The Carbon County news. [volume] (Red Lodge, Mont.) 1924-1931, 1929-05-30

ludll-dlF craft. FOT The WOrlQS
biggest zeppen-two of them in fact-are now
being built in Akron, Ohio as a part of the air.
ship building program recommended by the naval
bureau of aer0nautics.
This airship building program undertaken by
Uncle Sam represents the accumulation of years
of research and flying experience in both Europe
and America, and the expansion of Americas
hghter-than-air program came only after the mat
ter had been exhaustively discussed by three ses-
sons of congress- Emphasis was laid on the fact
that America, having possession CT vast resources
of the noninfammable gas, heum, had oppor-
tunity for construction of airships that no other
country had. The most important arship i'm
provement in recent years is the use of helum
gas During the World war all of the airships
USED contained hydrogen gas which is indammabe
and under certain conditions explosive.
III connection with the announcement that
Uncle Sam is to have the worlds biggest Yep it
Is Interesting to note that although this type of
aircraft was the invention of German, it really
originated in this country Count Ferdinand
Zeppelin, for whom it is named, conceived the
idea c. building a rigid ship while he was serv-
ing as volunteer officer in the Union army dur
ing the Civil war. During his service he had the
opportunity of making ascensions in captive bal
looms at Ft. Smelling, Mimi. and in Virginia Later
as colonel of cavalry during the Franco-Prus-
sian war, Zeppelin observed the use of free bal
looms which flew over Paris during the siege of
the French capital. From that time on he spent
most of his leisure time studying and designing
arships and in 1896 he retired from the army to
devote the rest of his life to that work.
Zeppelin built his first ship in 1900 but it was
not until 1870 after he had built and lost four
ships, that the world accepted his invention as
practicable. During the next four years Zeppe-
Inns were used extensively for passenger service
and carried more than $4,000 passengers without
a single accident The outbreak of the World
war, however, prevented him from carrying out
his dream of regular schedule of airshp travel
between Europe and America and he died in 1917.
I'y this time the Zeppelin corporation had grown
TO be one of the greatest companies in Germany
and this type of arship was extensively used for
military purposes throughout the World war One
of the Zeppelin experts was Dr. Karl Arnstein,
chief engineer and constructor of 70 airships. In
1924 when the Zeppelin rights for North America
were sold to an American company, Arnstein came
to this country as vice president and chief eng-
neer of the Goodyear Zeppelin corporation In
the navy competition of 1926 Arnsten's designs
were awarded first place and on them was based
the contract which was let last October for build
Ing the superdrigbles which are now under con-
structon in Akron
The two new superZeps will be known as the
lRS5 and ZRS6. To give you an idea of what
fhese Leviathans of the air will look like take a
t'ok at the composite picture shown above If
you saw the Los Angeles during it's tour across
the country or if you saw the Graf Zeppelin and
marveled at these monsters of the sky, consider