James Tytler

James Tytler (1745 to 1804) was a Scottish apothecary who is remembered chiefly as the editor of the second edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and as the first person in Britain to fly, by ascending in a hot air balloon in 1784. Historians of encyclopedias describe a social outcast who did hack work for low pay and rarely escaped poverty, yet who was a man of many talents: a political and religious controversialist, scholar, journalist, poet, song writer, musician, balloonist, pharmacist, surgeon and printer. His training and work in pharmacy and surgery place him among the practising healers of eighteenth century Scotland, although his lasting reputation rests on his editorship of the encyclopedia and his balloon flight rather than on any medical discovery.