trial balloon

Example Sentences

• "For many weeks in succession the little trial balloons thrown up to show the course of the wind were driven back upon the shores of France."
• "A small trial balloon was then sent up and its course followed by a thousand eyes. In one bound it flew against the bell-tower of the town-house, then rose again and made directly for the Northern Ocean."
• "In the same year the brothers Montgolfier were carrying on their experiments at Annonay. Their first serviceable balloon—the outcome of various attempts—was made of linen and lined with paper. [...] The excitement caused by the new-fangled machine soon spread to Paris, where many scientific men turned their attention to the subject. Among them was M. [Jacques] Charles, who was led to experiment with hydrogen. He manufactured a small trial balloon of silk, which he covered with an elastic varnish, and he had the satisfaction of seeing it rise up in the air, until it disappeared in the clouds."
• "That day, in order to get a little recreation, Pierre drove out to the village of Vorontsovo to see a great air-balloon, which Leppich had built for the destruction of the enemy, and a trial balloon, which was to be let off on the next day."
• "Whenever a balloon ascension is to take place M. Rampont, at the Hôtel des Postes, hastens to send off a few trial balloons for the purpose of ascertaining the course of the wind. When the direction is unfavorable the departure is postponed; on the contrary when it is favorable, orders are sent immediately to the station at which the ascension is to take place."
• ""The originality of the plan and views of the author [Jean Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent], and, above all, the perfect independence of its execution," are, according to the narrator in the Bulletin, the chief features of this new production; and the summary sketch of it which has been published, is (to use the phraseology of the same writer) "as a kind of trial balloon," launched with the view of seeing how the wind sits for his "great work.""