This year Britain is marking the 300th anniversary of the Hanoverian accession.
But 200 years ago this Tuesday, the country was marking the 100th anniversary of the Hanoverian accession and London was resplendent in its lavish celebrations of a grand jubilee.
Throughout the month-long festivities there were acrobats, military bands, fireworks and a spectacular re-enactment of the Battle of the Nile - depicting Nelson's 1798 naval defeat of Napoleon's forces.
But what the thousands of people who lined Hyde Park during the festivities had really come to see was James Sadler's bright silk balloons.
Thirty years earlier Sadler had become the first Englishman to fly, when his hot air balloon drifted off from the vast fields by Merton College, Oxford, early on 4 October 1784 and rose about 3,600 ft in the air.
Sadler became a celebrity, inspiring all sorts of balloon memorabilia, and remained so for much of his life - and, on 15 July 1814, during the jubilee celebrations, crowds flocked to Hyde Park to see the man himself and his balloon.
But, despite being a celebrity in his own day and was the first Englishman to fly, Sadler's name is virtually unknown today.
James Sadler: The Oxford balloon man who history forgot
By Linda Serck
BBC News, South
12 July 2014
Thousands lined Hyde Park during the 1814 jubilee celebrations to see James Sadler's balloons take off
Two hundred years ago James Sadler was a name on every Englishman's lips. The pastry chef from Oxford with a gift for science became the first ever Englishman to fly. So why is his name virtually unknown today?
Tens of thousands of expectant faces had lined Hyde Park in London for a glimpse of the "grand balloon".
The year was 1814, the date 15 July, and London was resplendent in its lavish celebrations of a grand jubilee, marking 100 years since the Hanoverians acceded to the throne.
Throughout the month-long festivities there were acrobats, military bands, fireworks and a spectacular re-enactment of the Battle of the Nile - depicting Nelson's naval defeat of Napoleon's forces.
James Sadler was born in February 1753 to a family who ran a pastry shop in Oxford
But it was James Sadler's bright silk balloon that crowds had arrived early to see.
Balloon fever had struck England 30 years before in 1784 when Sadler had become the first ever Englishman to fly.
Back then, his hot air balloon drifted off from the vast fields by Merton College, Oxford, early on 4 October and rose about 3,600 ft in the air.
He flew for about 30 minutes and made it four miles to Woodeaton.
He was brought back to the city "an absolute hero," according to his biographer Richard O Smith.
"They took the horses off his carriage and the townspeople pulled his carriage all around Oxford for hours," he said.
The London Chronicle declared that "Sadler is known from the humble cabbage seller to the mightiest of lords".
The first English aeronaut had become an overnight celebrity, inspiring all sorts of balloon memorabilia, and remained so for much of his life.
In the 18th Century, "flight represented mankind's greatest achievement", said Mr Smith.
The fields by Corpus Christie College is where James Sadler became the first Englishman to perform a manned flight, doing so in his hot air balloon
Here was a man who was flying in a balloon at up to 94 mph, when people were only used to speeds as fast as a horse.
Ballooning was expensive and therefore a rarity. Sadler would put his balloons on display before flying them, charging money to fund his flight.
And such was the lack of information about our skies that some people thought you could use a paddle to row in the sky.
Sadler had been warned he might collide with Heaven, and that sky dragons might come and attack him.
He was so famous that he once went to Cheltenham in 1785 to conduct a balloon flight and the entire town closed.
Mr Smith said: "I'd like to see One Direction to go to a town and see every school, shop, factory to close all day just to witness their presence."
Indeed three decades later the royal family requested three of his balloon flights for the 1814 jubilee.
"He was the highlight," said Mr Smith. "He had top billing. The crowds you got for this you wouldn't get today, there were countless numbers".
On 2 August 1814 Sadler was invited to meet Queen Caroline, King George III's consort, at the palace in London - a rare and huge honour that highlights his astronomical popularity.
Queen Caroline
Yet today, walking through his home city of Oxford, the town hall displays just one genuine artefact to represent the frenzied fanaticism surrounding Sadler - a drawer knob featuring a print of a balloon.
It is a tiny reminder of the unusual things a balloon motif was printed on during balloon mania, which included anything from snuff boxes to bidets.
Sadler biographer Richard O Smith (left) said the drawer knob on display typified balloon mania in the 1780s
The French may have beaten Sadler to it a year before, when on 21 November 1783 history's first manned flight was performed by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes in a hot air balloon designed by the Montgolfier brothers.
And an Italian named Vincenzo Lunardi was the first to fly in England on 15 September 1784.
But Sadler ensured the British had their own ballooning hero.
Lunardi "was only a showman when compared to Sadler," says Scott McLachlan, librarian at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.
"Sadler was unique in that he was engineer, inventor, experimenter and daredevil all in one."
But apart from the knob there is little else in Oxford to recognise Sadler's achievements.
The Oxford Museum of Science displays a medal bearing Sadler's head, with prints relating to ballooning history in storage.
There is a commemorative plaque along a quiet footpath called Dead Man's Walk in Oxford, next to the field where he first set off.
And there is his gravestone in the grounds of St Edmund's Hall in Oxford, not accessible to the passing public.
In 1984 this plaque was unveiled by Corpus Christie fields on the bicentenary of Sadler's first ascent in 1784
But as far as Sadler references go, that is pretty much it.
So why is the name James Sadler virtually unknown today?
"Very few books mention him and if they do it's usually in passing," says Mr McLachlan.
"It's hard to think how such a big celebrity of his times could be forgotten.
"But perhaps with new improvements in the exciting world of flight, people like the Wright brothers pushed an old timer out of the limelight."
"He left very, very little written work behind. Perhaps if he had written even just one decent treatise on something he wouldn't have been forgotten.
"But history has left him out."
Another reason Mr Smith and Mr McLachlan cite is his "lowly origins as a pastry chef".
James Sadler's grave is at the now decommissioned church of St Peter-in-the-East in Oxford, now part of St Edmund Hall College, Oxford
Sadler worked for the family business as a chef in a little shop in Oxford called The Lemon Hall Refreshment House.
The building, now long demolished, was in the shadow of the city's spires and limestone colleges where some of the country's greatest minds were at work.
Sadler's basket was in the shape of a gondola
Yet in the lowly surrounds of his workplace, according to the sources, Sadler was devising ways of flying with hot air.
"He worked in the back of a pastry shop and yet somehow he managed to design, manufacture, fuel and pilot the first ever balloon by an Englishman," said Mr Smith.
"Whilst others were struggling with what exactly made a balloon float - they were quite focused on smoke being the reason - Sadler understood the principles and focused on the fire," added Mr McLachlan.
"He was the first to create an adjustable fire in the basket to manipulate the balloon's altitude. He was also the first to use coal gas, an energy form which was only just being discovered."
He returned to the same field a month later and carried out what is thought to have been the first hydrogen-powered balloon flight.
"This is really remarkable because he worked in a cafe, baking pastries," said Mr Smith.
"He had no education and several sources say he was illiterate.
The 1814 jubilee celebrations in London on 1 August saw Sadler's son John ascend in the balloon dropping little parachutes containing jubilee messages
"Yet somehow he managed to manufacture hydrogen at a time when the element was so new, it hadn't even been named hydrogen.
"Somehow he was using neat sulphuric acid, and zinc and iron filings to make his own hydrogen - that he then captured in a duvet."
Owing to the scant amount of original documents on Sadler, little is known about why he became interested in ballooning or how he made the journey from pastry chef to ballooning expert.
While he would have known about the French ballooning achievements, "he was not someone joyriding on the back of the age's discovered advancements," says Mr Smith.
"Sadler's legacy is that he contributed scientific progress to flight - and proof he got it right is the fact he survived 50 flights over 40 years".
Perhaps tellingly, De Rozier, the first person to fly, also became the first to die in an aviation accident.
The Royal Aeronautical Society has maintained Sadler's grave and agrees that he "paved the way for later [aeronautical] developments".
"As the proprietor of a confectionery shop in Oxford, he did not indulge in flying as a rich celebrity but, to the acclaim of his academic contacts, saw his ascents as opportunities for scientific information gathering and carried measuring instruments on later flights," says Peter Elliott, chairman of the society's Historical Specialist Group.
But Mr McLachlan says the fact he came from the "town" rather than the "gown" of Oxford meant he was snubbed by the university at the time.
The ascent of James Sadler and one Captain Paget from Mermaid Gardens in Hackney, London in August 1811 was immortalized in various prints
"He was looked down on by other academics and this perhaps contributed to forgetting him in the academic and scientific communities," he says.
Sadler died in Oxford on 28 March 1828 aged 75 - a ripe old age for a daredevil balloonist - and his achievements inspired obituaries in England and France.
Oxford University's newspaper however marked his death with one sentence : "Mr James Sadler, elder brother of Mr Sadler of Rose Hill, Oxford, has died."
A line drawing of James Sadler was a "mass selling item"
This is remarkable considering his scientific discoveries in other fields, such as cannon design, for which he was praised by none other than Lord Nelson.
"Sadler worked out that all of the rifles and the cannons, including the ones aboard HMS Victory, over one third of them missed their target by over five feet," says Mr Smith.
"Sadler changed the smelting process, the length of the barrel, plus the size and weight of shot to optimise efficiency and accuracy.
"So you could argue that if it wasn't for Sadler the French and Napoleon would've won, and today in Britain we'd be eating croissants for breakfast".
And so his achievements rose like the height of his balloons.
At the jubilee celebrations in 1814, he was the celebrity more than the chemist, but overall he shunned any money-making spectacle and studiously focused on the science.
As a result he never became wealthy and died in poverty.
"Nowadays his name is almost unknown," says Mr Smith.
"It shows that even the mightiest stars one day collapse and emit no light."
What Sadler achieved
1784 - built a hot air balloon and was the first Englishman to fly on 4 October
1785 - one of the first to use coal gas as an illuminant
1786 - experimented with driving a wheeled-carriage using a steam engine
1791 - Patented a rotatory steam engine
1792-99 - Several Sadler engines were built and erected at Coalbrookdale, Shropshire and in London
1795 - Sadler established a mineral water factory near Golden Square in London
1796 - Appointed chemist to the board of naval works in London and worked on improving rifles and cannons
1798 - Patented a double-cylinder engine
1799 - Erected the Admiralty's first steam engine at Portsmouth
Ballooning history
Balloons were the first way humans took to the air
The first balloon flight in France was tested using animals: a sheep called Montauciel, a duck and a rooster
The first manned balloon ascent was on 21 November 21, 1783 by Frenchmen Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes
The paper-lined cotton balloon was designed by the the Montgolfier brothers
James Sadler set off in his balloon on 5 October 1784
He burnt wool for fuel because it was light
The early balloons used heated air as hot air expands to a lesser density than the surrounding air
Gas balloons were preferred to hot air as they did not use heavy stoves to burn fuel
BBC News - James Sadler: The Oxford balloon man who history forgot
But 200 years ago this Tuesday, the country was marking the 100th anniversary of the Hanoverian accession and London was resplendent in its lavish celebrations of a grand jubilee.
Throughout the month-long festivities there were acrobats, military bands, fireworks and a spectacular re-enactment of the Battle of the Nile - depicting Nelson's 1798 naval defeat of Napoleon's forces.
But what the thousands of people who lined Hyde Park during the festivities had really come to see was James Sadler's bright silk balloons.
Thirty years earlier Sadler had become the first Englishman to fly, when his hot air balloon drifted off from the vast fields by Merton College, Oxford, early on 4 October 1784 and rose about 3,600 ft in the air.
Sadler became a celebrity, inspiring all sorts of balloon memorabilia, and remained so for much of his life - and, on 15 July 1814, during the jubilee celebrations, crowds flocked to Hyde Park to see the man himself and his balloon.
But, despite being a celebrity in his own day and was the first Englishman to fly, Sadler's name is virtually unknown today.
James Sadler: The Oxford balloon man who history forgot
By Linda Serck
BBC News, South
12 July 2014
Thousands lined Hyde Park during the 1814 jubilee celebrations to see James Sadler's balloons take off
Two hundred years ago James Sadler was a name on every Englishman's lips. The pastry chef from Oxford with a gift for science became the first ever Englishman to fly. So why is his name virtually unknown today?
Tens of thousands of expectant faces had lined Hyde Park in London for a glimpse of the "grand balloon".
The year was 1814, the date 15 July, and London was resplendent in its lavish celebrations of a grand jubilee, marking 100 years since the Hanoverians acceded to the throne.
Throughout the month-long festivities there were acrobats, military bands, fireworks and a spectacular re-enactment of the Battle of the Nile - depicting Nelson's naval defeat of Napoleon's forces.
James Sadler was born in February 1753 to a family who ran a pastry shop in Oxford
But it was James Sadler's bright silk balloon that crowds had arrived early to see.
Balloon fever had struck England 30 years before in 1784 when Sadler had become the first ever Englishman to fly.
Back then, his hot air balloon drifted off from the vast fields by Merton College, Oxford, early on 4 October and rose about 3,600 ft in the air.
He flew for about 30 minutes and made it four miles to Woodeaton.
He was brought back to the city "an absolute hero," according to his biographer Richard O Smith.
"They took the horses off his carriage and the townspeople pulled his carriage all around Oxford for hours," he said.
The London Chronicle declared that "Sadler is known from the humble cabbage seller to the mightiest of lords".
The first English aeronaut had become an overnight celebrity, inspiring all sorts of balloon memorabilia, and remained so for much of his life.
In the 18th Century, "flight represented mankind's greatest achievement", said Mr Smith.
The fields by Corpus Christie College is where James Sadler became the first Englishman to perform a manned flight, doing so in his hot air balloon
Here was a man who was flying in a balloon at up to 94 mph, when people were only used to speeds as fast as a horse.
Ballooning was expensive and therefore a rarity. Sadler would put his balloons on display before flying them, charging money to fund his flight.
And such was the lack of information about our skies that some people thought you could use a paddle to row in the sky.
Sadler had been warned he might collide with Heaven, and that sky dragons might come and attack him.
He was so famous that he once went to Cheltenham in 1785 to conduct a balloon flight and the entire town closed.
Mr Smith said: "I'd like to see One Direction to go to a town and see every school, shop, factory to close all day just to witness their presence."
Indeed three decades later the royal family requested three of his balloon flights for the 1814 jubilee.
"He was the highlight," said Mr Smith. "He had top billing. The crowds you got for this you wouldn't get today, there were countless numbers".
On 2 August 1814 Sadler was invited to meet Queen Caroline, King George III's consort, at the palace in London - a rare and huge honour that highlights his astronomical popularity.
Queen Caroline
Yet today, walking through his home city of Oxford, the town hall displays just one genuine artefact to represent the frenzied fanaticism surrounding Sadler - a drawer knob featuring a print of a balloon.
It is a tiny reminder of the unusual things a balloon motif was printed on during balloon mania, which included anything from snuff boxes to bidets.
Sadler biographer Richard O Smith (left) said the drawer knob on display typified balloon mania in the 1780s
The French may have beaten Sadler to it a year before, when on 21 November 1783 history's first manned flight was performed by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes in a hot air balloon designed by the Montgolfier brothers.
And an Italian named Vincenzo Lunardi was the first to fly in England on 15 September 1784.
But Sadler ensured the British had their own ballooning hero.
Lunardi "was only a showman when compared to Sadler," says Scott McLachlan, librarian at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.
"Sadler was unique in that he was engineer, inventor, experimenter and daredevil all in one."
But apart from the knob there is little else in Oxford to recognise Sadler's achievements.
The Oxford Museum of Science displays a medal bearing Sadler's head, with prints relating to ballooning history in storage.
There is a commemorative plaque along a quiet footpath called Dead Man's Walk in Oxford, next to the field where he first set off.
And there is his gravestone in the grounds of St Edmund's Hall in Oxford, not accessible to the passing public.
In 1984 this plaque was unveiled by Corpus Christie fields on the bicentenary of Sadler's first ascent in 1784
But as far as Sadler references go, that is pretty much it.
So why is the name James Sadler virtually unknown today?
"Very few books mention him and if they do it's usually in passing," says Mr McLachlan.
"It's hard to think how such a big celebrity of his times could be forgotten.
"But perhaps with new improvements in the exciting world of flight, people like the Wright brothers pushed an old timer out of the limelight."
"He left very, very little written work behind. Perhaps if he had written even just one decent treatise on something he wouldn't have been forgotten.
"But history has left him out."
Another reason Mr Smith and Mr McLachlan cite is his "lowly origins as a pastry chef".
James Sadler's grave is at the now decommissioned church of St Peter-in-the-East in Oxford, now part of St Edmund Hall College, Oxford
Sadler worked for the family business as a chef in a little shop in Oxford called The Lemon Hall Refreshment House.
The building, now long demolished, was in the shadow of the city's spires and limestone colleges where some of the country's greatest minds were at work.
Sadler's basket was in the shape of a gondola
Yet in the lowly surrounds of his workplace, according to the sources, Sadler was devising ways of flying with hot air.
"He worked in the back of a pastry shop and yet somehow he managed to design, manufacture, fuel and pilot the first ever balloon by an Englishman," said Mr Smith.
"Whilst others were struggling with what exactly made a balloon float - they were quite focused on smoke being the reason - Sadler understood the principles and focused on the fire," added Mr McLachlan.
"He was the first to create an adjustable fire in the basket to manipulate the balloon's altitude. He was also the first to use coal gas, an energy form which was only just being discovered."
He returned to the same field a month later and carried out what is thought to have been the first hydrogen-powered balloon flight.
"This is really remarkable because he worked in a cafe, baking pastries," said Mr Smith.
"He had no education and several sources say he was illiterate.
The 1814 jubilee celebrations in London on 1 August saw Sadler's son John ascend in the balloon dropping little parachutes containing jubilee messages
"Yet somehow he managed to manufacture hydrogen at a time when the element was so new, it hadn't even been named hydrogen.
"Somehow he was using neat sulphuric acid, and zinc and iron filings to make his own hydrogen - that he then captured in a duvet."
Owing to the scant amount of original documents on Sadler, little is known about why he became interested in ballooning or how he made the journey from pastry chef to ballooning expert.
While he would have known about the French ballooning achievements, "he was not someone joyriding on the back of the age's discovered advancements," says Mr Smith.
"Sadler's legacy is that he contributed scientific progress to flight - and proof he got it right is the fact he survived 50 flights over 40 years".
Perhaps tellingly, De Rozier, the first person to fly, also became the first to die in an aviation accident.
The Royal Aeronautical Society has maintained Sadler's grave and agrees that he "paved the way for later [aeronautical] developments".
"As the proprietor of a confectionery shop in Oxford, he did not indulge in flying as a rich celebrity but, to the acclaim of his academic contacts, saw his ascents as opportunities for scientific information gathering and carried measuring instruments on later flights," says Peter Elliott, chairman of the society's Historical Specialist Group.
But Mr McLachlan says the fact he came from the "town" rather than the "gown" of Oxford meant he was snubbed by the university at the time.
The ascent of James Sadler and one Captain Paget from Mermaid Gardens in Hackney, London in August 1811 was immortalized in various prints
"He was looked down on by other academics and this perhaps contributed to forgetting him in the academic and scientific communities," he says.
Sadler died in Oxford on 28 March 1828 aged 75 - a ripe old age for a daredevil balloonist - and his achievements inspired obituaries in England and France.
Oxford University's newspaper however marked his death with one sentence : "Mr James Sadler, elder brother of Mr Sadler of Rose Hill, Oxford, has died."
A line drawing of James Sadler was a "mass selling item"
This is remarkable considering his scientific discoveries in other fields, such as cannon design, for which he was praised by none other than Lord Nelson.
"Sadler worked out that all of the rifles and the cannons, including the ones aboard HMS Victory, over one third of them missed their target by over five feet," says Mr Smith.
"Sadler changed the smelting process, the length of the barrel, plus the size and weight of shot to optimise efficiency and accuracy.
"So you could argue that if it wasn't for Sadler the French and Napoleon would've won, and today in Britain we'd be eating croissants for breakfast".
And so his achievements rose like the height of his balloons.
At the jubilee celebrations in 1814, he was the celebrity more than the chemist, but overall he shunned any money-making spectacle and studiously focused on the science.
As a result he never became wealthy and died in poverty.
"Nowadays his name is almost unknown," says Mr Smith.
"It shows that even the mightiest stars one day collapse and emit no light."
What Sadler achieved
1784 - built a hot air balloon and was the first Englishman to fly on 4 October
1785 - one of the first to use coal gas as an illuminant
1786 - experimented with driving a wheeled-carriage using a steam engine
1791 - Patented a rotatory steam engine
1792-99 - Several Sadler engines were built and erected at Coalbrookdale, Shropshire and in London
1795 - Sadler established a mineral water factory near Golden Square in London
1796 - Appointed chemist to the board of naval works in London and worked on improving rifles and cannons
1798 - Patented a double-cylinder engine
1799 - Erected the Admiralty's first steam engine at Portsmouth
Ballooning history
Balloons were the first way humans took to the air
The first balloon flight in France was tested using animals: a sheep called Montauciel, a duck and a rooster
The first manned balloon ascent was on 21 November 21, 1783 by Frenchmen Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes
The paper-lined cotton balloon was designed by the the Montgolfier brothers
James Sadler set off in his balloon on 5 October 1784
He burnt wool for fuel because it was light
The early balloons used heated air as hot air expands to a lesser density than the surrounding air
Gas balloons were preferred to hot air as they did not use heavy stoves to burn fuel
BBC News - James Sadler: The Oxford balloon man who history forgot
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