Watched Days

24 September 1852. Henri Giffard lifted off from Paris in a hydrogen airship with a 3-horsepower steam engine and a propeller, and flew 27 kilometres to Élancourt. It is the first powered, steerable flight on record.

Every list keeps that sentence. The one after it is the one worth keeping:

The wind was too strong to allow him to make way against it, so he was unable to return to the start.

He could turn and circle. He could not beat the wind. The steering worked in the direction he was already being pushed, which is the least useful direction for steering to work.

Two details sit in the same record. He hung a downward funnel off the engine and mixed the exhaust steam into the combustion gases, hoping no spark would rise into the gas bag. That part held. And Giffard's name is on the Eiffel Tower, one of 72 engineers and scientists, but it is there for the steam injector he invented that same year, not for the airship.

The record book keeps the date. The wind kept the rest.