page_title: Mary Myers
section_title: Patents
hierarchical_section_title: Mary Myers / Patents
caption_attribution_description: English: Myers Guiding Apparatus for hydragen lighter-than-air balloons
context_page_description: Mary Myers was a professional balloonist, better known as "Carlotta, the Lady Aeronaut." She was the first of American women aviation pioneers to solo fly a lighter-than-air passenger balloon and set many records for balloon flights.
  Myers ran a business of manufacturing and selling passenger airship balloons and high altitude weather balloons with her husband. She and her husband obtained several patents on aerial navigation devices and promoted these through exhibition demonstrations at county fairs and town shows. Their balloons and related equipment they made at their "balloon farm" in Frankfort, New York.
context_section_description: Myers helped contribute to her husband's inventions. The Louisiana Democrat newspaper of Alexandria, Louisiana, reported on July 11, 1885, that Myers had obtained several patents pertaining to passenger balloons. Some in particular described were guiding and steering apparatuses for passenger balloons. These were rudder and steering devices consisting of collapsical parts that could be opened and exposed to the air currents for navigation. Myers had used her inventions in over 150 flights she did.
  The passenger gondola platform was described as made of expandable hammock netting surrounding the passenger. She describes the navigation and steering capabilities of the airship through the shorting and lengthening of the gondola hammock netting mesh and a cloth screw propeller that would push her along like a boat propeller.
  Another of the steering devices was described as a 5-foot hoop, like a lady's fan, connected to the balloon platform back by cords. The interaction of the guiding apparatus was described by Myers as that of a rudder on a light boat in water, where the balloon itself tipped and changed its plane level side-to-side depending on the positioning of the hoop steering device. She describes it as altering the aerodynamics  of the balloon airship. Myers compares the hoop to that of a rudder in the stern of a boat and as having the same or similar characteristic results. Her passenger balloon airship could be further manipulated for navigation by stepping on the edges of the gondola platform and warping the edges.
caption: Myers balloon guiding apparatuses
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