"The Balloonist"
by Stephen Poleskie
on WSKG Radio's OFF THE PAGE
L I V E   Tuesday, August 7th at 1:00 PM
(Rebroadcast at 7:00 PM)

          In the long history of warfare an essential rule has always been, "hold the high ground". From watchtowers to spy satellites, high-altitude surveillance is a military necessity. During the Civil War, Union forces were offered assistance from an innovative technology: the balloon. Hovering a thousand feet above the troops and beyond the range of enemy fire, observers could provide real-time intelligence to their forces on enemy troop movements and materiel. During the initial years of the Civil War the pre-eminent "aeronaut" was Thaddeus Sobieski Constantine Lowe.

Directing fire during an attack by the enemy to save the day was how he had imagined it. But the Confederate soldiers he was about to rain death down upon were probably having breakfast, or perhaps still peacefully asleep in some battle-scarred meadow. Lowe knew that the main purpose of war was to kill your enemy, but somehow he had always thought of his role in a more abstract way, as if he were solving some scientific problem. This was the first time he had been faced with the reality that his mission was about destroying human life, not saving it.
                                        -- from The Balloonist

          The new book "The Balloonist" by Stephen Poleskie begins with an early history of ballooning, the work of the Montgolfier brothers in France and Napoleon's interest in the balloon as an instrument of war. But the book is essentially the biography of T.S.C. Lowe, an inquisitive New Hampshire native who set out as a youth to learn the basics of science. Dubbing himself "Professor" Lowe (a title he never gave up) he was a

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colorful lecturer on scientific principles, a showman and magician and, above all, an experimenter with gas-filled (not hot air) balloons.
           Lowe's most daring scheme was a balloon flight across the Atlantic Ocean. But he was persuaded to first attempt a long flight over land and in 1861 took off from Cincinnati for the east coast. He came down 800 miles later in the back woods of South Carolina, a Yankee dropping out of the sky in the South just a short time after the firing on Fort Sumter. Lucky to return to the safety of the North - and motivated in part by the sorry fate of relatives of his French-born wife during the recent uprising in France - Lowe volunteered his services and his equipment to the Union cause. The backing of Joseph Henry, the nation's leading scientist and secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, gained Lowe the personal attention and support of President Lincoln.
           The value of Lowe's observations was obvious, but the Balloon Corps lacked official status and Lowe himself never received a military appointment. Poleskie's book graphically details the battlefield action and political disputes that led to the Balloon Corps being disbanded two years before the conclusion of hostilities. Lowe was disappointed but also disgusted by what he had seen and was suffering from malaria.
           After the war he continued his balloon exhibitions but also branched out into other fields of science and technology. He invented improved methods of gas lighting and refrigeration. Thaddeus and Leontine Lowe also had ten children, and in 1888 they moved to California, where the former balloonist became interested in the development of an incline railway and other attractions in the mountains east of Los Angeles. The project was an engineering success (though eventually a financial failure) and the site is named Mount Lowe in his honor.
           Stephen Poleskie is professor emeritus of art at Cornell University. He was well established as a painter when he decided to become an aviator and, trailing colored smoke from his biplane, traveled the world creating abstract drawings in the sky as "aerial theater". That interest has now given way to literary pursuits. "The Balloonist: the Story of T.S.C. Lowe - Inventor, Scientist, Magician and Father of the U.S. Air Force" is his first book.
           Stephen Poleskie joins Bill Jaker to tell about the attraction of ballooning and the life of Thaddeus Lowe (a couple of days after Binghamton's annual Spiedie Fest and Balloon Rally draws dozens of Lowe's successors to the skies above the Southern Tier). To join in the discussion call during the 1:00 PM broadcast to 888/359-9754 or post your comments to WSKG.Radio@Gmail.com.

NEXT TIME: The scene is Hollywood in 1938 and a studio executive has been found dead on a soundstage. Suspicion immediately falls on Bela Lugosi, Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff. Dwight Kemper is an actor and writer from Binghamton who has fashioned fast-moving fiction from the exploits of a trio of real actors in "Who Framed Boris Karloff?" He comes to OFF THE PAGE on Tuesday, August 21st to ravel the mystery further.

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