I’m not sure what to make of the fact that today – when the virtual Democratic National Convention begins – the #stampoftheday features a hot-air balloon that failed to deliver the mail in a timely fashion.
A 7-cent airmail stamp issued on August 17, 1959, the stamp marked the 100th anniversary of the country’s first airmail flight in a balloon named Jupiter that was supposed to travel about 800 miles from Lafayette, Indiana (a town of about 12,000 people) to New York City. However, due to a lack of wind, it only made it as far as Crawfordsville, Indiana, about 30 miles south of Lafayette.
The balloon was piloted by John Wise, a pioneer in the field of ballooning, which at the time was dominated by daredevil balloonists who often gave rides at picnics, county fairs and carnivals. While Wise also toured, he saw his approach to ballooning as being serious, scientific and entertaining. He carried barometers, thermometers, compasses and other instruments on his flights and kept detailed notes of their readings. In addition, he invented a tough but pliable varnish for coating balloon fabric, devised a way of gluing the fabric sections together instead of sewing them to save time, and developed a balloon that would collapse to form a parachute if it deflated or was ruptured.
Wise also was among the first to document the jet stream, a constant flow of air found at about 15,000 feet that moved, west to east, at up to 100 miles per hour. These winds intrigued Wise, who believed if a balloon could get that high, that much wind could push the ship cross-country to any destination in its direction. This, he thought, also would allow for transcontinental and transatlantic travel in balloons that might carry up to 50 passengers and five tons of luggage.
He sought but did not get Congress to provide money he needed to build a balloon large enough to test his idea. So he began trying to raise money by touring. In the process Wise met dozens of scientists, including Charles M. Wetherill, a physician and analytical chemist who lived in Lafayette (and who went on to head the Chemical Division in the then new U.S. Department of Agriculture, the predecessor of today’s Food and Drug Administration). Wetherill believed that ozone, a gas in the upper air, was healthy and wanted Wise to go up and test for ozone. Their friendship may have been one reason – if not the reason – for Wise choosing Lafayette for his Jupiter show. It probably also helped that Thomas Wood, the local postmaster, agreed to authorize a “transcontinental voyage,” that would carry mail from Lafayette to New York City.
Whatever the reason, two days before the flight, a notice appeared in the local newspaper, reading “Prof. Wise will take a balloon mail from this city tomorrow. All persons who wish to send letters to the seaboard will place them in the Post office before twelve o’clock tomorrow, properly stamped, and directed ‘via Balloon.'” Wise received 123 letters, processed them in his post office and locked it in a bag the same as mail he would put on a train. (In addition to the mail bag, Wise also carried a barometer, he had received from Joseph Henry, the first head of the Smithsonian Institution, which was encouraging meteorological research.
Originally scheduled for August 16, the flight was delayed by bad weather. On August 17, a crowd that the local paper claimed it was “the largest ever assembled at Lafayette on any occasion,” gathered in Lafayette town square in the 91-degree afternoon heat to see him off. As the Jupiter rose high above the city of Lafayette, the winds grew still and the balloon seemed scarcely to move at all. Although the Jupiter ascended to 14,000 feet, Wise still could not find an air current to carry him east. Finally, the balloon started to drift south and, after five hours aloft, Wise decided to abort the flight. He landed landed a few miles south of Crawfordsville. The mail he carried made the rest of the journey by train.
was undetered and tried the flight again a month later. This time he traveled nearly 800 miles to Henderson, New York on Lake Erie. However, a storm forced him to crash land and the mail was lost. Wise would go on to fly observations balloons for the Union Army during the Civil War. Wise, who ultimately made more 400 long flights, died in 1879 when his balloon crashed into Lake Michigan.
In 1959, Lafayette celebrated the Airmail Centennial with dinners and speeches, a visit from Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield, and a replica balloon flight that carried airmail stamped at the 1959 rate of seven cents. Bizarrely, that balloon only made it as far as Battle Ground, 14 miles north of Lafayette. And for almost a century, no one had seen any of the 123 letters carried on the original flight. Finally one turned up in 1957; another 22 have been found since then, which, perhaps, is a harbinger of the slower service now being offered by the new, and not improved, U.S. Postal Service.
Be well, stay safe, fight for justice and work for peace.