The Story of a Great Achievement

For the great vision and unfaltering devotion to an idea that gave the rigid airship to the world, this compilation is my humble tribute to the memory of Count Zeppelin.

Chicago, August, 1922

“The forces of nature cannot be eliminated but they may be balanced one against the other.”

Count Zeppelin,
Friedrichshafen, May 1914.

The savage can fasten only a dozen pounds on his back and swim the river. When he makes an axe, fells a tree, and builds a raft, he can carry many times a dozen pounds. As soon as he learns to rip logs into boards and build a boat, he multiplies his power a hundredfold; and when to this he adds modern sciences he can produce the monster steel leviathans that defy wind, storm and distance, and bear to the uttermost parts of the earth burdens a millionfold greater than the savage could carry across the narrow river.”

—Horace Mann