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Fire Escape Partners
3465 25th Street, Suite 17
San Francisco, CA 94110 | (noun)
[AIR-ah-not'] 
1. somebody who pilots or navigates a lighter than air craft, such as a blimp or balloon; a balloonist: "During most conversations, Tom's thoughts drifted like an aeronaut in flight."
Origin:
Approximately 1784; from French, 'aeronaute' ('aer,' from Greek, 'aero,' from 'aer,' 'aeros': air + Greek 'nautes': sailor). In action:
"In 1909, a memorable fair attraction was the cigar-shaped Stroebel's airship, which used 7,000 cubic feet of hydrogen to perform 'daily ascensions' in a circle around the courthouse clock tower. Warned a period advertisement, 'It is understood that a premium of $50 will be given to the person that is brave enough to accompany the aeronaut in the flights.'
In comparison, in 1991, fair patrons were charged $10 for helicopter rides.
The McAfooses agree that some of the most popular fair events in recent years have been the band and cheerleader exhibitions and the demolition derby. 'That's where we get the crowds,' Frank said."
Jeff Himler. "Indiana Co. Fair history collected," Blairsville Dispatch (August 22, 2003).
"'You ought to have thought of my record and stayed out,' he told Fanny, one day the next spring, when the affairs of the headlight company had begun to look discouraging. 'I feel the old familiar sinking that's attended all my previous efforts to prove myself a business genius. I think it must be something like the feeling an aeronaut has when his balloon bursts, and, looking down, he sees below him the old home farm where he used to live--I mean the feeling he'd have just before he flattened out in that same old clay barnyard. Things do look bleak, and I'm only glad you didn't go into this confounded thing to the extent I did.'
Miss Fanny grew pink. 'But it must go right!' she protested. 'We saw with our own eyes how perfectly it worked in the shop. The light was so bright no one could face it, and so there can't be any reason for it not to work. It simply...'
'Oh, you're right about that,' Amberson said. 'It certainly was a perfect thing--in the shop! The only thing we didn't know was how fast an automobile had to go to keep the light going. It appears that this was a matter of some importance."
Booth Tarkington (1869-1946). The Magnificent Ambersons (1918).
"The machinery has proved, like the balloon, unmanageable, and flies away with the aeronaut. Steam, from the first, hissed and screamed to warm him; it was dreadful with its explosion, and crushed the engineer. The machinist has wrought and watched, engineers and firemen without number have been sacrificed in learning to tame and guide the monster. But harder still it has proved to resist and rule the dragon Money, with his paper wings. Chancellors and Boards of Trade, Pitt, Peel, and Robinson, and their Parliaments, and their whole generation, adopted false principles, and went to their graves in the belief that they were enriching the country which they were impoverishing. They congratulated each other on ruinous expedients. It is rare to find a merchant who knows why a crisis occurs in trade, why prices rise or fall, or who knows the mischief of paper money. In the culmination of national prosperity, in the annexation of countries; building of ships, depots, towns; in the influx of tons of gold and silver; amid the chuckle of chancellors and financiers, it was found that bread rose to famine prices, that the yeoman was forced to sell his cow and pig, his tools, and his acre of land; and the dreadful barometer of the poor-rates was touching the point of ruin. The poor-rate was sucking in the solvent classes, and forcing an exodus of farmers and mechanics. What befalls from the violence of financial crisis, befalls daily in the violence of artificial legislation."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). American poet and essayist. Essays and English Traits.
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