"Nothing will ever quite equal that moment of total hilarity that filled my whole body at the moment of take-off...it was not mere delight. It was a sort of physical ecstasy...

Such utter calm.

Such immensity!

[Afterwards] someone asked me, 'what's the use of a balloon?

I replied, 'What's the use of a newborn baby?'"


Dr. Alexandre Charles, on his first balloon ascent, near Paris, in 1783.