The last decades of the eighteenth century witnessed an astonishing flurry of activity in the skies as savants and amateurs alike launched balloons into the air with great abandon much to the delight of the enormous audiences that gathered to watch and applaud their efforts. James Dinwiddie, for example, released a balloon with ‘a peculiar form’ near Buckingham Gate in London in late 1783 which resulted in an ‘undulating serpentine motion’. This ‘afforded great entertainment to the spectators’. Mr Jackson, ‘of the Hutton Rugby School, near Stokesley’, set forth ‘an elegant aero static globe’ from the Market Place in Stockton in Durham, England in June 1784. The flight lasted only seven minutes but it ascended ‘in a very pleasing manner the whole time it was visible’. On 13 March 1785 Sieur Lhomond launcheda globe from the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris. Three other balloons preceded the main globe; one represented the sun, the second golden thunder, while the third was without decoration but in which Lhomond experimenting with a mixture of hot air and hydrogen. The latter balloon exploded after take-off. Throughout the second half of 1784 and into 1785 Monsieur Cailleau, from the town of Hauterive, released a series of small balloons. He and his assistant, Monsieur Rivière, used the Montgolfier balloon as their model. In Florence the aeronaut Giard ascended in a balloon on 1 October 1811.