Victorians who flew as high as jumbo jets

[zipwitch]

Great piece! It's a nice reminder that the real world was a lot more fantastic and steampunk-like than a conventional presentation of history would lead one to believe.

[shirro]

In an article from April 2016 they mention Felix Baumgartner but not Alan Eustace? Don't the BBC have google and wikipedia?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Eustace

[flexie]

I didn't know either. I bet Alan Eustace didn't have the PR of an energy drink company.

[pyrale]

Probably because Baumgartner did something new, not Eustace.

When you talk about the Everest, Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay deserve a word for their performance, not the flock of execs which climb it each year.

[esaym]

Reminds me of lawn chair larry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Walters

[lawnchair]

my hero

[mkhpalm]

I will admit. I have a hard time believing victorian ballooners achieved 37k feet without dying.

[mizzao]

Considering that some have climbed Mount Everest (29k feet, and requiring much more physical exertion) without supplementary oxygen, it doesn't seem too far-fetched.

[upofadown]

This is a relevant and good read:

* https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/861

A relevant Gutenberg search:

* https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=s.balloon

[rwmj]

How did they estimate their height?

[jzwinck]

They likely had a barometer. The very same method we use today to supplement the rather unsteady altitude reading from GPS.

If they did this, the next question would be how accurate their calibration was. Barometric altimetry was only about 20 to 50 years old at that time.

[roywiggins]

I wonder if Victorian balloonists experienced an analogue to the Overview Effect astronauts experience. I can't imagine what being the first people to see from high above would have been like.

[rogerspace]

Think about how we view the ocean today, versus how people viewed the ocean hundreds of years ago. The same phenomena meant really different things to different groups of people in different cultural contexts and historical moments. The same is true with the view of the earth from space. "The Overview Effect" is the product of cold war total-system thinking; a combination of the gaia hypothsis, the blue marble, and "spaceship earth". Here is a really good paper--Bimm, "Rethinking The Overview Effect" (2014)--about the historical specificity of "overview" an how it is a cultural, rather than natural, product. https://www.academia.edu/5995107/Rethinking_the_Overview_Eff...

[mizzao]

The "cold and lack of oxygen"? How about just altitude sickness?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altitude_sickness

[coldtea]

How is that different from "lack of oxygen"? Altitude sickness is just a name for its symptoms...

[funkyy]

Great article, its amazing how back in the days so many aristocrats and rich people were actually conquering the world, breaking the limits and sponsoring life saving experiments.

It was much different than we have today - get as much money, give %% of them to charity, hands clean.

[morgante]

Plenty of modern innovation and experiments are funded by billionaires today. Most relevant to HN, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Elon Musk are all ready examples.

[cpncrunch]

>actually conquering the world, breaking the limits and sponsoring life saving experiments.

Richard Branson and Elon Musk are doing that today.