Today, we ride in an airship. The University of
Houston's College of Engineering presents this
series about the machines that make our
civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity
created them.
Powered air transport took
two very different forms: heavier-than-air flight
and lighter-than-air flight. Heavier-than-air
flight has developed steadily, but lighter-than-air
transport seems for the moment to have come and
gone. The grand hotels that buoyed gently through
the skies in the early 20th century have completely
vanished. Little more than advertising blimps
survive.
The first successful powered balloon flight was
made by the French steam-engine designer Giffard in
1852. He mounted a three-horsepower steam engine of
his own design on a 147-foot-long balloon and
chuffed away at six miles per hour on a three-hour
ride over the suburbs of Paris.
Many powered balloon flights were made during the
next half century, and in 1900 Henry Deutsch, a
French financier, offered a 100,000-franc prize to
the first person who could fly the 14-mile course
from the Paris Aero Club around the Eiffel Tower
and back in 30 minutes. The two leading contenders
were the young Brazilian Santos Dumont and the
German Count von Zeppelin.
Santos Dumont just barely won the prize in 1901,
but he soon lost hope for lighter-than-air flight.
"To propel a dirigible balloon through the air," he
complained, "is like trying to push a candle
through a brick wall." He turned to
heavier-than-air flight and in 1906 was the first
European to fly an airplane.
But Count von Zeppelin went on to develop the rigid
dirigible into a glorious machine. He was flying
passengers by 1910 and achieving remarkable
popularity in Germany. In its enthusiasm, the
public completely forgave Zeppelin's spectacular
failures. His dirigibles weren't too effective as
warships in WW-I, but after the war he began
transoceanic service with really grand airships.
The grandest of these was the
Hindenburg. Completed in 1936, it was
just a little shorter than the Queen
Mary. It served 50 passengers and crossed
the Atlantic in 2½ days. This two-story
flying hotel had staterooms, a lounge, a promenade,
a dining room that offered venison and roast
gosling -- all the amenities anyone might wish.
When the Hindenburg caught fire and
burned in Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937, that put
an end to the great dirigibles. Santos Dumont, it
seemed, had made the right choice. Rather than
tackle the problems of making hydrogen-filled
balloons safe, people abandoned them and went with
the airplane.
But who -- crammed like a sardine on a
transatlantic jet and suffering jet lag -- doesn't
look back at the gentle elegance of these quiet
monsters and wonder about the complex factors that
influenced this particular decision.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
