One idea might be that it should have been invented then IF the idea that air (gases) were basically just like water (fluids).
I dunno if this is an intuitive jump but it seems unnecessary. Sky lanterns were built without knowledge of the air acting as a fluid. I don’t see why the same couldn’t be true for the hot air balloon.
But there would also have to be some expected net gain from the effort to make doing the work worthwhile. Is there any reason to think the expect value gained from the invention and availability of the balloon was seen as anything more than a trivial novelty or toy (such as the Chinese seemed to think)?
As I understand it, expectations for the hot air balloon were placed too high rather than too low. In the 1600s, Francesco Lana de Terzi envisioned that a hypothetical airship (which he deemed impossible) could break sieges (ofc airships are not the same as hot air balloons, but at the time there was no distinction). A very valuable use case. After the invention of the hot air balloon, lofty expectations continued for some time. From Wikipedia, “The military applications of balloons were recognized early, with Joseph Montgolfier jokingly suggesting in 1782 that the French could fly an entire army suspended underneath hundreds of paper bags into Gibraltar to seize it from the British. Military leaders and political leaders soon began to see a more practical potential for balloons to be used in warfare; specifically in the role of reconnaissance.”
After all, a balloon is not much like a ship which can be steered and the value of higher ground limited to just how far one can see clearly, and with sufficient detail.
This wasn’t known prior to the invention of the hot air balloon. Bartolomeu de Gusmão, who allegedly built a prototype of something similar to a hot air balloon in the early 1700s expected it to be steerable like a ship.
The Archimedes example might be an easy case, but I’m wondering if there are not things to look into regarding the motivations for the work on an invention at the time that offer some type of change in the “environment” (social or intellectual/level of knowledge) that point to why no one did something we now think of as obvious.
The scientific and budding industrial revolution motivated a “spirit of invention”. The idea of being an inventor by profession took root and led to more people taking a detailed look at the invention space. IMO, this shift in thinking turned the hot air balloon from an invention that some lone inventor with sufficient capital could have invented into a statistical inevitability.
Thanks for the response jmh!
I dunno if this is an intuitive jump but it seems unnecessary. Sky lanterns were built without knowledge of the air acting as a fluid. I don’t see why the same couldn’t be true for the hot air balloon.
As I understand it, expectations for the hot air balloon were placed too high rather than too low. In the 1600s, Francesco Lana de Terzi envisioned that a hypothetical airship (which he deemed impossible) could break sieges (ofc airships are not the same as hot air balloons, but at the time there was no distinction). A very valuable use case. After the invention of the hot air balloon, lofty expectations continued for some time. From Wikipedia, “The military applications of balloons were recognized early, with Joseph Montgolfier jokingly suggesting in 1782 that the French could fly an entire army suspended underneath hundreds of paper bags into Gibraltar to seize it from the British. Military leaders and political leaders soon began to see a more practical potential for balloons to be used in warfare; specifically in the role of reconnaissance.”
This wasn’t known prior to the invention of the hot air balloon. Bartolomeu de Gusmão, who allegedly built a prototype of something similar to a hot air balloon in the early 1700s expected it to be steerable like a ship.
The scientific and budding industrial revolution motivated a “spirit of invention”. The idea of being an inventor by profession took root and led to more people taking a detailed look at the invention space. IMO, this shift in thinking turned the hot air balloon from an invention that some lone inventor with sufficient capital could have invented into a statistical inevitability.