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N0KFQ > TODAY 02.07.14 15:59l 43 Lines 1887 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 25181_N0KFQ
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Subj: Today in History - Jul 2
Path: IZ3LSV<IV3SCP<IW0QNL<JH4XSY<JM1YTR<JE7YGF<N9PMO<N9PMO<VE3UIL<KQ0I<
N0KFQ
Sent: 140702/1455Z 25181@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQK1.4.60
Jul 2, 1900:
Zeppelin demonstrates airship
In the sky over Germany's Lake Constance, Count Ferdinand Graf
von Zeppelin, a retired Prussian army officer, successfully
demonstrates the world's first rigid airship. The 420-foot,
cigar-shaped craft was lifted by hydrogen gas and powered by a
16-horsepower engine.
Zeppelin had first become interested in lighter-than-air travel
in 1863, when as a military observer in the American Civil War he
had made several ascents in Union observation balloons. In 1891,
he retired from the Prussian army to devote himself to the
building of motor-driven dirigibles, and in 1900 he successfully
tested his first airship. Although a French inventor had built a
power-driven airship several decades before, the Zeppelin's rigid
dirigible, with its framework of metal girders, was by far the
largest airship ever constructed. Like the French airship,
Zeppelin's airship was lifted by highly flammable hydrogen gas
and thus vulnerable to explosion.
During World War I, several "Zeppelins," as all rigid airships
became popularly known, were used by the Germans in bombing
missions over Britain. After the war, commercial passenger
service increased, and one of the most famous rigid airships, the
Graf Zeppelin, traveled around the world in 1929. In the 1930s,
the Graf Zeppelin also pioneered the first transatlantic air
service, leading to the construction of the largest dirigible
ever built: the Hindenburg. On May 6, 1937, at the end of its
maiden voyage across the Atlantic, the Hindenburg burst into
flames upon touching its mooring mast in Lakehurst, New Jersey,
killing 36 passengers and crew. Lighter-than-air passenger travel
rapidly fell out of favor after the Hindenberg disaster, and no
existing rigid airship survived World War II.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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