pilots, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes, covered about 5½ miles in 25 minutes. On 1 December 1783, Professor Jacques Charles and the Robert brothers made the first gas balloon flight, also from Paris. Their hydrogen-filled balloon flew to almost 2,000 feet (600 m), stayed aloft for over 2 hours
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