Paolo Andreani

Flight

The first unmanned balloon flight seen by Andreani took place in 1784 when a hot air balloon built by the Gerli brothers rose a few metres into the air. The small balloon had been built by the three Gerli brothers, who were skilled builders and engineers. Andreani offered to commission a larger balloon. Thanks to its diameter of , Andreani made the first balloon flight when he was only 20. The paper-lined cloth balloon had a wickerwork passenger carrier. The hot air was created by burning birch wood, alcohol, and turpentine. The balloon took less than four weeks to make and weighed about when it was fuelled and had three passengers aboard. The first flight took place on 25 February 1784 when Andreani, and Charles Gerli flew for 25 minutes without incident. Joseph II, the Holy Roman Emperor was invited to watch, but he reportedly declined the invitation as he did not want to witness a suicide. Instead, the Emperor encouraged the cancellation of the flight. Despite the Emperor's assessment, a crowd of nobility and intellectuals gathered to witness Andreani and two local farmers ascend to a height of whilst the balloon travelled a distance of .

On March 28 Andreani received a standing ovation at La Scala. The Emperor joined in the celebrations by arranging for a medal to be struck to commemorate the event. Andreani appears on one side of the medal, and on the other is his balloon. In September 1784, the first hydrogen balloon ascent in Britain took place and the aeronaut was another Italian, Vincenzo Lunardi.

Explorer Andreani was now a recognized aeronaut but he also became known as a traveller and explorer. He met the geologist Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond in Paris and rejoined him in England, where Faujas was determined to visit the Scottish island of Staffa to observe the rock structure there. The party consisted of Faujus, Andreani, and the American polymath William Thornton. During the trip, Faujas determined that Fingals Cave had a volcanic origin. During their return through England, they met James Watt, and they also observed Joseph Priestly's experiments which were revealing new gases from water. His first journal records his meeting with the Iroquois. Using canoes along the Hudson River and the Mohawk River and around the Great Lakes, he and his group travelled over and met six different Native American peoples. He documented his contacts with the Oneida and Onondaga peoples in particular.

Andreani also wrote about meeting German, Dutch, Shakers, Iroquois, and Anglo New Yorkers. His reports on the Oneida include an illustration which is thought to be the first recorded picture of a lacrosse stick. Andreani was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society, an eminent scholarly organization of international reputation, on January 20, 1792. via the Caribbean with the intention of returning to Lombardy. He had hoped to find a cure for the paralysis of his legs, but his plans were thwarted by his debtors and he was suspected by the Austrians of having sympathy for the ideals of the Enlightenment and the United States. He died on May 11, 1823, now totally disabled and in dire circumstances, as an expatriate in Nice (where he had moved in 1817).