A knight of the air

Henry Tracey Coxwell

Henry Tracey Coxwell was an English aeronaut and writer about ballooning active over the British Isles and continental Europe in the mid-to late nineteenth century. His achievements included having established and led two military balloon companies in Cologne, Germany at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, leading the first aerial trip in England for purposes of photography, piloting a British Association flight from Wolverhampton, England that achieved a record altitude with James Glaisher in 1862, reaching at least 29,000 ft (8,800 m), and perhaps as high as 35,000 to 37,000 ft, as well as founding The Balloon, or Aerostatic Magazine and collecting his experiences in an autobi