Scientist of the Day - Wilfred de Fonvielle

Linda Hall Library

Linda Hall Library

Linda Hall Library

Linda Hall Library

Linda Hall Library

Linda Hall Library

Linda Hall Library

Wilfrid de Fonvielle, a French aeronaut and science writer, was born July 24, 1824 (second image).  Fonvielle was a political activist when young, taking part in the Revolution of 1848 and being deported to Algeria at one point, where he founded a radical journal.  But in the 1860s, he discovered ballooning and made a number of ascensions.  In 1863, the balloonist Nadar had fabricated the world's largest balloon, known appropriately as Le Geant, and had attempted, not very successfully, to fly it during the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1863 (third image).  Four years later, Fonvielle had his own chance to ascend in the Giant, with no better luck than Nadar.  The giant had a huge, two-story wicker nacelle (fourth image), and they would stock it with provisions for a long flight, and then typically it would ascend a thousand feet or so, and then descend quite rapidly (it was very heavy for a lighter-than-air craft), and bounce along the ground, spilling its occupants out like jacks (fifth image).

Fonvielle wrote about his attempted ascents in Le Geant in a compilation called Travels in the Air (1871), which contained ballooning accounts by James Glaisher, Camille Flammarion, Gaston Tissandier, and Fonvielle, and which supplied five of our images.  Le Geant ascended three times with Fonvielle at the valve and never flew again.  Fonvielle, however, made many other and more successful flights.  He was one of many who escaped the Siege of Paris of 1871 in a balloon.

Fonvielle became an advocate for aeronautics in his later life and helped organize the Union Aèrophile de France, over which he presided for some years.  The Union in turn founded a magazine, L'Aerophile, in 1893, to which Fonvielle contributed many articles over the next decade (first image).  One of the early issues has a profile of Flammarion (sixth image), who was a dedicated balloonist, although he is now more famous as a popular scientific writer.  Flammarion amassed an impressive library of books on aeronautics; in 2013, we acquired 27 books from the Flammarion Collection.  One of those was a volume by Fonvielle, Les Balloons-sondes (1898).  As one can see (seventh image), it is in pristine condition, its original paper covers unsullied, as were most of the books from Flammarion's library.

Dr. William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@umkc.edu.