page_title: French Aerostatic Corps
section_title: Experimentation
hierarchical_section_title: French Aerostatic Corps / Experimentation
caption_attribution_description: French scientist Jean-Marie-Joseph Coutelle (1748-1835). "Le colonel Coutelle, chef des aérostiers en 1794."
context_page_description: The French Aerostatic Corps or Company of Aeronauts was the world's first air force, founded in 1794 to use balloons, primarily for reconnaissance.
context_section_description: Numerous suggestions had been made for the use of balloons during the French Revolutionary Wars, and in 1793 the Committee of Public Safety began testing their potential.  Initial tests of airship designs proved unsatisfactory.  However, experiments conducted near the Tuileries from September to October 1793 to produce the required hydrogen without the use of sulphuric acid, which was in short supply, were successful, producing more than 20 cubic metres.  As a result, the Committee determined to use this technique to float tethered balloons.
  At the end of October 1793, chemist Jean-Marie-Joseph Coutelle and his assistant, the engineer Nicolas Lhomond, were sent to join the Army of the North, with 50,000 livre to acquire equipment.  They were given a letter from Lazare Carnot commending them to General Jean-Baptiste Jourdan and representative Ernest Dominique François Joseph Duquesnoy, which informed them that "Citizen Coutelle is not a charlatan".  However, on arrival, Jourdan ridiculed the project, ordering Coutelle back to Paris, with the message that an Austrian attack was imminent, and a battalion was required, not a balloon.
caption: Coutelle in 1794.
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