Article ID: CBB746764826

Martyrs Made in the Sky: The Zénith Balloon Tragedy and the Construction of the French Third Republic's First Scientific Heroes (2020)

unapi

Following the balloon's invention in 1783, the French greeted the technology with enthusiasm, speculating extensively about its potential scientific and practical applications. However, the lack of progress in navigating against the winds discredited ballooning, and in the following decades it became the domain of spectacular forms of entertainment and of swindlers trying to defraud public subscriptions. All of this changed after the 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War, during which balloons were used to breach the siege of Paris. This essay explores how the aeronautical community, led by the recently established Société Française de Navigation Aérienne, mobilized the memory of the war to transform the balloon into a symbol of a heroic republican science. Paramount in that process was the Zénith's 1875 high-altitude ascent that killed two aeronauts—Joseph Crocé-Spinelli and Théodore Sivel. The tragedy reverberated beyond France's scientific community, and through popular acclaim the two aeronauts became the Third Republic's first scientific martyrs, anticipating the eventual apotheoses of figures like Claude Bernard and Louis Pasteur. The ballooning revival in the last third of the century helped strengthen the association between France and aeronautics, thus setting the stage for the country to acquire a central position in the field by the early twentieth century.

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Authors & Contributors
Brant, Clare
Nord, Philip G.
Mathias Dreyfuss
De Oliveira, Patrick Luiz Sullivan
Ramirez, Enrique Gualberto, III
Thébaud-Sorger, Marie
Concepts
Balloons and ballooning
Aeronautics; aviation
Nationalism
Technology
Aircraft; airplanes
Archaeology
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
20th century, early
20th century
17th century
Places
France
Great Britain
United States
Germany
Antarctica
Americas
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