watching the numerous
balloons leaving Paris during the siege, no doubt, first originated in
Zeppelin's mind the thought of developing a large rigid airship. In
fact, as early as 1873 he designed a large rigid airship, sub-divided
into single compartments and he emphasized the importance of such
aircraft for long distance transportation in order to help in the
civilization of mankind.

In 1887 Zeppelin submitted a memorandum to the King of Wurttemberg in
which he explained in detail the requirements of a really successful
airship and stated many reasons why such airships ought to be large and
of rigid construction. However, nothing of importance was actually
accomplished until he resigned as a General in 1891 in order to give his
full time to his invention.

[PLATE 3: Zeppelin "LZ-4" Starting From the Floating Shed on a
Twenty-four Hour Flight, June 1908.

Count Zeppelin's Second Floating Shed With Zeppelin "LZ-5".
Lake Constance (Bodensee) 1908.]

In 1894 at the age of 56 years, with the assistance of an Engineer,
Kober, he had completed the design of a rigid airship, and the modern
rigid airship of today is not essentially different from Zeppelin's
first design. He submitted these designs to a special committee that had
been appointed by the most famous of the German scientific authorities
and was greatly disappointed over the decision of the committee which,
although they could not find any essential faults in the Count's
design, could not recommend that an airship be built in accordance with
Zeppelin's plans. Admitting that he was not the first to conceive the
idea of rigid airships, Count Zeppelin, however, insisted that he had
arrived at new principles and that these principles were sound. There
had been several attempts to build rigids, but there always had been too
much weight of the necessarily voluminous framework, which so anchored
the craft with its own weight that it could not lift itself. The
discovery of aluminum made this problem less difficult, however, and
many models were designed with the framework of this light material.

Two years after Count Zeppelin had completed his first designs and while
he was still endeavoring to arouse enough interest to warrant the
construction of a rigid ship, an aluminum framework rigid ship was built
by another group near Berlin. This ship was of approximately 150 feet in
length, but of an essentially different design from Zeppelin's. The
outer cov