It's a bird, no, it's a plane, no, it's a balloon
By Shazia Hasan
BALLOONS! I'd scream excitedly upon sighting the man who sold balloons. When I was little, the person I'd eagerly search for when going out was the balloon man. He had balloons of all shapes and sizes which were only filled with air that he had either pumped in through his lungs or a long thin air pump and they all hung from a long pole he carried on one shoulder. Usually he would be present at the commercial area roundabout.
Balloons don't just have to be filled with air. They are also filled with lighter-than-air gases. The helium or hydrogen balloons are always ready to go up, up and above. If you happen to be really light and someone hands you a hundred or so of these, then you too may start floating in the air along with them.
Don't you all have a fascination for balloons? Sure you do. Why else would I see all those balloons hanging from the ceiling and walls with your birthday party decorations? But balloons have a lot of other uses too besides serving as amusing playthings and decorations.
HOT AIR BALLOONS:
Don't you just love them? Hot air balloons have been written about in many famous stories including Around the World in Eighty Days and reading about them leaves one wishing to travel in them.
In 1670 an Italian named Francesco de Lana, made a drawing of a strange flying machine. It was an aerial ship. The design happened to be the first serious attempt in planning a lighter-than-air craft. It served as a prototype of the balloons, which a century later, would for a while solve the problem of flight. De Lana's 'flying-ship' was a small boat with a sail, lifted into the air by four large balloons. There was to be a vacuum inside each balloon. The designer thought that, without any air inside, the balloons would lift the boat, and possibly a crew as well, up into the air. What he didn't realize was that atmospheric pressure would simply flatten the balloons. In spite of this, de Lana was right in thinking that a ship could be lifted off the ground by means of spheres lighter than air.
In 1780 two French brothers, Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier, sons of a paper-factory owner in Annonay, began to carry out some strange tests. They discovered that a bag would rise if held open over the hot air from a fire. They made a large balloon and filled it with warm air from a fire of straw and wool. The great sphere rose into the air to a height of 6,000 ft. This experiment took place in public at Annonay in 1783. The crowd which had gathered were absolutely astonished. The news spread all over France, and the Academy of Sciences in Paris invited the Montgolfier brothers to repeat the experiment there. At the same time they authorized a scientist, J.A. Charles to carry out similar investigations. Charles built a balloon with pieces of silk glued together. His balloon was filled with inflammable air (hydrogen) and it was launched in August, 1783 and, in spite of rain and bad weather, it soared up into the clouds until it was completely lost from sight.
The Montgolfier brothers returned a month later and after carrying out another successful test, decided to show their invention to the court. Before a crowd presided over by the King and Queen of France, their balloon filled with warm air rose from the ground, carrying in a cage on board the first aeronauts in history: a sheep, a rooster and a duck.
Soon humans too began going up in these balloons. But the hot air balloons had a drawback. Once up in the air, they were at the mercy of winds. A way had to be found to control them. That was where airships came into the picture.
AIRSHIPS:
In 1852 another Frenchman named Henri Giffard overcame the difficulty, of manoeuvring in the air, by flying for the first time in an airship. The airship's balloon wasn't spherical, it was in the shape of a cigar and was driven by a 3 horse-power steam engine. However, a Brazilian named Santos-Dumont was even more successful with his airship's manoeuvring than the Frenchman. His ship was called Dirigible No. 6 and in it he easily flew around the Eiffel tower and became world-famous for it.
But the real triumph of the airship goes to two Germans named Schwartz and Zeppelin. They are the ones who came up with the idea of building airships with a metal framework in the shape of a giant cucumber that could enclose large balloons containing gas. The new airships were much better than the previous ones but the experiments involving these came to a tragic end in 1897 when the machine crashed to the ground. Zeppelin later put the experiments to good use and built about two dozen airships called Zeppelins in which he carried out a number of successful flights. Later he even set up various airlines. But during the 1930s several airships were destroyed by fire as the gas they contained was the inflammable hydrogen gas. One airship called R-101 met with an accident on its way to Karachi. The gigantic airship was on its first voyage when it caught fire in Paris. The huge hanger specially built to house it at Karachi became known as Kala Chuprha. You could spot it from a long distance. Sadly it remained empty till it was finally demolished decades later during the 1960s.
For many years people stopped using airships due to their cost, slow speed, vulnerability to bad weather and the danger of catching fire. But now they are being built again using the slightly heavier but safe gas helium.
Airships are also known as Blimps, Dirigibles or Dirigible Balloons (dirigible in French means 'to steer'). They always have four main parts: the cigar shaped bag or balloon filled with lighter-than-air gas, a car or gondola that is slung beneath the balloon for holding the passengers and crew, engines that drive propellers and horizontal and vertical rudders to steer the craft.
MILITARY PURPOSES:
Anchored observation balloons were used by Napoleon in some of his battles and by both sides in the American Civil War and in World War I. During World War II the Americans relied on airships for coastal patrols. Also during World War II, balloons were anchored over many parts of Britain over oil installations, communication centres etc. to defend against low-level bombing or dive-bombing. The low flying planes would run into these balloons, that were attached to steel wires, and crash.
For better communication during combat, radio antennas are also attached to gas balloons which help transport them to higher altitudes.
WEATHER BALLOONS:
Balloons used for carrying aloft radio transmitted devices, that gather meteorological data in the atmosphere, are known as weather balloons. The most popular devise carried up into the atmosphere is called a radiosonde. Radiosondes which carry sensors for temperature, pressure and humidity, provide weather information and are very useful for atmospheric research. The movement of the balloon too indicates the wind direction at various heights. Around the world each day radiosonde balloons make over 1,000 soundings of the winds, temperature, pressure, and humidity in the upper atmosphere. These flights are made almost exclusively from land areas.
BALLOONS IN MEDICINE:
How do you think balloons are used in medicine? Patients play with them, you say? Well, they may if they want to but I mean something else. I am talking about intravenous balloons. They are used in a sort of surgical procedure developed to treat heart disease. These balloons can help open up blockages in the artery. This is called angioplasty or balloon catheterization where a thin wire with a balloon on the tip is inserted into the patient's artery through the leg and threaded through the aorta into the coronary artery. Upon reaching the blocked area, it is inflated. The process compresses the plaque and helps resume normal blood flow.
OTHER USES:
Balloons enable investigators to make observations for hours or even days with instruments too heavy for rockets to carry. X-ray telescopes that are to be placed in orbit outside the atmosphere, must be carried to high altitudes by rockets or balloons. Balloon-borne telescopes are used to detect the more penetrating (harder) X rays, whereas those carried aloft by rockets or in satellites are used to detect softer radiation.
Balloons are also used to salvage sunken ships and submarines. They are inserted into the hulls and holds of the sunken vessels and inflated resulting in increased buoyancy and flotation.
Look around you. Balloons are just about everywhere. They are even there in all those comics you read. Haven't you noticed those cartoon balloons which are used in presenting dialogues. Those encircled words are known as bubbles or cartoon balloons. By the way bubbles too are balloons filled with air. They may not be made from cloth, rubber or plastic but still they are balloons nonetheless
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