Ever since the time of the ancient Greeks people wanted to conquer the sky’s expanse and get from place to place by flying. Therefore, in the age of the Hellenic culture, a skilled sculptor and builder Dedal made a pair of wings out of wax and feathers. With the help of that ma
rvelous device, he managed to take off into the air above Crete, along with his son Ikar. Ikar had gone too close to the sun, the wings had melted and Dedal’s son had died, unfortunately.
Ever since, many inventors have tried to build an aircraft that would enable man to fly. In addition to that, stand the famous drawings of the flying machine by Leonardo da Vinchi.
At first, balloons filled with heated air flew in the sky with the help of wind. Afterwards, aircrafts filled with gas ligh- ter than air flew and did not depend on the wind currents. People called them "airships"...
The French had projected and made the first successful "airship" – in French dirigeable, in English dirigible, and in Serbian dirizabl.
In 1784, a French general Meusnier had projected an elliptic-like balloon made from two layered "bags" with 79 meters in length. It carried a cabin shaped in a certain way so that it could float on water should it need to land on it. The balloon was equipped with three propellers that needed to be hand-turned by power and strength of eighty men. The general’s death in 1793 had stopped the "take off" of his balloon.
http://www.dirizabl.co.yu/images/history/leonardot.jpg
In 1830, British "father of aviation" Sir George Cayley had recognized the importance of the existe
nce of motor power in order for flying and controlling of the aircraft to be possible. He experi- mented with a machine run by hot air that used gunpowder. He had hoped that the light steam engine would possibly advance and in a visionary way, he had foreseen the development of the internal combustion engine. The development of technology at that time did not enable Cayley to solve the problem of the force that would start and run the "airship".
Another Frenchman by the name of Pierr Jullien of Villejuif deserves the acknow- ledgments for further development of the dirigible. In 1850, he made and demon- strated a model of the "airship" that had a helm for flying and had looked more like models of the 20th century rather than like those that were made in the 19th century, after it was built.
It was Jullien’s "airship" that had inspired Henry Giffard, a French engineer and inventor, to build a dirigible of 44 meters in length, with a steam engine of 2.2 kilo- watts which was used to turn its propellers. The "case" for the passengers had hung from a wire net in which the aircraft was "wrapped".
Giffard’s first flight happened on September 24, 1852. He had traveled for almost 27 kilometers from Paris to Trappes with the speed of 10 kilometers per hour. His dirigible could fly only during calm weather because, by then, a strong enough motor, the dirigible’s starting device that would overcome everything stronger than a light breeze, had not been invented yet. Giffard, a wealthy enthusiast as he was, had projected one huge dirigible (600 meters long, the steam
engine for start off had weighed 30 tons) that was supposed to travel at the speed of 72 kilometers per hour. That sort of machine had been too expensive and had never been made.
In 1884, Charles Renard and Arthur C. Krebs had made an extended dirigible that they named "France" and this model was a real improvement in comparison to earlier models."France" was the first "airship" that was able to, in light wind, come back to its starting point from where it took off. It flew up in the air on August 9, 1884 for the first time and an electric engine run on batteries had controlled it. This flight, that lasted 23 minutes, was the first flight controlled from takeoff until landing. After that flight, "France" had flown seven more times.
During the next years, little had happened in the development of the dirigible, that is, until the appe- arance of a Brazilian man by the name of Albert Santos Dumont. He had perfected the technology of flying. He used a gasoline motor for the engine. He had 14 small "airships" that he had made and flew himself. In 1901, he had circled the Eiffel tower with his airship no.6, and with his dirigible
no.9, he regularly went to work from one place to the other.
A German general, Ferdinand von Zeppelin, was also succ- essful in the construction of "airships". In cooperation with Ludwig Deer and Hugo Eckener, von Zeppelin had his first successful flight on July 3, 1900.That kind of airship had been named zeppelin, after Ferdinand himself, and later on zeppelins were perfected and used in civilian and military air traffic and transport until 1940.
The Americans as well had participated in the whole "dirigible story". An American inventor Thomas S. Baldwin had made a 16 meter long ship, the "California Arrow, that had a Curtiss motor of 15 kilowatts in power. In 1908, he had sold it to the American military forces. This machine was the first American military airship.
A year earlier, an American journalist, Walter Wellman, tried to reach the North Pole with his dirigible but did not make it. In 1910, he, again, did not manage to fly over the Atlantic Ocean in his airship.
Nevertheless, the dirigibles had flown for more than a million kilometers in the next thirty years. They had even flown over oceans and were used in passenger transpor- tation and lives had not been lost.
Sixty years ago, count Hindenburg had, whilst running away, flown in the dirigible from Europe to the USA... his airship crashed in Lakehurst, NJ in 1937. Radio reporters and photojournalists sought through the tragedy live.
Thirty-six out of ninety-seven passengers had lost their lives... one person who had survived the fall, in despite of the accident, stated, "Dirigibles' time is yet to come. It is boring to fly by an airplane, dirigibles are exciting!"
In addition, really, time of the dirigible is only yet to come... Today, in the whole world, there are devotees and admirers of the dirigible. For instance, there is a group of scientists in Russia, which follow the thesis that the dirigible is the safest engine running airship ever built. The admirers of these airships give names to their compa- nies, sports clubs, associations, cafes, and publications after the dirigible. There are even museums that carry this name and painters who present different models of this ‘airship’ on their drawing panels.
Unusually nice post stamps with images of different types of the airship can be bought in Russia. We ourselves have named our magazine by this name. Nevertheless, will perhaps a new Meusnier, a new Giffard or Zeppelin appear and construct the airship of the future – an innovated dirigible?
"Airship of the Future" is precisely the name of a cargo airship that will be construc- ted by a German company called Cargo Lifter.The airship will be able to transport cargo weighing 160 tons at the speed of 100 kilometers per hour and at the height of 2000 meters. Filled up with 500,000 cubic meters of inflammable helium, the airship is going to be 260 meters in length. This dirigible will not be in need of a runway for take off and landing and will be more durable than conventional aircrafts. The only problem the constructors have is finding a way for transferring heavy and huge parts from the production section to the actual place where the parts are put together. "The cargo dirigible of the future" will be a balance between former bulky "airships" and light airships of today that are mostly used for commercial means.
The big dirigibles, made at the beginning of the 20th century, could carry lots of cargo, but they alone were heavy as well. The dirigibles of today are very light balloons filled up with pressured gas and therefore cannot be used for cargo transfers. The dirigible of the future will have, along with a motor, a modified solid construction for transferring cargo and a separate cabin for the crew.
The production of this airship is underway and several more years will probably pass by the time a prototype in its original size is made. In the "Cargo Lifter" company, they say that the project is of interest to the United Nations as well since the dirigible might also be used for food deliveries to endangered regions. Many people have gotten interested in the dirigible story, that is for sure. Perhaps because of nostalgia or the guiding idea of the everlasting of dirigible, the airship of the future is awaiting its promotion.
The Zeppelin Corporation constructed in 1997 an airship that took off in 2001 with a thought to use it in tourism means. The reservation of the flight ticket can be made on the internet as well.
Engineers at the Pentagon plan to "put up back in the sky" an airship similar to the one with which Hinden- burg flew to the United Stated by 2010.
Their dirigibles will be able to fly at heights above 20,000 meters and control US boundaries at sea since they will be equipped with radars that can cover around 2000 square kilo- meters.
On every June 3, in the German town of Fridrihshafen (on June 3, 1900, on the lake Konstanc near the mentioned town, count Zeppelin had taken off in his "airship") admirers of old aircrafts gather along. They are telling the world that fly- ing by planes is boring, that the view from a dirigible is much more interesting and that is why its time is only yet to come. We want to believe those people.
More than some seventy years ago in an old archived edition of the daily newspa- per ‘Politika’ it had been stated: "A German dirigible ‘Count Zeppelin’ traveling through France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Hungary – will fly over Yugoslavia as well."
