2-356-479 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'Blanchard's Balloon', 1790 (1912). Etched on metal. Jean Pierre Blanchard (1753-1809) was a prominent French pioneering balloonist. Together with American Dr John Jeffries he made the first aerial crossing of the English Channel in a hydrogen balloon on 7th January 1785. Taking off from Dover, Kent, they landed in the Foret de Felmores, France, approximately four and a half hours later. Famed throughout Europe for his ballooning, on 9th January 1793 Blanchard became the first person to fly a balloon in the USA. A print from One Hundred Silhouette Portraits, Horace Hart, at the University of Oxford Press, 1912.