sells five of them. At the Balloon Equipment Store at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, British Army Captain James Templer conducts the British Army's first official experiments with an observation balloon. It is considered the birth of British military aviation. 1879 The British Army gains its first balloon, the Pioneer. Frenchman Victor Tatin builds a power-driven model aeroplane with airscrews and a compressed air motor, successfully flying it off the ground. American scientist Edmund Clarence Stedman proposes a rigid airship inspired by the anatomy of a fish, with a framework of steel, brass, or copper tubing and a tractor propeller mounted on the front of the envelope, later changed to an engine with two propellers suspended beneath the framework. The airship never is built, but Stedmans design foreshadows that of the Zeppelins of World War I. Biot makes short hops in the Biot-Massia glider. 1880 The Russian naval officer Alexander Fjodorowitsch Mozhaiski patents a steam-powered aircraft. Friedrich Wölfert and Ernst Baumgarten attempt to fly a powered dirigible in free flight, but crash. Balloons are used in British military manoeuvres for the first time at Aldershot. 1882 4 July – The first balloon flight in New Mexico is made by Park Van Tassel. 1883 M.A. Goupil proposes a steam-powered monoplane with tractor propeller. His full-size test rig lifts itself and two men in a light breeze, but the design is never built. The first electric-powered flight is made by Gaston Tissandier who fits a Siemens AG electric motor to a dirigible. Airships with electric engines (Tissandier brothers, Renard and Krebs). Wölfert unsuccessfully tests a balloon powered by a hand-cranked propeller The Berlin-based "German Society for Promoting Aviation" publishes a magazine, the "Zeitschrift für Luftschiffahrt" (Magazine of Aviation). 1884 9 August – The first fully controllable free-flight is made in the French Army dirigible La France by Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs. The flight covers in 23 minutes. It was the first flight to return to the starting point. Mozhaiski finishes his monoplane (span 14 m, or 46 ft). It makes a short flight, taking off after running down a launching ramp. John J. Montgomery makes first controlled heavier-than-air unpowered flight in America. The British Army deploys observation balloons in combat for the first time, when it takes balloons subordinated to the Royal Engineers along on the Bechuanaland Expedition in South Africa. The Imperial Russian Army adopts the balloon for military service. Englishman