In 1880, a cigar-shaped dirigible, equipped with a benzine motor was demonstrated in Leipsic. It had been built the year before by Baumgarten and Wölfert. At its sides it had "wings" or sails and three cars were suspended from it instead of one. This airship met with a serious accident on its very first trip. A passenger in one of the cars destroyed the balance, the whole thing toppled over and crashed to the earth, the occupants miraculously escaping injury. Not long afterward Baumgarten died. Wölfert constructed a new dirigible of his own design containing a benzine motor in which he ascended from the Tempelhofer Feld, near Berlin, in June, 1897. Wölfert had neglected to provide against contact of the gas escaping from the envelope with the heated fumes from the engine. An explosion took place in mid-air, and the machine fell to earth in a mass of flames, killing Wölfert and the other occupant. [Illustration: GIFFARD'S AIRSHIP] Next in the long series of attempts came that of an Austrian named David Schwartz, who designed a dirigible with one entirely new feature: a rigid aluminum envelope. This balloon had a petrol engine. It was tried out in Berlin in 1897, but an accident to the propellers brought it crashing to the ground. Its occupant jumped for his life and barely escaped killing. Up to this time there is little to record in dirigible history but a long series of valiant attempts and failures, punctuated all too frequently by grewsome disasters. But the nineteenth century was drawing to a close, the twentieth century with its era of mechanical triumphs was at hand, and the time was ripe for those champions of the dirigible to appear who should make it a potent factor in modern warfare. [Illustration: SANTOS-DUMONT ROUNDING THE EIFFEL TOWER] Almost at the same time there stepped into the limelight of public interest two men, representing Germany and France, whose names are now famous in the aeronautic world. In 1898 there appeared in Paris a young Brazilian named Santos-Dumont, who began constructing a series of dirigibles whose success astounded the authorities. In exactly the same year Count von Zeppelin, in Germany, formed a limited liability company for the purpose of raising funds for airship construction. His first dirigible balloon was the longest and biggest that had ever been built. Although the envelope was not, like Schwartz's dirigible, of solid aluminum, it was practically rigid, for it was made by stretching a linen and silk covering over an aluminum framework. Zeppelin's first airship had two cars, with a motor in each, giving about 30 horsepower. On its trial trips it made a better speed than had yet been attained.