By this time the French Government had become interested in the work, and provided money to continue investigations. The result of this was that in 1885 two officers of the French army, Captains Renard and Krebs, brought out by far the most successful airship yet constructed. It was 165 feet long, 27 feet in diameter, and was driven by an electric motor of nine horse-power. That this machine proved itself perfectly capable of being guided in the air is amply shown by the fact that it returned to its shed five times out of the seven on which it was publicly taken out. It also attained a speed of fourteen miles an hour, and indeed it would seem that Renard and Krebs, although their names are now almost forgotten, accomplished nearly as great things twenty years ago as the popular airship inventors of the present day.
One of the greatest difficulties with which early inventors had to contend was the enormous weight of their engines. The machinery they were obliged to use to drive their airships through the air weighed more than their balloons, unless made of unwieldy size, had power to lift. The same difficulty indeed exists at the present time, though to a much less degree. Of late years, and especially since the introduction of the motor-car, great progress has been made in the construction of light but powerful engines, or motors, and the employment of petrol vapour instead of coal or oil has very greatly lessened the weight of the fuel which has to be carried.
In consequence of this improvement many airships have recently been made which have met with varying success, and many more are at the present moment in process of construction. Among the host of inventors, whose names it would here be impossible even to mention, three stand out from the rest in special prominence—Zeppelin, Santos Dumont, and Stanley Spencer—all three the inventors of airships which have, by actual experience, proved their power of steering a course across the sky.
Of these rival airships, by far the largest and most elaborate was that built by the first named, Count Zeppelin, a distinguished veteran soldier of the German army. For many years he had spent his time and fortune in making experiments in aerial navigation, and at length in 1900, having formed a company and collected a large sum of money for the purpose, he produced an enormous airship, which, from its size, has been compared to a man-of-war. In shape Count Zeppelin’s invention resembled a gigantic cigar, 420 feet in length, pointed at both ends. The framework was made of the specially light metal aluminium, covered over with silk, and though from outside it looked all in one piece, within it was divided into seventeen compartments, each holding a separate balloon made of oiled silk and absolutely gas-tight. The object of this was to prevent the tendency the gas has to collect all at one end as the ship forces its way through the air. These balloons were filled with pure hydrogen, the cost of the inflation alone being £500. Beneath was slung a long gangway, 346 feet in length, with two cars, also made of aluminium, attached to it. In these cars were placed two motor-engines of sixteen horse power each, driven by benzine, and working a pair of screw-propellers attached to the balloon. A steering apparatus was placed at each end, and the whole machine, with five passengers, weighed about eleven tons.
Zeppelin’s Airship over Lake Constance.
To lessen the effects of a possible fall, the experiments were carried out over water, and the great airship was housed in a shed built on Lake Constance. The cost of this shed alone was enormous, for it was elaborately constructed on pontoons, and anchored in such a way that it could be turned round to allow the airship to be liberated from it in the best direction to suit the wind. The trial trip was made one evening in June 1900, when a very light wind was blowing. The great machine rose into the air, carrying Zeppelin and four companions to a height of 800 feet. The steering apparatus then being put into action, it circled round and faced the wind, remained stationary for a short while, and then sank gracefully and gently upon the water. A few days later another and more successful trial was made. The wind at the time was blowing at sixteen miles an hour, but in spite of this the airship slowly steered its course against the wind for three and a half miles, when, one of the rudders breaking, it was obliged to come down. On one or two other occasions also it made successful voyages, proving itself to be perfectly manageable and capable of being steered on an absolutely calm day. The expense of the experiments was, however, tremendous; money fell short, and the great machine, the result of many years’ labour and thought, has since been abandoned and broken up.
Santos Dumont’s Airship.
A far happier fate has so far attended the efforts of the brave young Brazilian, Albert Santos Dumont. The wealthy son of a successful coffee-planter, he had always from his boyhood been keenly interested in aeronautics, and, coming to Paris, he constructed in 1898 an airship of a somewhat novel kind. His balloon was cigar-shaped, 83 feet long, and holding 6500 feet of pure hydrogen. Attached to the balloon, and working a propeller, was a small motor like those used for motor cycles, and astride of this Santos Dumont rode, bicycle fashion, steering his course with a rudder. In this ingenious machine he ascended from the Botanical Gardens in Paris and circled several times round the large captive balloon then moored there, after which he made a number of bold sweeps in the air, until an accident occurred to his engine and he came precipitately to the ground. Though shaken he was by no means discouraged, and declared his intention of continuing his experiments until he should have invented an airship which, in his own words, should be “not a mere plaything, but a practical invention, capable of being applied in a thoroughly useful fashion.”