Chapter 4 Popular Science and Public Participation In November 1783 a letter to the editor appeared in the Affiches de Toulouse that likened the significance of the introduction of hot-air balloons to Archimedes’s famous lever. “All of Paris, Monsieur, all of France, all of Europe is occupied in this moment by the Ballon aérostatique ,” the letter read, “ physiciens and non-physiciens , everyone celebrates the glory so justly earned by the gentlemen Montgolfier.” He described the unique nature of the age in which he lived, when, after two thousand years, “the fruit of [Archimides’s] principle had ripened.” 1 As the anonymous writer saw it, the Montgolfiers had discovered the natural laws that governed the physical world, and their Montgolfière balloon demonstrated to physiciens and laypersons alike the tangible, spectacular outcome of a centuries-long process. The brief letter expressed a fascination with the visual, spectacular outcomes of discovery. By applauding the significance of the innovation, the writer reflected the ways that men and women in the late eighteenth century conceptualized the potential for future breakthroughs. This chapter investigates letters to the editor concerned with scientific innovation through two case studies: the advent of hot-air balloons and elec- trical experimentation. Hot-air balloons and electricity were scientific phe- nomena that built on eighteenth-century innovation in natural philosophy and chemistry. In 1783 and 1784 the first balloons were launched in France, and electricity became the subject of two causes célèbres. In these years, 87 88 CHAPTER 4 savants turned to the affiches to generate public interest in scientific inquiry by publishing their results. In part, the spectacular and public nature of such experiments invited popular participation, which readers voiced in their let- ters to the editor. The efforts of experts to engage newspaper readers were successful; over the two-year period of 1783 and 1784, 462 of all of the 1,287 letters published in the affiches concerned the sciences. 2 As the range of par- ticipants trying out experiments or offering innovations on their own grew, it became more difficult for savants to control the messages conveyed in the press. After all, the affiches’ editors printed side by side the learned and ama- teur letters regarding balloons or electricity. The writing public wanted not only to learn but also to contribute. The discussions of popular scientific experimentation in the affiches reflected a widespread optimism that human understanding of natural phi- losophy would continue to grow in ways that were just becoming clear. The letters concerning ballooning and electricity demonstrated how readers translated this general optimism into specific scientific contexts. The pro- cess of empiricism and the purposes of new knowledge guided their cor- respondence. In tracing their conversations, this chapter is not a study of the mechanics of hot-air balloons or electricity, because the writers themselves did not adhere to shared understandings of the mechanics. Rather, this chap- ter is an examination of the ways that spectators and practitioners partici- pated in scientific spectacle and inquiry. Ballooning and electricity were vivid illustrations of the ways in which popular scientific conversations situated empiricism as the basis of authority and by doing so destabilized assump- tions about who could participate in making new knowledge. Ballooning Culture The first hot-air balloon took flight in France on June 4, 1783, in the town of Annonay. The affiches avidly followed the events, dedicating consistent attention to the early experiments and public responses. The Montgolfier brothers, Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Etienne, were the inventors behind the first public balloon launch. Before becoming balloonists, the brothers ran a paper manufactory and maintained keen interests in chemistry and the physical sciences. News of Henry Cavendish’s identification and isolation of hydrogen, which he called “inflammable air,” and Joseph Priestley’s dis- covery of “dephlogisticated air,” or oxygen, in 1774 had traveled to France and sparked the imagination of the early aeronauts. In June 1783 Antoine Lavoisier replicated Cavendish’s findings. Inspired by the research into the relative weight of oxygen and hydrogen as compared to common air, Joseph THE WRITING PUBLIC 89 and Etienne devised a hot-air balloon, which they unveiled in June 1783 in a public demonstration. 3 Over a brazier they kindled wool and dry straw doused with alcohol, which filled the balloon above it with hot air. When released from its tethers, the balloon ascended rapidly to 3,000 feet and was carried more than a mile and a half into a vineyard where it landed and caught fire. By July the Montgolfiers had decamped to Paris, where they continued their demonstrations. Before the summer’s end they were faced with com- petitors, especially Jacques-Alexandre-César Charles, a public lecturer in physics who devised a balloon filled with hydrogen. He was aided by the brothers Anne-Jean and Marie-Noël Robert, who were both royal engineers, and Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond, an enthusiast for natural history who launched the subscription to raise funds for the hydrogen balloon. Each team developed their own approach for the appropriate gas to use and how best to treat the balloon itself so that it would hold the air that filled it. Charles’s team, for example, made their balloon of patterned silk, which they soaked in rubber. The Montgolfiers used untreated fabric. While nouvelles à la main testified to the fierce competition between the balloonists, the general infor- mation press instead adopted what Mi Gyung Kim has called “a hegemonic transcript of the balloon’s scientific and public utility.” 4 Conflicts between ballooning teams for the most part stayed out of the affiches. The balloons, which were often called globes aérostatiques or machines aérostatiques in the press, dominated the letters to the editor in 1783–84. Enthusiasm for the balloons spread quickly. Women adopted the “chapeau au ballon,” a new style of hat made of silk gathered into a puffed crown and paired with a wide brim. 5 Other hat styles featured ribbons taken from the balloons and used as trim. Novelty merchants sold miniature balloons for three to eight livres, which enthusiasts could take home and launch in their own homes and gardens. 6 Parades, portraits, and poetry all reflected the excitement and consumer culture that quickly emerged around the new invention. The affiches were no different. Updates on ballooning appeared in the newspapers frequently. Especially in the early accounts from 1783, such let- ters consisted of eyewitness testimony of ascents conducted in Paris and its environs. Over time, the impulse in the letters shifted to more regionally oriented efforts to raise funds for a particular city’s own project to launch a balloon. As the desire to participate in this phenomenon overtook the coun- try, notables in provincial towns, along with academicians, sponsored proj- ects and solicited donations. Amateurs also took part in the conversation by proffering advice on ways to apply or improve the nascent technology. 90 CHAPTER 4 The enthusiasm for the balloons was widespread, even as the purposes that writers proposed for the new technology jostled against one another in the press. Whereas most of the content of the censored affiches was rather restrained, it was not so with ballooning. Writers expressed claims of genius and discovery. They voiced the feeling that they lived at the pinnacle of human achievement. The awe they expressed for ballooning verged on the spiritual. 7 As observers and participants, writers depicting balloon launches could get a bit carried away. The lofty language in their correspondence com- municated a confidence in innovation that many perceived as boundless. But in that hope, there was also a tension, for physiciens and enthusiasts saw in the balloon differing possibilities. Aeronauts Engage the Public Balloons captured the public imagination and influenced letters to the edi- tor throughout the kingdom. The first letters in the provincial press on bal- looning appeared anonymously in the Affiches du Dauphiné on September 19, 1783. The letter opened confidently, declaring that “all physiciens ought to— I think—believe now in the possibility of aerial navigation.” 8 The hard work of getting the balloon into the air accomplished, the writer thought it would be rather simple to sort out the steering, takeoff, and landing. The best way to make this happen was to encourage collaboration on such problems through a “society of Savants and Amateurs” who would fund the construction of a globe which the writer agreed to pilot. The letter ended by specifying pre- cisely who the writer was addressing: “Protectors of the sciences, illustrious savants, renowned artists, it is up to you to facilitate and perfect this sublime discovery, which should prove, more than any that has ever done, the power and genius of man.” 9 By directly identifying the people whom the writer invited into the proposed society, he or she attempted to delineate a bound- ary of who should participate in such projects. During the fall of 1783 and the winter of 1784, the letters on ballooning attempted to reproduce in the mind’s eye of the reader the early balloon- ing demonstrations and to convey how the scientific process worked. The contributions generally conformed to an outline where the writer walked his reader through an experiment. The writer related a series of tests that were modified slightly each time a launch was conducted in order to mea- sure the effect of small changes on the result. The correspondence also emphasized precision: the size of the balloon, the weight of the struc- ture, the exact height the balloon reached, and how long it remained aloft. THE WRITING PUBLIC 91 Precise measurements, repeated tests, and the sharing of results all invited enthusiasts to follow along.