He and his brother Anne-Jean Robert (1758–1820) were the engineers who built the world's first hydrogen balloon for professor Jacques Charles; which flew from central Paris on August 27, 1783. They went on to build the world's first manned hydrogen balloon, and on 1 December 1783 Nicolas-Louis accompanied Jacques Charles on a 2-hour, 5-minute flight. Their barometer and thermometer made it the first balloon flight to provide meteorological measurements of the atmosphere above the Earth's surface.
