At first it was the globe; Some time later the zeppelin would come to conquer the skies, or at least to try. But the pioneers of the aerostatic ship were undoubtedly the Montgolfier brothers when they discovered that the lightness of the smoke made the inverted paper bags with which they played in front of a bonfire rise.
Determined to put their discovery to use, the two brothers experimented with lightweight materials until they came up with a globe made of linen and paper. His invention was presented to the public in Paris, on the Champ de Mars, on August 27, 1783.
We could well point out that the history of our contemporary science began at the moment in which that hot air balloon ascended to the heavens. Days later, in Versailles, before King Louis XVI, the Montgolfier brothers raised a balloon from which they hung a basket. Inside the basket was a sheep, a rooster and a duck. In less than ten minutes, the balloon landed in a forest near the palace. The animals barely suffered the impact and Louis XVI gave permission for humans to be used in the following experiments with the hot air balloon.
However, as much as it was perfected, the hot air balloon was not without its limitations. The most important thing is that the wind conditioned its flight, which is why it was necessary to devise a dirigible balloon. It will take little more than a century to fly the first one. The date: October 9, 1896. The place: Tempelhof airport. The airship reached 400 meters and stayed in the air for a few minutes. Then it plummeted. Something was wrong. However, among the public was a retired soldier: Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, whose concern would lead him to invest all his money in getting a rigid airship prototype that would not fail. In the end it was achieved and was baptized as Luftschiff Zeppelin.
From here on, different episodes take place where the airship will take center stage. One of them is going to be the episode written by the Hungarian journalist Arthur Koestler, an all-rounder whose life experience is, in itself, a novel. His life seems like a fiction where the entire reality of the 20th century fits. His humanitarian commitment led him to clash with Hitler and Stalin, and leave the Communist Party. Faithful portraitist of the time, he was captured by the national army in the Spanish civil war. To get closer to the figure of Arthur Koestler, it is enough here to recommend his memoirs published by Lumen.
At just over twenty-five years old, Koestler wrote a foundational report that has been translated into Spanish by Francisco Uzcanga Meinecke for Libros del KO. It is entitled The Arctic from the window of a zeppelin and is a logbook with a profusion of details and scientific comments. . When his eye gets used to the whiteness, Koestler begins to differentiate the greyish ice of sea water with that other, more bluish ice, which is that of the mainland. The zeppelin where Koestler traveled was a laboratory where not only the amount of dust particles in a cubic centimeter of air was measured, but also philosophizing about loneliness and the lack of nicotine. It should be noted that smoking in an airship is only allowed for suicide bombers.
With clear prose and narrative agility, Koestler tells us about the first landing of the airship in the middle of the Arctic. To do this, valves are opened and gas is released. “A painful decision – warns Koestler – because every cubic centimeter of gas sacrificed has to be compensated by releasing ballast in the ascent, and the amount of ballast is limited.”
In his report, Koestler shows us that the scientific method is not only used to obtain ideas, but also to treat them. In this way, with a clear prose, Koestler discovers that the sky is a note, an outline under which the historical grammar that guillotined the head of Louis XVI is developed; the moment in which the contemporary world begins.
