The first serious — scientifically serious in the modern sense of the word — research program related to aeronautics, carried out in the territory of southern Poland, was a series of balloon experiments conducted in Kraków in 1784 by professors of the Crown Main School. On January 17, 1784, the first launch attempt took place in the courtyard of the Collegium Physicum at 6 St. Anne’s Street; further attempts were made on February 19, 21, and 24 of the same year, while on April 1, the first flight of an unmanned balloon, called an “air vessel” (bania powietrzna), took place. It was made of paper, approximately 9 meters tall, with a volume of 260 m³. It had the shape of two truncated pyramids joined at their bases, with a permanent hearth suspended on ropes. It is worth noting the speed with which Polish scientific circles — especially in Kraków — reacted to news of the experiments by the French Montgolfier brothers.
The fully documented site of the first aerostat trial was the grounds of the village of Wesoła — now the Jagiellonian University Botanical Garden in Kraków. At this location — in the center of Kraków, just a few minutes’ walk from the Main Market Square — on April 1 of the year of our Lord 1784, which according to sources promised to be a fair day, an extraordinary experiment took place. At 7 o’clock in the morning, mortar shots announced the remarkable event. The residents of the royal city flocked in great numbers to the village of Wesoła, situated just beyond the city walls. Having arrived, they waited impatiently for the promised sensation. Ten months earlier, in faraway France, brothers Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier had publicly carried out a successful trial flight of an “air vessel.” News of this first balloon flight in the world had reached Kraków, whose residents were now to witness with their own eyes this triumph of Enlightenment-era science. “When a bright flame several feet high was ignited […] the entire column of flame was directed inside the machine. The balloon lifted off the ground at 10:17. In less than a minute, it rose to a height of 60 meters. After 20 minutes of flight in several directions, depending on the wind, the fire began to die out and the balloon began to descend. The machine landed at 10:47 near the city walls between the Florian Gate and the St. Nicholas Postern.” On July 9, 1784, J. Śniadecki and J. Jaśkiewicz carried out another launch attempt, which unfortunately ended in disaster — the balloon caught fire, and the Commission of National Education, which had been funding the experiments, refused to provide money for further trials.
