Abstract
BY the issue of commemorative stamps, the opening of a museum at Friedrichshafen, and in other ways, Germany has been paying homage to the memory of Count Ferdinand Zeppelin, of airship fame, the centenary of whose birth occurred on July 8. Born on the shores of Lake Constance, Count Zeppelin was educated at Stuttgart, and at twenty years of age became an infantry officer. His military studies led him to visit Italy, France and England, and in 1863 he served with the Union forces in the American Civil War, in the course of his service making a balloon ascent. Returning home, he took part in the war between Prussia and Austria and in the Franco-Prussian War and afterwards rose to high,command. In 1891 he retired as a general. He had long conceived the idea of aerial navigation by airship, and free from official duties, and possessing considerable means, he devoted all his energies to the construction of a rigid airship. In 1900 he achieved his first success with Z1 a craft 420 ft. long and 38½ ft. in diameter, the envelope of which contained seventeen gasbags with a total capacity of about 400,000 cub. ft. of hydrogen. The two cars suspended beneath the ship had two 18 horse-power Daimler engines. On July 2, 1900, the airship was hauled out of its floating shed on Lake Constance and covered a distance of 3½ miles before being landed on the water and towed back to the shed. As a military officer, Zeppelin had visualized the use of airships for observations and for carrying dispatches, but their use as a means of transport was his chief aim, and one of his ambitions was to see Europe and America connected by an airship service. This, however, he did not live to see, for he died in Berlin on March 8, 1917, in the midst of the Great War.
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The Zeppelin Centenary. Nature 142, 107 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/142107a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/142107a0