EN BALLONS DIRIGEABLES

(Paris): (Saussine Editeur), 1900. Very good plus.. Rare and spectacular French game of aerostatic navigation from the great Age of Airships. Wonderful turn-of-the-century game of dirigible adventure and aetheric disaster for six players, lacking only the original instruction sheet. To traverse the 75 numbered stations of the playing board, an airship must bypass or overcome a host of dangers between launch and landing: lightning strikes, explosions, fires, loss of cargo and passengers, sailors in need of air rescue, and the most embarrassing dirigible mishap of all: accidental gas-bag puncture by cathedral spires.
The estimated date of manufacture, midway between the balloon marvels of Jules Verne and the Hindenburg disaster, coincides with competition for the Deutsch de la Meurthe aviation prize, a bounty of 100,000 francs offered in 1900 to the first machine capable of flying a round trip from the Parc Saint Cloud to the Eiffel Tower in Paris in under 30 minutes; the prize was won by Alberto Santos-Dumont's Airship Number 6 in 1901, after a series of failures echoed in several of the stations and landmarks of the EN BALLONS gameboard. The following year, aviator Augusto Severo de Albuquerque Maranhão's dirigible exploded over Paris; the tragedy was reconstructed in a lost George Méliès silent film, The Catastrophe of the Balloon "Le Pax" (1902). To put it briefly: at the dawn of the twentieth century, the skies of Paris were filled with flaming airships. What a time to be young, alive, and playing board games. 17.5'' x 13'' (box). Original chromolithographed box, containing: original game board, printed on four 16.75'' x 12'' chromolithographed panels (no longer connected); six painted metal model dirigible playing pieces; two six-sided dice; two cardboard cones, one cardboard dish, and six small cardboard squares numbered 1 through 6 respectively; and one pink fabric pouch containing over 70 opalescent pastel-colored necco wafer-esque round glass tokens. Moderate fraying and wear to edges of box and playing boards. Mild wear to other game pieces.