Papal investigation, were either absorbed into other military orders such as the Order of Christ and the Knights Hospitaller or contemplative Benedictine or Augustinian ones. In Portugal, they found refuge under the Order of Christ. The Templars brought to Portugal treasures, knowledge of ancient civilizations, and naval technology from the Arabians, which triggered the naval navigation era, making Portugal one of the most powerful nations in the world
Under the European expansion brought by the navigation era, Brazil was discovered by Portugal in 1500. Brazilian Jesuit Bartolomeu de Gusmão, born in Brazil to Portuguese parents, adopted a religious career and moved to Portugal when he was 15 years-old. By reading antique writings possibly brought to Portugal by Templars, he rediscovered the principle of the hot-air balloon. In August 1709, Gusmão built a small and unmanned balloon and performed a demonstration at the court of King Dom João V. There are reports that Gusmão built an unmanned larger balloon that freely ascended outdoors some time later. Bartolomeu de Gusmão proceeded with his experiments with larger balloons and legend has it that eventually he himself flew a balloon, which was launched from Saint Jorge Castle, on the top of one of Lisbon’s seven hills, covered 1 km, and crashed in Terreiro do Paço. However, there is no evidence that this actually happened. Later, Gusmão was pursued by the Inquisition and left Portugal. Before leaving the country, he gave his brother several drawings of his balloons. After some time, his brother worked at Portugal’s Embassy in Paris and established some contacts to José de Barros, a scientist close to the Montgolfier brothers, the first people to construct a balloon that performed a recorded manned flight in history.
Short before the French Revolution, the brothers Joseph-Michael and Jacques-litienne Montgolfier built a globe-shaped balloon of sackcloth with three thin layers of paper inside. The envelope could have nearly 790 m³ of air and weighed 225 kg. It was constructed of four pieces (dome and three lateral bands), and held together by 1,800 buttons. A reinforcing fishnet of cord covered outside the envelope.
In June 4th, 1783, Montgolfier’s aircraft performed its first public demonstration at Annonay in front of a group of dignitaries from the Etats particulars. The related flight covered 2 km, lasted ten minutes, and had an estimated altitude of 1,600 to 2,000 m. Word of its success quickly reached Paris. Etienne went to the capital to make further demonstrations and to solidify the brothers’ claim to the invention of flight. Joseph, given his unkempt appearance and shyness, remained with the family.
From the flights with Montgolfiers’ balloons on, ballooning became largely widespread. In 1785, Jean-Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries departed from England on a balloon and crossed the English Channel. In 1794, France opened a ballooning school. It also used two balloon corps in the battles of Maubeuge and Fleurus and in the Mainz siege in the following year. In July of 1849, Austrian troops used balloons for the first time to drop bombs on Venice.
English aeronaut Charles Green (1785-1870) used a coal gas-filled balloon, formerly known as the Royal Vauxhall, for his most famous flight from London to Nassau in Germany, in 1836. It was on this voyage, along with passengers Robert Holland and Thomas Monck Mason that Green successfully completed the world’s longest flight, covering an estimated 770 km in 18 hours. After achieving this feat, Green had an endless supply of sponsors, who were eager to ascent in the famous balloon.
In 1852, Frenchman Henri Giffard was the first to fly an airship (Torenbeek, 2009), which was fitted with steam engines and propellers (Fig. 2). Santos-Dumont commented on Giffard’s experimentation with airships (Santos-Dumont, 1904): “Giffard’s primitive steam-engine, weak in proportion to its weight, spitting red-hot sparks from its coal fuel, had afforded that courageous innovator no fair chance, I argued. I did not dally a single moment with the idea of an electric motor, which promises little danger, it is true, but which has the capital ballooning defect of being the heaviest known engine, counting the weight of its battery. Indeed, I have so little patience with the idea that I shall say no more about it except to repeat what Mr. Edison said to me on this head in April 1902: ‘you have done well,” he said, ‘to choose the petroleum motor’.”
From Giffard’s steam-powered airship on, numerous vehicles were developed, including that belonging to Paul Hälein, in 1872 (Fig. 3), and the one of Charles Ritchel, in 1878, Paul Hälein from Germany was the first to use internal combustion engines on an airship. Hydrogen was used as the fuel to lift the airship, stored in a single tank. In the United States, Charles Ritchel made demonstrations of a lighter-than-aircraft built with impermeable fabric and tubular structure with room for the pilot and an engine, and he managed to sell five units of his flying machine. Several other airships produced significant innovations before the turn of the century.
