The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-08-09
France Led in Efecting
 the Conquest of the Air

Although Count von Zeppelin has achieved the most general celebrity among latter-day inventors of air ships, his gigantic aerial craft repre- sents but the adoption, development and improvement of the ideas of ear Her workers in the same field. In spite of the fear and dread inspired by the very name of Zeppelin, in ac- tual warfare the German loviathans of the atmosphere have yet to dem- onstrate any marked superiority to the much less advertised airships of France, the nation where the dirigible ballon was born and developed.
 It was Frenchman, in an airship invented by Frenchmen and built by the French government, who first demonstrated that such a craft could be made to answer to her helm. It was thirty-two years ago today, Au- gust g, 1884. that this epochal feat was performed. Many balloons had been used during the Franco-Prus- sian war to send messages out of be- sieged Paris. This suggested power fully to French minds the great pos- abilities of the balloon which could be steered, and scores of inventors tackled the problem: Tssander and Clifford were the most successful, but their balloons fell little. short of the realization of their hopes.
 The next step in the development of a dirigible balloon was taken when the French government organized an aeronautical bureau. Captain Renard lishment and was commissioned to "a oIl ft,A r1io nf a r craft, and to improve upon them if possible. Taking as his models the most successful of the balloons of his predecessors. Renard sought to com bine their virtues and eliminate their defects He succeeded in the con- struction of an electric motor which gave more power for its weight than any previously built. He then built an aircraft of spindle shape, with a length of 165 feet The propeller he tors had always placed the propeller at the rear.
 On August g, 1884, the new dirigi- ble. which had been christened :Ths France" was ready to take to the air. The weather conditions were fa- vorable. Capt Renard was accom- panied by his assistant. Capt. Krebs. Before great crowd which had as- sembled to witness the test, the bal loon rose into the air and sailed away, travelling distance of about two and half miles. Renard then turned the craft, which answered perfectly to the helm, and sailed back over the course, the balloon settling down on the ex- act spot from which it had started. This was the first time in history that such a feat had been performed, and it aroused the admiration of the world. For days little else was talked about, and at the Paris worlds fair in 1889 'The France" was one of the most interesting features of the exhi- bition.
 Santos-Dumont, the son of a Bra zi1ian coffee planter but an adopted son of France; Lebaudy of France, Spencer of England, Greth of San Zeppelin of sGermany, and many other inventors, took up the problem of aerial navigation where Renard left off, and the great dirig- ible balloons of today are the result of their efforts.
 ton. the discoverers of the principle having been Joseph and Stephen who built their first bal loon in 17S3. The first human being to ascend in a balloon was Francois Pilatre de Rozier, a young naturalist. who was afterwards. killed in an at tempt to cross the channel in a bal- loon