The Balloon-Hoax
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The Balloon-Hoax was a newspaper article written by Edgar Allan Poe. Published on April 13, 1844 in the New York Sun, it began with the headline:
ASTOUNDING NEWS!
BY EXPRESS VIA NORFOLK:
* * * * * * *
THE ATLANTIC CROSSED
IN THREE DAYS!
* * * * * * *
SIGNAL TRIUMPH OF
MR. MONCK MASON'S
FLYING MACHINE!!!
The article went on to provide a detailed and highly plausible account[1] of a lighter-than-air balloon trip by famous European balloonist Monck Mason across the Atlantic Ocean taking 75 hours, along with a diagram and specifications of the craft. Poe recounts in another publication trying to obtain a copy of the paper and being unable to, due to the crowd bidding up prices for copies on the steps of the Sun.[2]
A retraction concerning the article was printed in The Sun on April 15, 1844:
- BALLOON - The mails from the South last Saturday night not having brought a confirmation of the arrival of the Balloon from England, the particulars of which from our correspondent we detailed in our Extra, we are inclined to believe that the intelligence is erroneous. The description of the Balloon and the voyage was written with a minuteness and scientific ability calculated to obtain credit everywhere, and was read with great pleasure and satisfaction. We by no means think such a project impossible.[3]
The author of this retraction has not been determined and is perhaps Poe himself.
A facsimile of this article was printed by Clarence S. Brigham, "Poe's 'Balloon Hoax'," The American Book Collector, vol.I, No.2, February 1932, pp.94-5. The facsimile, which appears at the front of the issue, is so reduced in size that only the text of the headline can be read. Mary E. Phillips reprinted the headline and the illustration of "The Victoria" in Edgar Allan Poe the Man, Chicago, 1926, II, pp. 872-3. Mrs. Phillips inadvertently gives the picture of "The Victoria" upside down, with the basket and propeller above the balloon. (In her own copy of this book, left to the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore and kept in the collection of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Mrs. Phillips notes this error as one of several corrections for an intended second edition which was never published.) The top half of the page containing the article, but not including the picture, is reproduced in Thomas & Jackson, The Poe Log, 1987, p. 459. An article on the hoax was published in the Air & Space Smithsonian magazine in 1993.[4]
The first human-carrying lighter-than-air craft of any type to cross the Atlantic was the British dirigible R-34, a direct copy of the German L-33 which crashed in Britain during World War I, in 1919. The 3559.5 mile flight from Britain to New York City took 108 hours 12 minutes.
The first human-carrying unpowered balloon to actually cross the Atlantic Ocean was Double Eagle II from August 11 to 17, 1978. The Pacific was crossed in three days by unmanned Japanese "fire balloons" in 1944.
[edit] References
- ^ Edgar Allen Poe, Astounding News! (full text of hoax), New York Sun, April 13, 1844
- ^ MuseumOfHoaxes.com Balloon Hoax
- ^ HistoryBuff.com Balloon Hoax
- ^ Sassaman, Richard. "The Tell-Tale Hoax". Air & Space/Smithsonian 1993
