A gas balloon is a balloon that flies in the air because it is filled with a gas less dense than air or lighter than air (such as helium or hydrogen).
 It is tied to a thread to prevent it from flying up in the air.
 It is also sealed at the bottom to ensure that the gas doesn't escape.
 A gas balloon may also be called a "Charlière" for its inventor, the Frenchman Jacques Charles.
 Today, familiar gas balloons include large blimps and small rubber party balloons.
 Blimps have displaced zeppelins (which are not balloons) as the dominant form of airship.
Jacques Alexandre César Charles (November 12, 1746 – April 7, 1823) was a French inventor, scientist, mathematician, and balloonist.
Operation Distant Plain was a series of non-nuclear explosive and detonable gas tests performed on test sites in Alberta, Canada during the course of 1966 and 1967.
 Their purpose was to provide airblast, cratering and ground shock data in summer and winter conditions for testing new prototype equipment, military targets and coniferous forest blowdown and defoliation.
 Participants included Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and United States under the Tripartite Technical Cooperation Program.
 Detonable gas balloons were used in this operation in an attempt to find an economical substitute for TNT as well as for the fact that they could be placed at desired heights without a heavy support structure or towers.
 In addition, they were more adaptable to airblast phenomena and produced a well defined blast wave without perturbation or ejecta; they also produced no crater.
 However, it was found that they lacked the high pressure associated with high explosives, and difficulties were encountered as the 20-ton gas balloon ruptured and another detonated unexpectedly during inflation.
 Ultimately ANFO was elected as a lower cost alternative to TNT for non-nuclear explosives tests.
Joseph William Kittinger II (born July 27, 1928) is a retired colonel in the United States Air Force and a USAF Command Pilot.
 Following his initial operational assignment in fighter aircraft, he participated in Project Manhigh and Project Excelsior in 1960, setting a world record for the highest skydive from a height greater than 31 km .
 He was also the first man to make a solo crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in a gas balloon.
The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device.
 The Kinetoscope was designed for films to be viewed by one individual at a time through a peephole viewer window at the top of the device.
 The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector, but introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic projection before the advent of video, by creating the illusion of movement by conveying a strip of perforated film bearing sequential images over a light source with a high-speed shutter.
 A process using roll film first described in a patent application submitted in France and the U.S. by French inventor Louis Le Prince, the concept was also used by U.S. inventor Thomas Edison in 1889, and subsequently developed by his employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson between 1889 and 1892.
 Dickson and his team at the Edison lab also devised the Kinetograph, an innovative motion picture camera with rapid intermittent, or stop-and-go, film movement, to photograph movies for in-house experiments and, eventually, commercial Kinetoscope presentations.
Jean-Pierre [François] Blanchard (4 July 1753 – 7 March 1809) was a French inventor, best known as a pioneer in balloon flight.
Maurice Fernez (30 August 1885 - 31 January 1952, Alfortville, Paris, France) was a French inventor and pioneer in the field of underwater breathing apparatus, respirators and gas masks.
 He was pivotal in the transition of diving from the tethered diving helmet and suit of the nineteenth century to the free diving with self-contained equipment of the twentieth century.
 All Fernez invented apparatus were surface-supplied but his inventions, especially his mouthpiece equipped with a one-way valve, inspired the scuba diving pioneer Yves le Prieur.
 He was also a talented businessman who created a company to manufacture and sell the breathing apparatus he invented, and expanded its range of products to include gas masks, respirators and filters.
An aerostat (From Greek ἀήρ "aer" (air) + στατός "statos" (standing) through French) is a lighter than air craft that gains its lift through the use of a buoyant gas.
 Aerostats include unpowered balloons and powered airships.
 A balloon may be free-flying or tethered.
 The average density of the craft is lower than the density of atmospheric air, because its main component is one or more gasbags, a lightweight skin containing a lifting gas to provide buoyancy, to which other components such as a gondola containing equipment or people are attached.
 Especially with airships, the gasbags are often protected by an outer envelope.
A balloon is a flexible container for (partially or fully) confining a gas.
 Balloon may also refer to:
Thomas Harris (died 25 May 1824) was a pioneering English balloonist who was killed in an accident.
 There is little information about his early career, but he invented the gas discharge valve, a device to release all the gas in a gas balloon to prevent the balloon from dragging after landing.

Question: A gas balloon may also be called a "Charlière" after which French inventor?
Answer: Jacques Alexandre César Charles