The U. S. Navy are building at Lakehurst, N. J., the ZR-1 modeled after the Zeppelin L-49. The ZR-1 will be of 55,000 cubic meters (1,940,000 cu. ft.) gas capacity and is intended for use as an experimental and training ship. Luftschiffbau-Zeppelin is building (August, 1922) at Friedrichshafen a Zeppelin of 30,000 cubic meters (1,059,000 cu. ft.) gas capacity to be used for experimental and training purposes. It will be finished in the winter of 1922-23 and in time to take advantage of some of the worst of winter weather conditions for experiments having to do with airship navigation under the extremes of weather and temperature. Considerable of the information contained in these pages has been furnished by Luftschiffbau-Zeppelin for which the author is greatly indebted to them. HARRY VISSERING [PLATE 1: Zeppelin “LZ-1” First Ascent July 2nd, 1900. Count Zeppelin’s First Floating Shed on Lake Constance (Bodensee) and the Zeppelin “LZ-1”, July 1900.] CHAPTER I Zeppelin and His Airships Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin was born at Constance on Lake Constance (Bodensee), Germany, July 8th, 1838. His boyhood was not unlike that of others in Central Europe; and, as a matter of course, young Zeppelin was enrolled at a military school at Ludwigsburg, from which he in due time graduated into a lieutenancy in the Wurttemberg Army, but he was not particularly enthralled with the quiet life of a garrison in peace time. His creative faculties demanded something more of life than the routine of inspections, drills and dress parades. When he died on March 8, 1917, in Berlin, the whole world mourned the loss of one whose genius and vision had developed the rigid airship into a practical vehicle of the sky, proved of inestimable value in peace and war. Zeppelin had lived to see _more than a hundred rigid airships built_ from his designs and under his personal supervision. And so completely was his personality interwoven with the creation of these aerial giants that throughout the world all dirigible lighter-than-air craft are looked upon as the noted Zeppelins, and are referred to as such. It is an unconscious but none the less fitting tribute to the man who, starting when he was past the half century mark, has made possible the greatest of all vehicles for us to use in our new dominion—the air. An Officer in the American Union Army [PLATE 2: Zeppelin “LZ-3” Over Count Zeppelin’s First Floating Shed October 1906. Zeppelin “LZ-3” in First Temporary Land Shed. Which was erected and used while the new double shed, completed in 1908, was being built at Friedrichshafen.]