Airships and balloons in the 19th Century

During the 1800s many advances in ballooning followed the flight of the Montgolfier in 1783, even to the extend that ballooning became popular all over the world. In Europe and America Jean-Pierre Blanchard made famous balloon flights, and in 1785 Jean-Pierre and John Jeffries crossed the English Channel. They also did the exhibition ascent in Philadelphia in 1793, with no one less than George Washington witnessing the event.

John Wise, the first American balloonist, had the privilege of being trained by Blanchard and in turn he trained many others in America, greatly spurring the American interest in ballooning. Unfortunately, Jean-Pierre Blanchard died in an experimental parachute jump from his balloon in 1809.

During the civil war, balloons were placed in strategic places to enable to observe below and communicate telegraphically with other balloons. The Confederacy realized the potential of ballooning for reconnaissance; they tried to put up a program but never succeeded. To make the balloon an observation area is Thaddeus Lowe’s idea and it was used as a pivot in telegraph mail between the White House and the balloon.

The art of aerial photography high up in a balloon was credited to Felix Tournachon (Nadar) of France. A whole photographic laboratory was even carried in a huge balloon. During the siege of Paris in the year 1870 Tournachon became well-known for ballooning mail and passengers out of the city.

On July 11, 1897 an attempt to balloon over the North Pole was made by Salomon August Andree and two others, launching from Spitzbergen. The trio was never again seen, until an expedition in 1930 found their frozen bodies. The balloon had crashed on ice, and the crew froze while attempting to walk back to civilization.

Propeller systems for balloons enabled the ship to be better controlled directionally, which gave birth to the dirigible. First successful flight of such a contraption was on September 24, 1852. Henri Giffard conceptualized the cigar shaped design, filled with hydrogen and powered by a steam engine.

Thaddeus Lowe built the first balloons that were used for observation during the American Civil War at Virgina in Fair Oaks. The LZ4 was Germany’s pride, but during an attempt to break an endurance record it got destroyed. During the Civil War, an army general from Germany known as Ferdinand von Zeppelin had noticed the extensive use of balloons. Count von Zeppelin along with chief engineer Ludwig Durr, created a 420-feet airship designed to carry multitudes of people.

A number of victorious dirigible flights happened towards the end of the 1880s. This moved the Germans to thinking of the possibility of using the airship as a means of traveling. Experiments went on with two models, one with gasoline engine and the other covered with aluminum sheet. Unfortunately, both crashed while doing test flights in 1897.