Competing Claims
Some claim that the hot air balloon was invented some 74 years earlier by the Brazilian Portuguese priest Bartolomeu de Gusmão. A description of his invention was published in 1709 in Vienna, and another one that was lost was found in the Vatican in about 1917. However, this claim is not generally recognized by aviation historians outside the Portuguese-speaking community, in particular the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.
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