Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier

It's tethered to the ground by ropes thick enough to hold a ship.

A few hours earlier, one of the two brothers who had built this thing, Étienne Montgolfier, climbed into its basket and lifted a few feet off the ground himself, just to prove the balloon could carry a person's weight and come back down safely, and it worked.

Now, it's someone else's turn, someone with no ties to the family, no stake in the wallpaper business, just a volunteer willing to go higher.

His name is Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, a science teacher known around Paris for demonstrations that occasionally involve small explosions.