This print from a contemporary journal illustrates the pubic display of one of the first manned hot-air balloon rides, which set off from the Tuileries on 1 Dec 1783 and successfully landed 36 km away two hous later. To commemorate the Charles and Robert ride a drink called Créme Aérostatique was invented and hydrogen-filled novelties were sold. The early balloon rides attracted enormous public audiences - one reportedly attracted 100,000 people. They were commemorated on medals and in contemporary journals, plays, travelogues, poetry and fiction. Balloons featured on decorative objects such as china, snuff-boxes, furniture, wallpaper, fans and jewellery as well as inspiring fashion trends in hairstyles, hats, lace and ribbons. The December 1783 edition of the European Magazine, for example, described the fashion in Paris for ‘the ladies to wear straw hats of a monstrous size, made in imitation of aerostatic globes’, and the same magazine noted that ‘air balloon ribbon’ of striped yellow was fashionable at the French Court. ‘Lunardi’s maroon’ and ‘Lunardi’s lace’ were fashionable in the following year. 'Balloonmania' lasted for about two years. It was sometimes ridiculed in caricatures and satirical literature.

The balloon used hydrogen gas to operate and was the second ‘Charlière’ (as they were called) built and funded by public subscription. Their name comes from Physicist Jacques Alexandre César Charles, who directed the instrument makers Anne-Jean and Marie-Noël Robert in their construction. The Charles and Robert flight was the climax to a period of experimentation that included the invention by papermakers Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier of a balloon fed by air displaced by heat (called a ‘Montgolfière’). This was first shown at Annonay on 4 June 1783, and their subsequent experiments were supported by the Academie des Sciences and resulted in the first manned ‘Montgolfière’ launched on 21 November 1783 from Château de la Muette. Although organisers attempted to keep the numbers down, these events in Paris attracted huge crowds. Public balloon displays continued for decades. Whilst viewed as scientific experiments in France they were exploited in England by adventurers like Vincenzo Lunardi and Francesco Zambeccari spying a money-making opportunity.