The two modes by which Man has been able to break the bonds of gravity, lighter-than-air and heavier-than-air flight, were invented before and after the nineteenth century. Nonetheless, there were several innovations that are worth examining. The modes of flight available to the Victorians were surprisingly sophisticated.
In 1783, the Montgolfier brothers launched their "aerostat," a large envelope of fabric, lined with paper and held together by buttons. The air inside was heated by burning a combination of straw and wool. This unmanned balloon rose 6500 feet before drifting back to the ground. From this modest, even crude, beginning, Man's conquest of the air had truly begun.
There were two basic types of balloons, hot air and hydrogen. Both types were developed at the same time. Later balloons made use of coal gas, which provided better lift than hot air, but not as much as hydrogen. The United States was the main supplier of hydrogen and thus hydrogen balloons were rather rare in England and Europe.
In 1844, Edgar Allen Poe wrote a fictitious account of an Atlantic crossing by balloon that was published in an American newspaper. The newspaper was quite embarrassed to discover it was a hoax. A successful crossing of the Atlantic by balloon was made in 1919, taking four minutes less than the time Poe had predicted.
In 1849, the first flight across the Alps was made from France to Italy by Francois Arban. In 1858, Gaspard-Felix Tournachon, better known as Nadar (and a friend of Jules Verne), built an enormous balloon with a two story gondola that could hold 50 men and housed a photographic darkroom. Nadar used his balloon to photograph Paris from the air. In 1859, John Wise flew from Missouri to New York, a distance of over 800 miles, in less than twenty hours. In 1890, Edward Schweiser, aka Captain Spelterini, photographed the Great Pyramids from a balloon.
Balloons, like most technology, also found use in the military. In 1849, Austria used unmanned balloons to bomb Venice. Balloons were used extensively in the American Civil War as observation platforms. Balloons were used for communication during the Franco-Prussian war.
Jules Verne published his first novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon in 1862, telling the adventures of a scientist and his two assistants travelling in a hot air balloon.
The first dirigible, a true propelled, steerable airship, was invented in 1852 by Henri Giffard. In 1865, Solomon Andrews formed the first American airline, based on an airship he had patented. Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin completed the first rigid framed dirigible in 1900 and launched a colorful, romantic era of leisurely air travel.
Sir George Cayley was a gentleman inventor who was interested in human flight. in his laboratory in his ancestral home of Brompton Hall, he perfected the airfoil and built several model gliders, along with plans to build a human-sized glider. His dream was to achieve a means of powered-flight, but the engines available at the time were too heavy. He gave up his dream and went into politics. Later, however, in 1853 at the age of 80, he finally built a full-sized glider and order his coachman to test it. Launched by an enthusiastic crew, the glider flew down a hill and landed safely. It was the first and only flight. The coachman was terrified by the experience and resigned immediately.
Others, like Jean-Marie Le Bris and Louis Mouillar in France and Otto Lilienthal of Germany also built gliders that made successful short flights. The Wright Brother built their first unmanned glider in 1896 and from 1900 to 1902 built a series of manned gliders.
The Wright Brothers, a pair of young men with a bicycle shop, finally achieved heavier-than-air, powered flight in 1903. The Wright Flyer was a fabric-covered, wooden-framed biplane, propelled by two chain-driven propellers run by a 12 horsepower engine of their own design.
Giving characters the ability to fly in any Victorian campaign, be it strictly historical, alternative history or fantastic, should be a dangerous endeavor, an adventure in itself. Balloons can be used to convey characters to isolated locations never before visited by Westerners. Hot air balloons are probably the most useful, since they could be fueled by any combustible material scrounged up by the party. Hydrogen would be almost impossible to replace.
In general, balloons are unguided craft, subject to the whims of the breeze, although several means of propelling balloons were designed, including bicycle-driven propellers and hand-controled rudders. Gliders were mere novelties, with little practical value as transportation. Dirigibles, however, grew into an excellent means of transportation and were reliable if slow.