M. Santos Dumont will long be remembered as a pioneer both of the airship and of the aeroplane. His earlier experiments were devoted to the lighter-than-air vessel, and during a period of several years commencing in 1898 he built an extraordinary assortment of small airships. His first experiment was with a little vessel having a cylindrical envelope of varnished Japanese silk with pointed ends, 82! feet long and iii feet in diameter, possessing a capacity of about 6,300 cubic feet.

It was fitted with an internal air ballonet to compensate changes of pressure, and the power plant was a 3i-h.p. motor-cycle engine weighing 66 Ibs., which was attached to an ordinary balloon-basket suspended from the envelope. The poise of the vessel was controlled by moving weights. Its steering was achieved by the use of a silken rudder stretched over a steel frame. In September, 1898, this toy airship left the Zoological Garden at Paris in the face of a gentle wind and performed all sorts of evolutions in the neighbourhood.

This first effort was followed by airships numbered 2, 3, and 4, which were modifications of No. 1. No. 5, however, was a more ambitious proposition, being 109 feet long and 17 feet in diameter. It was fitted with a fourcylinder motor, driving an enormous air-screw 26 feet in diameter, which, at a speed of 140 r.p.m., gave a thrust of 120 Ibs. Among other novelties water ballast was used, and the suspension was done with piano wire instead of ordinary balloon cord.

Discouraged by general apathy towards everything concerning aeronautics, and lacking financial support from a nation of shopkeepers who would not stake money on anything which did not show prospects of an immediate profit, British aeronauts were compelled to shelve the problem of the dirigible airship almost entirely and to continue to earn their bread as parachute jumpers at country fairs.

The history of the British airship in the nineteenth century can therefore be told in but few words.

Airships were among the first aircraft to fly, with various designs flying throughout the 19th century. They were largely attempts to make relatively small balloons more steerable, and often contained features found on later airships. These developments moved in fits and starts throughout the 1800s.

The first person to make an engine-powered flight was Henri Giffard who, in 1852, flew 27 km (17 miles) in a steam-powered airship.

In 1863, Dr. Solomon Andrews devised the first fully steerable airship, although it had no motor. The aircraft would "swim" forward as it moved upward and downward by means of alternately dropping ballast and venting gas.

In 1883, the first electric-powered flight was made by Gaston Tissandier, who fitted a 1-1/2 horsepower electric motor to an airship.

The first fully controllable free-flight was made in a French Army airship, "La France", by Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs in 1884. The 170 foot long , 66,000 cubic foot airship covered 8 km (5 miles) in 23 minutes with the aid of an 8-1/2 horsepower electric motor.

None of these efforts led to ongoing development. Continuous development that led to today's designs began in 1898 with the work of the remarkable Alberto Santos-Dumont. Santos-Dumont built 11 airships, driven by internal combustion engines. His were the first aircraft to make routine controlled flights.

The zenith of Santos-Dumont's flying career came in 1901 when his airship "Number 6", a small blimp, won the Deutsch de la Meurthe prize of 100,000 francs for flying from the Parc Saint Cloud to the Eiffel Tower and back in under thirty minutes. Many inventors were inspired by Santos-Dumont's small airships and a veritable airship craze began world-wide.