Engineer Salomon August André believed he had the answer to exploring the arctic back in the 1890.
Balloons!
Yes, he came up with a concept of using a hydrogen filled balloon, and draglines to explore the arctic.
He managed to convince several financiers of his idea, among which was Alfred Nobel (yes that Alfred Nobel) and the king of Sweden at the time.
He designed and had a balloon constructed, the Eagle, and designed a system of drag lines to try and implement some kind of steering.
In 1896 the first attempt was made, it is from that attempt this photo is from, it show the hydrogen gas generator apparatus used to fill the balloon.
This attempt was aborted when the balloon was found to be leaking too much hydrogen through the approximately 8 million holes in the stitching of the balloon, while waiting for suitable winds
The balloon lost about 68kg of buoyancy per day.
So they gave up that attempt.
But next year, in 1897, André made a new attempt!
One of the earlier members had left and been replaced, and this year, the winds were far better.
On the 11th of July the proper wind finally arrived, and it was time!
The lines were cut and the balloon slooowly lifted from the ground and flew out over the sea.
The problems had already started...
Remember the draglines?
Yeah, they caused so much friction and weighed so much that they started dragging the balloon down into the surface of the sea.
They also started spinning, unscrewing them from their mountings, and soon the balloon had lost 530kg rope.
At the same time the expedition members released 210kg sand to compensate for the seawater that had entered as the basket hit the surface of the sea.
740kg were lost in the first few minutes of the expedition, this caused the balloon to shoot up 700m.
This was just the start of the expedition.
These guys never made it home alive.