“Count Zeppelin, who proved that air ships have a practical future, is no longer undisputed ‘king of the air.’ His rivals have taken his pattern, and improved it until soon air ships will be able to keep afloat for many days and in that case to cross oceans. A type of this modern ship is the first Schütte leviathan of wood and steel bracing, now nearly finished at Mannheim. It is expected to lift its twenty-four and one-fifth tons one and a quarter miles, because its beam is sixty feet as compared with the forty-four feet of the _Zeppelin II_. The car is one hundred and thirty feet long, with a cabin to accommodate thirty passengers. The new ship displaces nineteen thousand cubic meters, as against fifteen thousand in the _Zeppelin III_. It is expected to carry a cargo of five to six tons supported by ten spherical sustaining chambers, and eight ring-shape reservoir chambers connected by a secret apparatus. These eight reservoirs automatically receive all expanding gas that escapes from the sustaining chambers, thus conserving the entire supporting power. Four motors of combined five hundred and forty horse power will drive the propellers. Expert opinion predicts a speed of thirty-seven to forty-three miles an hour, three miles faster than the _Gross III_, at this writing the fastest air ship in the world. The whole enterprise is backed by Mr. Lanz, a rich manufacturer, who is president of the German Air-Navy League. A wooden-braced ship of equal equipment and size, designed by the Engineer Rettich, is well under way. “Another rival of the _Zeppelin_, so far only projected, has been designed by the Engineers Radinger and Wagner, and is intended to be an advance in endurance. It should float for fifty days without replenishing gas. It is planned to have a rigid hull of hollow paper tubes and steel bracing and to be thirty per cent lighter than a _Zeppelin_ built of aluminum, in any equal size. Drum-shape compartments are to hold the sustaining hydrogen, none of which is to be lost through expansion by the sun, as any surplus will be compressed by automatic pumps into the hollow tubes.[18] Having six thousand meters less displacement than the _Zeppelin III_, it will carry a reserve of seven hundred cubic meters of gas. Thirty-two per cent of its weight-carrying capacity will be given up to passengers, fuel, and baggage. Engines of two hundred and forty-two combined horse power are expected to develop a speed of forty to fifty miles an hour. Larger craft of the same type would, of course, carry much heavier cargoes and have higher speed. This type of ship, soon to be placed in the construction cradle, is expected to cross the ocean easily with fifteen passengers.”