Page 55 - All About History - Issue 38-16

The Weird World of Airships

Andrews offered his
invention to the Union
army during the
American Civil War,
but they showed little
interest in it
1852 1863

A change in direction Losing power

Just 51 years before the Wright Brothers conquered was highly flammable and dangerous, but was An aviator and airship inventor, Solomon Andrews
the skies, the first powered flight in history was otherwise lighter than air, allowing for balloons had an unconventional approach to airship
taking place. A French engineer, Jules Henri Giffard, filled with it to float. To power his dirigible, Giffard construction. His craft, called the Aereon, would
had solved a major problem with balloon travel: used a steam engine specially designed with a use air currents as propulsion rather than an
controlled and steerable propulsion. Without this, downwards-facing funnel and mixed exhaust engine to glide through the air. This novel idea
a balloon ride was essentially a one-way trip. fumes so as to reduce the chance of sparking – just was never fully realised as the company went
Creating the world’s first powered and steerable one of which could vaporise the volatile hydrogen. bankrupt after the American Civil War. An attempt
airship, called a ‘dirigible’ from the French word Producing three horsepower and able to reach a top to reinvent the concept in the 1960s also failed.
for steerable, Giffard had opened the world up speed of more than nine kilometres per hour, the
to the concept of lighter-than-air travel. The gas engine was about as powerful as a modern iron.
used in balloons at this time was hydrogen, which

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