Timeline of Commercial Air Traffic in the 1800s In the 1800s, 5 private corporations launched ventures to transport goods and passengers between cities on hot air balloons, airships, and airplanes. (One of the ones below technically didn’t, but I think what they *did* do is close enough to count.) Here is a timeline: In 1843, the Aerial Transit Company was a British corporation that sought investor funding to build an airplane for transporting goods and passengers between cities. However, their science was bad, and they were widely mocked. They did not receive sufficient funding to build their airplane, which wouldn’t have worked anyway without serious design modifications, as no one really knew how to build airplanes yet. Some scientists at that time were not even sure it was possible. The company went bankrupt, and the venture was not revived. In 1859, the United States Express Company was a package delivery corporation that once hired hot air balloonist John Wise for an experiment to test the feasibility of transporting packages between cities by air. The test flight carried real, commercial packages, meant for shipment from Missouri to customers in New York, and it was also meant to test if a balloon could travel the kinds of distances required for transatlantic flights. Mr. Wise dreamed of a company specializing in cross-oceanic transport, and the United States Express Company was one of his chief sponsors (perhaps hoping one day to *be* a trans-oceanic transport company). Sadly, during the flight, in an effort to avoid crashing, Wise decided he must jettison the commercial packages as if they were ballast. The company decided not to pursue further tests, though the venture was somewhat revived in 1873; keep reading for more on that later. In 1863, the Aerial Navigation Company was an American corporation founded by an airship pioneer named Solomon Andrews. I think he is praiseworthy for this thing, among others: he built his airship *before* founding this company, pitched investors on his “big idea” *after* demonstrating to their satisfaction that his machine worked, and only *then* received funding from them. His big idea was (as with prior attempts on this timeline) to use the airship in a commercial enterprise involving the transport of goods and passengers between cities, with profits to be shared with the investors. The company used the investors’ money to build a new aircraft and then they made several successful test flights in 1866, but before they did any *commercial* flights, the bank holding their money collapsed, and the company filed for bankruptcy. The venture was not revived. In 1873, the Daily Graphic was an American newspaper which, after a pitch by balloonist and entrepreneur Washington Donaldson, attempted to revive John Wise’s transatlantic transport idea by sponsoring the construction of a hot air balloon meant to be employed by Mr. Donaldson in transporting goods and passengers from America to Europe for profit. Mr. Wise was allegedly consulted on the project since he had previous experience trying to do this with the United States Express Company as his sponsor. The newspaper expected to benefit from this venture through enhanced publicity for their newspaper, e.g. the first balloon in Mr. Donaldson’s fleet was named after them (his "fleet" never had more than this one balloon), and they had a deal to get a scoop about its maiden voyage. Sadly, the balloon was torn during a test; after repairs, a test flight commenced, where the balloon flew 60 miles before it crashed and was destroyed. The venture was not revived, partly because Mr. Donaldson died in a crash while attempting another long-distance flight in 1875; this time the operation was sponsored by the P.T. Barnum circus, and was not intended to test the feasibility of a long-distance flight company; it was a daredevil act to attract publicity for the circus. In 1898, the Society for the Promotion of Airship Flight was a German corporation founded by entrepreneur Ferdinand von Zeppelin to seek investor funds and then build the first Zeppelin airship. It worked, leading to Mr. Zeppelin receiving more financing for further efforts, so he built more airships. A few years later (i.e. in the early 1900s), after more designs and tests, he founded the Zeppelin company to use his airships for commercial transport of goods and passengers around Europe and eventually across the world – as well as for military usage. The Zeppelin company is widely regarded as the first airline company, and this timeline is partly intended to show that they were *actually* the first *successful* airline company. Four others preceded them but without the Zeppelin company’s smashing success. Also noteworthy: there were 2 government-sponsored “quasi corporations” – the French Postal Service and the US Postal Service – which successfully contracted with balloonists several times in the 1800s to experiment with delivering real, commercial mail between cities via balloons. These tests were mostly publicity stunts meant to draw crowds who sent needless postcards and such with expensive balloon stamps, and they happened in 1859 (in America), 1870 (in France), and 1877 (in America again). Arguably, such a test even happened in 1793, when President George Washington gave a balloonist a document greeting the owner of whatever land the balloonist would happen to land on. The document was arguably a type of mail, so some say *that* counts as an early example of balloon airmail too, though it’s somewhat different since the document’s intended recipient wasn’t exactly known in advance, and so there was no specific delivery address. Anyway, these experiments demonstrated the commercial potential of air traffic, as most of the tests were not failures, had paying customers, and sometimes got the mail to its destination faster and cheaper than alternative methods. Nonetheless, the Postal Services did not think balloonists saved them enough time or money to justify contracting their services regularly. Especially when some of the tests *did* experience failures and thus risked further damaging each Postal Service’s already imperfect reputation for reliability. Also noteworthy: many balloonists formed “informal” commercial ventures throughout the 1800s (and even the late 1700s) where people paid them for individual flights in their balloons, especially at circuses and carnivals. These ventures technically count as commercial transport of passengers, and some of them sound like they were part of formal for-profit corporate entities (like circuses). Moreover, a few people even ventured to contract with such balloonists to charter a flight between two cities, so some people might question why I failed to include such examples in my timeline. The reason is, based on my research, I don’t think these flights counted as transporting customers or freight with an *economic* or even a *vacation-y* interest in quickly getting to another location on a regular schedule. The passengers mostly just wanted to break records and get a thrill from the very act of flying a long distance (or, at circuses and such, a rather short distance). That’s important too, but in this timeline I wanted to focus on “business” travel (or even “vacation” travel) rather than flying-for-adreneline’s-sake. I wanted to find ventures that experimented with flights between cities for the purpose of assessing the economic feasibility of doing them on a regular basis for passengers and freight, like modern airlines do. I think the “adreneline-junky” purpose is less interesting, for me, even though companies supplying *that* demand were almost the only ballooning ventures that really succeeded in the 1800s. It is notable that the only venture on my timeline that *was* successful was Mr. Zeppelin’s 1898 company, which had a very limited purpose of just building a functional airship. This success led Mr. Zeppelin to further successes down the road – a reminder that setting a very *attainable* goal can be massively rewarding. Also noteworthy: several balloonists in the 1800s contracted with various militaries to provide reconnaissance services for a fee. At least one public-private partnership did this: the Union Army Balloon Corps of 1861 was an official military entity, but the pilots were all civilians under private for-profit contracts. I think that technically counts as a commercial venture, at least for the pilots, but the military connection and the absence of any attempt to use balloons to travel between cities makes it not quite what I was looking for when I started this document, so I did not include it in the main timeline. But I do think it’s really interesting in its own way; e.g. the success of that public-private partnership eventually led to the government (in 1892) creating an official “not-private” division of the military called the Signal Corps Balloon Service, staffed with pilots who were sergeants and colonels and such, rather than ordinary civilians. Through a series of rebrands and mergers, this group eventually became the US Air Force. I find that fact both funny and really cool: in a very real sense, the US Air Force has its organizational origins in a few soldiers who scouted for enemy troops from the high vantage point of a hot air balloon.