5 January 1786
An aerial map of rural Chester identifying the specific geographic details of Baldwin’s route during his flight.
This image is not only a map, but a visual description of the flight the balloon took. Its inclusion of the names of local places, including rivers, was intended to provide a geographically specific complement to the image titled “Balloon Prospect from Above the Clouds,” which was to be inserted on the preceeding page so that “when unfolded” the Explanatory Print would “be seen along with the Balloon-Prospect” (on pages 154 and 155, according to the “Direction for placing Them” in the book’s prefatory pages).
This image corresponded to the scene depicted in “A Balloon Prospect from above the Clouds,” which was to be inserted on the facing page. The intention was that this print could be used to provide a more specific indication of the geographical features included (but not labelled) in the other print.As Thomas Baldwin made his journey in a hot air balloon over Cheshire, he had carefully tracked the movement of the balloon. The lines in this image map the course the balloon took. Viewing the two together would have enabled readers to appreciate Baldwin’s double emphasis on his own scientific rigour and the wonder of flight.
Balloon flights quickly became so frequent an occurrence in the years after Lunardi first ascended from London that the leading periodicals and newspapers carried columns on ballooning news which did little more than list many of them.
Viewed together, this “Explanatory Print” and the print titled of “A Balloon Prospect from above the Clouds,” were intended to reinforce Baldwin’s emphasis on his published account’s descriptive precision and scientific rigour, in sharp contrast with what he dismissed as the “vague and unsatisfactory” nature of other published accounts of balloon excursions. The “Explanatory Print” depicted the same landscape that was shown in “A Balloon Prospect from above the Clouds,” but where the latter aimed at conveying an impression of this aerial view, the “Explanatory Print” offered a highly specific indication of the “names of Principal Places mentioned in the Excursion.”
Chester, Cheshire, England (North West England, on the River Dee)
Baldwin, Thomas. Airpopaidia: Containing the narrative of a Balloon Excursion from Chester, the Eighth of September, 1785. Chester, 1786.