Plans were immediately made for the construction of a third dirigible,
which was to be 1,970 feet in length, 98 feet in extreme diameter, and
to have a capacity of 7,800,000 cubic feet of gas. The engine of this
giant was to have weighed 30 tons, and with it Giffard expected to
attain a speed of 40 miles per hour. Cost prevented the scheme being
carried out, and Giffard went on designing small steam engines until
his invention of the steam injector gave him the funds to turn to
dirigibles again. He built a captive balloon for the great exhibition
in London in 1868, at a cost of nearly £30,000, and designed a
dirigible balloon which was to have held a million and three-quarters
cubic feet of gas, carry two boilers, and cost about £40,000. The plans
were thoroughly worked out, down to the last detail, but the dirigible
was never constructed. Giffard went blind, and died in 1882--he stands
as the great pioneer of dirigible construction, more on the strength of
the two vessels which he actually built than on that of the ambitious
later conceptions of his brain.
In 1872 Dupuy de Lome, commissioned by the French government, built a
dirigible which he proposed to drive by man-power--it was anticipated
that the vessel would be of use in the siege of Paris, but it was not
actually tested till after the conclusion of the war. The length of
this vessel was 118 feet, its greatest diameter 49 feet, the ends being
pointed, and the motive power was by a propeller which was revolved by
the efforts of eight men. The vessel attained to about the same speed
as Giffard’s steam-driven airship; it was capable of carrying fourteen
men, who, apart from these engaged in driving the propeller, had to
manipulate the pumps which controlled the air bags inside the gas
envelope.
In the same year Paul Haenlein, working in Vienna, produced an airship
which was a direct forerunner of the Lebaudy type, 164 feet in length,
30 feet greatest diameter, and with a cubic capacity of 85,000 feet.
Semi-rigidity was attained by placing the car as close to the envelope
as possible, suspending it by crossed ropes, and the motive power was
a gas engine of the Lenoir type, having four horizontal cylinders, and
giving about 5 horse-power with a consumption of about 250 cubic feet
of gas per hour. This gas was sucked from the envelope of the balloon,
which was kept fully inflated by pumping in compensating air to the
air bags inside the main envelope. A propeller, 15 feet in diameter,
was driven by the Lenoir engine at 40 revolutions per minute. This
was the first instance of the use of an internal combustion engine in
connection with aeronautical experiments.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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