On a clear February day in 1784, the Queen’s College undergraduate Edward Rudge launched a balloon of his own making, filled with hydrogen (then known as ‘inflammable air’), from the college grounds. Rudge’s balloon was one of the earliest in Britain, at a time when, following the pioneering experiments of the Montgolfier brothers in France, a craze for balloons was spreading across Europe. People from all ranks and backgrounds came together to celebrate, decry, study, ridicule, experiment with, and immortalise balloons.

240 years after Rudge’s balloon launch, please join us at The Queen’s College for an interdisciplinary and multimedia event on the cultural history of air ballooning in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries.

Two talks by Professor Frank James (Department of Science and Technology Studies, UCL) and Elisa Cozzi (English Faculty, Oxford) will be followed by a Q&A chaired by Professor Fiona Stafford (English Faculty, Oxford). The event will be accompanied by an exhibition of balloon-related books and prints in the foyer of the Shulman Auditorium, presented by The Queen’s College Librarian, Matthew Shaw.

PROGRAMME:

17:30-17:45 Drinks reception in the foyer of the Shulman Auditorium
17.45-18:00 Matthew Shaw: presentation of the exhibition
18:00-18:05 Fiona Stafford: introduction
18:05-18:25 Frank James: ‘Airs and Cultural Productions in the Romantic Period’
18:25-18:45 Elisa Cozzi: ‘Shelley, Éire, and Air Balloons: Oxford and Dublin, 1810-12’
18:45-19:00 Q&A and close