ROBERTSON, Étienne Gaspard. La Minerve, vaisseau aërien destiné aux découvertes, et proposé à toutes les Académies de l'Europe... Seconde édition, revue et corrigée. 36, [4] pp. 4 woodcut illustrations printed on 3 pages, one large folding engraved plate of the Minerve (490 x 331 mm), letter-keyed to text; woodcut title vignette. Small 8vo., 194 x 114 mm., bound in 19th-century brown calf gilt, sides panelled with triple fillet, spine richly gold tooled, morocco gilt lettering-pieces, turn-ins gilt, gilt edges, preserving original plain mauve front wrapper with author's presentation inscription. Paris ("Vienne: de l'imprimerie de S.-V. Degen, 1804. Réimprimé à Paris"): Hocquet, 1820.

First and Only Edition of this facetious scheme to tour the world in a giant hot air balloon, a presentation copy from the author to an unidentified recipient. The Belgian physicist, painter, ex-priest and balloonist Étienne Gaspard Robertson (né Robert, 1763-1837) was best known to his contemporaries for his wildly popular magic lantern shows, "perhaps the most memorable phantasmagoria spectacles ever created" (Terpak, Devices of Wonder, p. 301). He toured throughout Europe, marking his arrival in each new city by an attention-grabbing balloon ascent. Although he is credited with accomplishing the first balloon flight undertaken for purely scientific purposes, Robertson's own account of that flight, undertaken on June 18, 1803 with a music professor named Lloest, did little to counter his reputation as a charlatan. Not only did he exaggerate the altitude reached (supposedly 23,536 feet), but his report was also laced with whoppers, such as his claim that the reduced pressure of the high altitude had so enlarged the heads of the balloonists that Lloest could no longer wear his hat (Rolt, The Aeronauts, p. 186).

The enterprise set forth in the present pamphlet was one of the first projects to involve a giant balloon. In theory, a giant balloon would provide a larger reservoir for gas and would thus make it possible to undertake very long flights. In fact, the technology of the time would have made such a balloon utterly unmanageable. La Minerve was one of the largest balloons every conceived; with a 160-foot diameter, it was designed to carry a load of 161,000 pounds, including 60 scientists, and was outfitted with ample sleeping space, a library, church, gymnasium or exercise area, water-closets, chemistry laboratory, music room, separate ladies' quarters, anchor, huge storage barrel for storing water, wine and foodstuffs, dinghy in the form of a smaller balloon attached to the main balloon, etc. The main hull was convertible into a ship in case of a water landing. All areas of the balloon, which was made of rubber-lined silk, were connected by silk ladders. "Although the grandiloquent dedication to [Alessandro] Volta would appear to have been written in all seriousness, the design of the La Minerve is of such baroque extravagance that the conclusion that Robertson was either mad or clowning is hard to resist…" (Rolt, pp. 137-8).

Not surprisingly, in light of his fondness for deception, the Minerva was not in fact conceived by Robertson at all - earlier versions of it had been published as early as 1784 (cf. Liebmann and Wahl, no. 440-441). To complete the spoof, the title of the work describes this edition as the second, and a fictitious 1804 edition is mentioned in the imprint. No copies of such an edition have been located.

This is an outstandingly rare presentation copy of this exceedingly scarce pamphlet, of which only a single copy is recorded in American institutional collections (University of Minnesota). The inscription reads: "a Morin[?] Chevalier jeune de la part de M. Robertson."

Brockett 10421. Gamble 781. Genesis of Flight, p. 84. Liebmann and Wahl 443. Maggs, History of Flight (cat. 619), 194. Romance of Ballooning, pp. 62-63.