"Bartholomeu de Gusmão was a naturalist, recalled for his early work on lighter-than-air ship design. He was born in 1685 at Santos, So Paulo, Brazil, and died November 18, 1724, in Toledo, Spain. He began his novitiate in the Society of Jesus at Bahia when he was about fifteen years old, but left the same in 1701. He went to Portugal and found a patron at Lisbon in the person of the Marquess d'Abrantes. He completed his course of study at Coimbra, devoting his attention principally to philology and mathematics, but received the title of Doctor of Canon Law. He is said to have had a remarkable memory and a great command of languages. In 1709 he presented a petition to King John V of Portugal, begging a privilege for his invention of an airship, in which he expressed the greatest confidence. The contents of this petition have been preserved, as well as a picture and description of his airship. Following after Francesco Lana, S.J., Gusmo wanted to spread a huge sail over a bark like the cover of a transport wagon; the bark itself was to contain tubes through which, when there was no wind, air would be blown into the sail by means of bellows. The vessel was to be propelled by the agency of magnets which, apparently, were to be encased in two hollow metal balls. The public test of the machine, which was set for June 24, 1709, did not take place. According to contemporary reports, however, Gusmo appears to have made several less ambitious experiments with this machine, descending from eminences. His contrivance in the main represented the principle of the kite (aeroplane). In all probability he did not have magnets in the aforementioned metal shells, but gases and hot air generated by the combustion of various materials.

It is certain that Gusmo was working on this principle at the public exhibition he gave before the Court on August 8, 1709, in the hall of the Casa da India in Lisbon, when he propelled a ball to the roof by combustion. The king rewarded the inventor by appointing him to a professorship at Coimbra and made him a canon. He was also one of the fifty chosen members of the Academia Real da Historia, founded in 1720; and in 1722 he was made chaplain to the Court. He busied himself with other inventions also, but in the meantime continued his work on his airship schemes, the first idea for which he is said to have conceived while a novice at Bahia. His experiments with the aeroplane and the hot-air balloon led him to conceive a project for an actual airship, or rather a ship to sail in the air, consisting of a cleverly designed triangular pyramid filled with gas, but he died before he was able to carry out this idea. The fable about the Inquisition having forbidden him to continue his aeronautic investigations and having persecuted him because of them, is probably a later invention. The only fact really established by contemporary documents is that information was laid against him before the Inquisition, but on quite another charge. He fled to Spain and fell ill of a fever, of which he died in Toledo. He wrote: Manifesto summario para os que ignoram poderse navegar pelo elemento do ar (1709): Varios modos de esgotar sem gente as naus que fazem agua (1710); some of his sermons also have been printed. Biographie Universelle, XIX (Paris, 1817), 218-220; Carvalho, Memoria que tem por objecto revindicar para a nao portugueza a gloria da inveno das machinas aerostaticas (Lisbon, 1843); Simões, A inveno dos aerostatos reivindicada (Evora, 1868); Moedebeck, Zeitschrift fr Luftschiffahrt (1893), 1-10; João Jalles, Os bales (Lisbon, 1887); Wilhelm, An der Wiege der Luftschiffahrt, Pt. II (Hamm, Westphalia, 1909). From the Catholic Encyclopedia, 1910 Gusmao, Bartholomeu de Gusmao, Bartholomeu de

[www.onpedia.com]





"Bartolomeu Lourenço de Gusmão, a Jesuit priest, was born in Santos, Brazil, then a Portuguese colony. He attended the Jesuit school in Bahia and the Jesuit University at Coimbra where he studied physics and mathematics. He took up the idea of a lighter than air craft, described by Lana-Terzi, but used hot air rather than the vacuum Lana had suggested." From here: [www.manresa-sj.org]

Lana Terzi: "Born at Brescia in Italy of a noble family, Lana-Terzi entered the Jesuits in Rome in 1647, and studied at the Roman College. His fame rests mostly on a small volume called Prodromo overo saggio di alcune inventioni (1670) in which he distinguishes between "heavier than air" and "lighter than air" aircraft and describes how the latter might be constructed. The history of human thought about flight usually includes myths like Daedalus and Icarus or the fantastic machines of Da Vinci, but Lana-Terzi's Flying Boat deserves pride of place, because his theories are based on solid science. His ideas became widely known in Europe and underlie fellow Jesuit Bartolomeu Gusmao's first hot air balloon flight in 1709, and the Montgolfier brothers' first manned flight in 1783"
from here: [www.manresa-sj.org]




"Bartolomeu de Gusmão, a Jesuit priest, was a major figure in aerostatics and is renowned for the bird-shaped balloon he built and which was named "Passarola". Gusmão was born in 1685 in Santos, Brazil, then property of the Portuguese crown. He attended the Jesuit seminary of Bahia and soon showed an interest and a talent for Physics; he invented and patented a machine to elevate water up to 100 m high. Having completed his studies in Brazil, he embarked to Portugal in 1705, and joined Coimbra University in 1708 where he studied Physics and Mathematics. Soon he started working in a "lighter than air" device, and in 1709 King João V grants him a patent for his "air-walking object". The crown also decided to help him out with the expenses to build the machine and the king graciously granted him an allowance for life. Free from financial worries, Bartolomeu was then able to dedicate himself completely to his endeavours with the technology available at the time, and there is evidence that wire-braced paper balloons were used in his experiments.
On 8 August 1709, in “Casa da India”, Gusmão made a hot-air filled paper balloon ascent 4 meters in the presence of the court, the Ambassadors, and religious dignitaries, among whom was Cardinal Conti (later Pope Innocent XIII). The hot air was produced by “fire burning in a clay bowl nested in a wooden tray at the bottom of the balloon.” Fearing that the curtains would catch fire, the servants destroyed the balloon, but the experiment was a success" from here: [www.emfa.pt]




"......It was a soap bubble rising in the hot air surrounding the flame of a candle that challenged the intellect of Gusmão to consider the difference between the densities of air...." From here: [www.earlyaviators.com]




So the big question: is there any evidence from the University of Coinbra's documents that suggest the Jesuit priest's balloon experiments were inspired by South American Indians using balloons?

or was he inspired by a soap bubbles rising in the hot air, or by another Jesuit priest's (Lana Terzi) ideas?


Is the International Explorers Society (I.E.S.), which according to Time in 1975, was a travel-oriented organization based in Coral Gables Fla, still around? Are the researchers still around? If they are, have you asked them for their evidence concerning the documents at the University of Coimbra?

CT