Let the Wright Brothers have their fame for the first flight; they still owe at least a dole of credit to Jules Henri Giffard. The man had a mind for engineering, and in particularly steam engineering. He helped his fellow Frenchmen build a dirigible (from the French dirigeable, meaning “steerable”) powered by clockwork, but then embarked on creating his own, a balloon for the first time controlled not by the wind but by an on-board engine.

On this day, September 24, in 1852, Jules Henri Giffard demonstrated his steam-powered airship in a flight from the Hippodrome in Paris and to an eventual landing 17 miles away near Trappes, France.

Giffard intended to turn back around to Paris, but the winds proved too strong for the ships’s three-horsepower engines, so he contented himself (and his audience) with making lazy circles in the sky above Trappes. His next flight attempt had a larger engine, this time suspended from two balloons, and went less successfully. One of the balloons sprung a leak, forcing Giffard to make an unexpected crash landing.