Georges Besançon

French editor and balloonist (1866–1934)

Georges Besançon (1866–1934)^[1] founded and edited the aeronautical journal L'Aérophile.

Besançon was a balloonist ("aeronaut") and journalist.^[2] Besançon helped train the later-celebrated balloonist Salomon Andrée, probably in the late 1880s.^[3]

In 1892, Besançon and scientist Gustave Hermite sent instruments on fabric or paper balloons into the upper atmosphere for meteorological research.^[4] In 1901, Hermite and Besançon sent up small instrumented rubber balloons that were designed to expand until at a high altitude they would burst. Then their instruments would descend by parachute.^[4]

Besançon founded the aeronautical periodical L'Aérophile in 1893, and remained its director until at least 1910.^[5] There he covered and reported on the era in which the airplane was invented and an international airplane industry arose.

References

^ University of Michigan library record
^ L'Aérophile Collection Overview, Science References Services of the Library of Congress
^ Czech, Kenneth P. "Swedish-Led Artic [sic} Expedition in a Balloon Led to a Tragic End" at historynet.com, originally from Aviation History magazine
^ ^a ^b "Early Scientific Balloons" at avstop.com
^ L'Aérophile, Jan 1, 1910 cover at archive.org scanned from Smithsonian Institution Library