On this day 160 years ago, more than 50 years before the first flight of the Wright brothers, Henri Giffard undertook a flight of around 25km from Paris to Trappes using his steam-engine-powered airship. In September 1783 the Montgolfier brothers had demonstrated the feasibility of travelling by balloon, by sending a sheep, a duck and a rooster for a three-kilometre eight-minute trip in a basket suspended below a balloon.
Just two months later, the first free flight with human passengers occurred using a hot air balloon, and a few days later a manned hydrogen balloon went for a 36 kilometre flight lasting over two hours. In 1785 the first balloon flight across the English Channel was made by Jean-Pierre Blanchard, and over the course of the next half century travel by balloon became very popular.
However, balloons are subject to the vagaries of the wind, and it was desirable that some way of steering could be found if air travel was to become useful. Thus Henri Giffard experimented with the use of a steam engine until he had created a navigable airship, being an elongated hydrogen-filled balloon that could be steered and directed. The steam engine drove a propeller, and steering was by way of a rudder.