The Development and Future of the Airship

Extract

IN view of the growing interest in the development of Airships as a step towards the improvement of commercial relationship between the Mother country and the various parts of her far flung Empire, there must be some to whom this subject is of interest, and therefore, as one who has had experience, both in the construction and in the actual flying of several types of Airships, I submit the following brief account of the development of the Airship of to-day and also the possibilities that lie before this type of aircraft

The earliest experiments of a serious character in “Lighter than Air” type of aircraft took place about the year 1776, immediately following the discovery of Hydrogen gas by Cavendish, but it was not until 1783 that the first really successful flight was made by a Frenchman, Professor Charles, who remained in the air for three and three-quarter hours and covered a distance of forty miles in a balloon of his own design, the lifting medium of which was Hydrogen