Kryakutnoy

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Flight of Kryakutnoy

Furvin Kryakutnoy (Russian: Фурвин Крякутной or probably Furtzel Russian: Фурцель) was an early 18th century Russian inventor, who may have invented the hot air balloon fifty years before Montgolfier brothers.

In 1950s historian A. I. Sulkadzev discovered a following fragment in a Ryazan monastery chronicles:

1731 года подьячий нерехтец Крякутной фурвин сделал как мяч большой, надул дымом поганым и вонючим, от него сделал петлю, сел в нее, и нечистая сила подняла его выше березы и после ударила о колокольню, но он уцепился за веревку, чем звонят, и так остался жив

(In 1731 scrivener Kryakutnoy Furvin from Nerehta [a village close to Ryazan] made a big ball, blew it up with smoke unclean and smelly, made a loop, sat into it; and the devil raised him above the birch tree and the hit him of the bell tower; but he managed to hang on to a bell rope and so he survived.)

Later the chronicles tell that for his witchcraft the inventor should be executed, but was spared and only exiled to Solovetsky Monastery under promise to never fly again.

The text was interpreted as a description of a hot air balloon, that if chronicles were right, happen fifty years before Montgolfier brothers. The manuscript was discovered at the time of Soviet fight against worshipping the West and was widely used to claim priority of Russian science in Aeronautics and was widely popularized. It is also shown in the Andrei Tarkovsky's movie Andrei Rublev (but set two hundred years earlier).

Later famous historian Dmitry Likhachev discovered that the original manuscript was falsified:

Word нерехтец (resident of Nerekhta) is written over word немец (German)
Word Крякутной (Kryakutnoy) is written over word крещёной (baptized)
Word Фурвин (Furvin) is written over word Фурцель (Furtsel).

The falsification was done most probably by Sulkadzev himself. The rest of document appears to be original. If this is true the unlucky inventor of the hot air balloon was not a Nerekhta resident Furvin Kryakutnoy but a German baptized in Orthodox Christianity with the last name Furtzel.