Early Airships
In 1783, two French brothers, Joseph Michel and Jacques Etienne Montgolfier
became the first human beings to be carried aloft by a manmade ship
of the air. That same year, 1783, another French gentleman, Jean-Baptiste-Marie
Meusnier envisaged the first elongated, steerable balloon, thus becoming
the conceptual inventor of the airship or dirigible. This first non-rigid
or blimp airship incorporated the first inner ballonets. A hot-air
ballon craze ensued all over Europe, particularly in France. Military
applications were rapidly developed...
But
it would not be until 1852 that another French, steam engineer Henri Giffard,
ordinarily regarded as the airship inventor today, built the first practical
airship and flew it. At an impressive average speed of 6.7 miles
per hour (10.8 km/h), he demonstrated powered flight, on September 24,
1952, flying from Paris to Trappe in an airship fitted with a suspended
gondola and a 3 horsepower steam engine of his own design, for a total
of 27 km (17 miles). The gas bag was 44 m (144 feet) long and 12
m (39 feet) in diameter, inflated with 2,500 m3
(88,000 cubic feet) of coal gas. Control was minimal and the engine very
heavy.
Two other French brothers Albert and Gaston Tissandier, also made themselves
famous with their experiments. Gaston's son, Paul, would also become
an aeronaut. Jules Francois Dupuis-Delcourt, an airship constructor,
did pioneering work in the 1850's.
In our Europe, in 1872, Paul Haenlein raised the speed
to 16 km/h (10 mph) with an engine fed by coal gas from an envelope of
the balloon. The first fully controllable airship, steerable back to its
starting point regardless of wind, was built in 1884 by the team of Charles
Renard and Arthur C. Krebs. It used an electrical power plant and achieved
23.3 km/h (14.5 mph). But in New Europa, Rhyme Enginemaster,
aided by Tom Olam, builds Leonardo da Vinci's long-lost Sorcerous Engine
in 1870, allowing the Kingdom of Bavaria to seize air supremacy.
This spurs many competitors, first and foremost Prussia under the impetus
of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, to find develop their own lighter-than-air
ships...
References come from A
Giant for the Sky: Airships brief history , History
- Flight Without Wings: Balloonists , and other sources.
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