pamphlet in 1864. 1865 Solomon Andrews flies a dirigible twice over New York City. German experimenter Paul Haenlein takes out a patent for the "Earliest Known Airship With a Semi-rigid Frame," envisioned to have a coal-gas-burning engine which draws its fuel from the crafts envelope, which is filled with coal gas. He later will construct the craft in Germany. Jules Verne describes in his novel The Journey to the Moon the launch of a rocket from Florida, from which many years later American space flights actually will start. The Frenchman Le Comte Ferdinand Charles Honore Phillipe d'Esterno writes in his book About the Flight of Birds, "Gliding seems to be characteristic for heavy birds; there are no odds which are stacked against that humans can not do the same at fair wind." He had earlier published the 1864 pamphlet Du Vol des Oiseaux (On the flight of birds). French artist and farmer Louis Pierre Mouillard makes a tentative gliding flight. After years of studies of bird flight he publishes his book L'Empire de l'Air in 1881. He thinks that imitation of gliding and soaring flight of birds is possible, but not the imitation of the flapping of wings. 20 September – Jacob Brodbeck, in his coil-spring-driven airship, flies 100 feet before crashing in a field near Luckenbach, Texas, USA. 1866 First South American military balloon reconnaissance ascent. On 6 July, Lieutenant Colonel Roberto A. Chodasiewicz, an Argentine Army military engineer, makes the first South American military observation ascent, manning a Brazilian Army's captive ballon over Paraguayan troops, during the Paraguayan War. Foundation (12 January in London) of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain later to become the Royal Aeronautical Society, the world's oldest society devoted to all aspects of aeronautics and astronautics. Francis Herbert Wenham, British, presents his paper on "Aerial Locomotion" to the RAeS. Patented superposed wing design (biplane, multiplane). Jan Wnęk claims gliding flights (1866–1869) from the Odporyszów church tower. Kraków Museum of Ethnography, the source of claims of documentary evidence, refuse to allow independent researchers access to these. First exhibition of aviation in London's Crystal Palace. 1868 British inventor Matthew Piers Watt Boulton patents the aileron in its modern form. 1869 4 July – Frederick Marriott makes the first successful flight of an unmanned powered airship in the United States at San Francisco, a small scale dirigible called the Avitor Hermes, Jr.. 1870s - 1880s 1870 Balloons