In 1884 Renard, with Captain Krebs, con structed the La France, the success of which stimulated anew the hope of conquering the air. Its hull was 165 feet long, 27.5 feet in greatest diameter and cubed 66,000 feet. It was kept rigid under varying conditions by means of a balloonet filled with air. The car sus pended from the balloon was 108 feet long and 6 to 7 feet across. It carried at its for ward end the propeller, and at its rear a rec tangular rudder, and between them the aero nauts, the batteries and electric motor. The motor weighed 220 pounds and developed nine horse power. The battery, composed of chloro chromic cells, was the result of researches of Renard.
While Renard was experimenting with elec tric power, a few German inventors were ap plying gas and benzine engines with better promise of practical success. The first of those was Hanlein, who in 1872 advanced the project of driving a well-shaped balloon by means of a gas engine taking its fuel from inside the balloon, and making good the loss by pumping air into the balloonet. In 1879 Bannigarten and Wolfert in Germany built a dirigible equipped with a Daimler benzine motor. The year 1898 witnessed the commence ment of two famous systems of navigation by the lighter than air, one in France, the other in Germany, destined quickly to revolutionize the art and to establish it on a substantial basis. The leading exponents of these two systems were Alberto Santos-Dumont, a rich young Brazilian living in Paris, and Ferdinand von Zeppelin. Both achieved success by applying the gasoline engine to the propulsion of elon gated balloons, but by very different methods.
Santos-Dumont's first dirigible was designed to carry his weight of 110 pounds and a 356 horse-power petroleum engine taken from his tricycle and reduced in weight to 66 pounds. The hull was a cylinder of varnished Japanese silk, 82 feet long including its pointed ends, 11% feet in diameter and 6,354 cubic feet in gas capacity. A ballonet, or air pocket, occupied the lower middle of the envelope. The basket for the pilot, engine and two blade propeller was suspended below the hull. The poise of the vessel was con trolled by shifting weights fore and aft, while the turning right and left was effected by means of a silk rudder stretched over a steel frame. This dirigible demonstrated that it was possible readily to guide an airship, but upon descent the envelope folded up like a pocket knife. Santos-Dumont continued his pioneer work until he encountered the rivalry of great wealth employing highly trained en gineering and constructive talent. But he con tinued to do excellent work for the populariz ing of the science. Santos-Dumont's experi
ments were continued by Le Baudy, the most notable of whose ships were the Le Bandy, La Patrie, Morning Post and the Vile de Paris. The Zodiac Company, under the com pelling energy of Count de la Vaulx, furthered the work by the production of the Zodiac I, II, III and IV.
During all of these developments English and American authorities pursued a policy of interested waiting, watching the progress and hoping to benefit by the costly experimenting of the others. In 1909, however, the British government appropriated nearly $400,000 for aeronautics, and the United States House of Representatives voted $500,000, but promptly reversed its action. Considerable progress was made in England subsequent thereto through the monetary stimulus offered by various Lon don newspapers.
The United States War Department, in 1908, started an aerial squadron by purchasing from Thomas S. Baldwin for $10,000 a tiny airship of the flexible type. It had a rubberized gray silk cylindrical hull slightly tapering toward the rear and terminating in ogival ends, its length being 96 feet, its major diameter 1956 feet.
Coincidentally much work was done in Ger many. The work done there by Von Zeppelin really commenced in 1898, when he formed a limited liability company for the purpose of de veloping a new type of dirigible which he had long contemplated. In the summer of 1900 he brought forth from his floating laboratory on Lake Constance the first of his airships.
Through disaster after disaster and griev ous hardships, Count Zeppelin pushed his work from 1900 to 1910, when he had his first passenger machine ready. The maiden voyage of this first air liner was a marvel to the for tunate few traveling in such celestial style. Great progress was made between 1910 and 1914 and at the outbreak of the European War the Zeppelin was one of the most potential ele ments of Germany's air fleet.
Aeroplane, The.* The art of presents two main groups of fliers. The first comprises the various para chutes, gliding machines, soaring machines. These may be called passive fliers, because they carry no motive power, but ride passively on the air by the force of gravity or a towline. The second group comprises the bird-like flap wing machines called aorthopters(; the screw lift fliers called the aeroplanes, also called monoplanes, biplanes, triplanes, ac cording to the number of superposed main lift ing surfaces; and lastly the gyroplanes, whose sustaining surfaces may turn over and over, like a falling lath, or whirl round and round, like a boomerang. These may all be called dynamic, or power, fliers.