John Wise (balloonist)

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John Wise (24 February 1808 – 28 September 1879?) was a pioneer in the field of ballooning. He made over 400 flights during his lifetime and was responsible for several innovations in balloon design.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early career 1.2 Projects and innovations 1.3 Disappearance 2 Notes 3 References

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early career

John Wise was born on 24 February 1808 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, United States, to William and Mary Trey Weiss who anglicized his surname to Wise (pronounced almost the same way). He was the fourth of eight children. He worked as an apprentice cabinetmaker from the time he was 16 and after the age of 21 he briefly became a piano maker thereafter. He had been interested in ballooning since reading an article in the newspaper when he was 14 and in 1835, at the age of 27, he decided to construct his own balloon.

Wise made his first ascent in Philadelphia on 2 May 1835. As the construction had been self-financed the materials of his home-made balloon were not of the highest quality. He used muslin sheet coated with a mixture of birdlime suspended in linseed oil to make the sheet impermeable. Unlike most balloonists of the day, Wise was not ballooning as a commercial venture, but rather for his own interest and scientific curiosity. He took a second flight in Lebanon County on Independence Day 1835 and made further flights in Pennsylvania over the next few years. He conducted various experiments on atmospheric pressure, pneumatics and hydrostatics, and while his primary interest remained scientific, he joined the ranks of commercial balloonists performing at shows and county fairs.

[edit] Projects and innovations

Wise proposed a project for a balloon to cross the Atlantic Ocean and in 1843 petitioned Congress for $15,000 for construction of the project. His request was denied. He then proposed the use of balloons in the Mexican-American War to bomb the castle of San Juan de Ulúa at Veracruz. Wise proposed building a huge gas balloon capable of lifting 20,000 pounds, loading it with 18,000 lbs of explosive and using a five-mile-long cable to fly it over the castle where the explosives would be released. The War Department response is not recorded but it appears Wise may have been ignored as the plan was never put into action. However, during the Civil War he was drafted into service as a spotter reporting on Confederate troop movements. His rifle shot at Confederate troops from his balloon on 25 July 1861 is credited as the first airborne hostile shot in military history.

After the death of Robert Cocking in the first modern parachuting accident, questions were raised over which of the two competing parachute designs was superior: the cone-shaped parachute proposed by Sir George Cayley and used by Cocking, or the umbrella-shaped design used by André-Jacques Garnerin in his successful jump of 1797. Wise conducted numerous experiments comparing the two designs and found that Cayley's design always made a more stable descent. Cocking's failure was put down to poor calculations and substandard construction. (The oscillation problem inherent in the Garnerin parachute was later solved by the introduction of a vent in the top of the canopy).

In 1838 he developed a balloon that if ruptured or deflated when aloft would collapse to form a parachute (the bottom half would fold upwards into the top half to form the classic parachute shape) which would allow the occupants of the basket to descend without injury or loss of life. Although the idea was not original, Wise was the first to build working version and the first to demonstrate its use. On a flight from Easton, Pennsylvania in bad weather, the design was put to an impromptu test when Wise's balloon was punctured. Wise survived without injury.

Among his other innovations was the use of draglines to stabilize altitude and the rip panel for controlled deflation on landing. Prior to Wise's use of the rip panel, balloons would drag along the ground when landing and had to be secured by anchors and lines. Balloonists wishing to deflate their balloons would climb out of their baskets onto the netting surrounding the balloon, and having scaled to the top of the balloon would open the valve to allow the gas to escape. The weight of the balloonist would cause the balloon to collapse inwards and there had been a number of accidents where the balloonists had been killed after becoming entangled in the rigging. Wise also recognised that the heat from the sun played a valuable role in warming the gas in the balloon, and built a black balloon to utilize the effects. He was the first to observe the jet stream, noting there was a "great river of air which always blows from west to east". On 17 August 1859 he made the first flight of local airmail in the U.S. from Lafayette, Indiana to Crawfordsville, Indiana carrying 123 letters and 23 circulars of which one cover was discovered in 1959.^[1] His trip of 25 miles ended when he was forced to land by lack of buoyancy.

[edit] Disappearance

On 28 September 1879, aged 71, he disappeared with a passenger on a trip in high winds from East St. Louis, Illinois over Lake Michigan. No trace of Wise, the passenger or the balloon have ever been found. In 44 years, Wise had made 463 ascents.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• "Parachute". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th Ed.). (1911). London: Cambridge University Press. 
• Nick Moehlmann. John Wise, A Pioneer. John Wise Balloon Society of Central Pennsylvania. Retrieved on 2 July 2007.
• Russell Naughton (2002). The Pioneers, John Wise. Monash University Engineering Department. Retrieved on 2 July 2007.
• History of the Purdue School of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Purdue University (2007). Retrieved on 2 July 2007.