John M. (John Mackenzie) Bacon

Born in Berkshire in 1846, John Mackenzie Bacon was an English astronomer, aeronaut, lecturer, and writer. He was also an Anglican clergyman before leaving church work to focus on science, public lectures, photography, and ballooning. He became a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1888.

Bacon wrote about flight at a time when it still felt astonishingly new. His best-known work, The Dominion of the Air (1903), helped introduce readers to the history and excitement of ballooning and early aeronautics. He was known not just for writing about the subject, but for living it: he made balloon ascents, carried out scientific observations aloft, and was involved in early attempts to photograph and even film events such as a solar eclipse.

He died in 1904, leaving behind a reputation as one of the more colorful popularizers of science in late Victorian Britain. A later biography by his daughter, Gertrude Bacon, shows how closely his literary work was tied to a life of experiment, curiosity, and public enthusiasm for the possibilities of the air.