James Sadler Describes the Scientific Potential of Ballooning

Aerostation is too intimately connected with the entire range of Science, its exhibitions are too brilliant and interesting, not to deserve the patronage which a liberal public always confers on desert … It is so well calculated to throw light on the obscure science of Meteorology, to develop many interesting facts in Magnetism, and to assist the progress of Chemistry and Electricity, that its success must be regarded as interesting to Philosophy [science] in general.

James Sadler, Balloon, Across the Irish Channel (1812)

• ballooning
• exploration