Airship

n airship is a lighter-than-air craft that can be propelled, like a balloon with an engine. An air­ship also has a rudder and fins for steer­ing. Some airships have rigid sides, while others are soft until filled with gas, like a balloon. Airships were used in the first controlled, powered flights.

The First Airships

Before airships were invented, people had developed balloons for air travel. Balloons, however, are not steerable, and they drift with the wind. In the nine­teenth century, aviators tried to build balloons that could be controlled.

French inventor Henri Giffard (1825-1882) built the first airship in 1852. He constructed a cucumber­shaped balloon 144 feet (44 meters) long. The only engine available at the time was a steam engine. Suspended beneath the balloon was a platform on which Giffard fixed a small steam engine that he designed himself to make it as light as possible. The engine drove a propeller, which pushed the airship along at 5 miles per hour (8 kilometers per hour). In this airship, Giffard flew

for 17 miles (27 kilometers). His airship had no way of turning in flight, unfor­tunately, because it had no steering mechanism.

Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs addressed this drawback in 1884. Their airship, La France, had an electric motor plus a rudder and elevator for steering. The inventors proved their airship’s superiority by flying a circular course over Paris, which no balloon could do. This airship was known as a dirigible, from a French word meaning “steer­able.” The name dirigible came to be used for airships in general.

Other airships soon took to the skies. In 1888, Dr. Karl Wolfert of Germany tested the first airship powered by a gasoline engine-an engine already being tested in early automobiles.