Poe added realistic elements, discussing at length the balloon's design and propulsion system in believable detail. His use of real people, including William Harrison Ainsworth, also lent credence to the story. The character of Monck Mason was not a real person, though he was based heavily on Thomas Monck Mason; the story borrowed heavily from Mason's 1836 book Account of the Late Aeronautical Expedition from London to Weilburg. "The Balloon-Hoax" is like one of Poe's "tales of ratiocination" (such as "The Murders in the Rue Morgue") in reverse: rather than taking things apart to solve a problem, Poe builds up fiction to make it seem true. The story is also an early form of science fiction, specifically responding to the emerging technology of hot air balloons. The story may have later been an inspiration for Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days. As Verne scholar William Butcher pointed out, Verne was an early admirer of Poe and his novel Cinq semaines en ballon (Five Weeks in a Balloon) was published within a year of his non-fiction book Edgar Poe et ses œuvres (Edgar Allan Poe and his Works). Verne even has a character mention Poe's story in From the Earth to the Moon. It is not difficult to see Poe's works, published in France as Histoires extraordinaires ("Extraordinary Stories"), as one of the influences on Verne's Voyages extraordinaires ("Extraordinary Journeys"). Real trans-oceanic lighter-than-air flights The first human-carrying lighter-than-air craft of any type to cross the Atlantic was in 1919. The British dirigible R-34, a direct copy of the German L-33 which crashed in Britain during World War I. The 3559.5 mile flight from Britain to New York City took 108 hours 12 minutes. The first human-carrying unpowered balloon to actually cross the Atlantic Ocean was Double Eagle II from August 11 to 17, 1978. The Pacific was crossed in three days by unmanned Japanese "fire balloons" called Fu-Go in 1944, exactly 100 years after Poe's story. References External links Journalistic hoaxes Works by Edgar Allan Poe Hoaxes in the United States 1844 in the United States 19th-century hoaxes April 1844 events Written fiction presented as fact Works set on balloons