It was at the siege of Paris that Zeppelin's mind first became engaged with the problem of a๋rial navigation. From his post in the besieging trenches he saw the almost daily ascent of balloons in which mail was sent out, and persons who could pay the price sought to escape from the beleaguered city. As a colonel of cavalry, he had been employed mainly in scouting duty throughout the war. He was impressed now with the conviction that those globes, rising silently into the air, above the enemy's cannon shot and drifting away to safety would be the ideal scouts could they but return with their intelligence. Was there no way of guiding these ships in the air, as a ship in the ocean is guided? The young soldier was hardly home from the war when he began to study the problem. He studied it indeed so much to the exclusion of other military matters that in 1890 the General Staff abruptly dismissed him from his command. They saw no reason why a major-general of cavalry should be mooning around with balloons and kites like a schoolboy.
The dismissal hurt him, but deterred him in no way from the purpose of his life. Indeed the fruit of his many years' study of aeronautic conditions was ready for the gathering at this very moment. On the surface of the picturesque Lake Constance, on the border line between Germany and Switzerland, floated a huge shed, open to the water and more than five hundred feet long. In it, nearing completion, floated the first Zeppelin airship.
In the long patient study which the Count had given to his problem he had reached the fixed conclusion that the basis of a practical dirigible balloon must be a rigid frame over which the envelope should be stretched. His experiments were made at the same time as those of Santos-Dumont, and he could not be ignorant of the measure of success which the younger man was attaining with the non-rigid balloon. But it was a fact that all the serious accidents which befell Santos-Dumont and most of the threatened accidents which he narrowly escaped were fundamentally caused by the lack of rigidity in his balloon. The immediate cause may have been a leaky valve permitting the gas to escape, or a faulty air-pump which made prompt filling of the ballonet impossible. But the effect of these flaws was to deprive the balloon of its rigidity, cause it to buckle, throwing the cordage out of gear, shifting stresses and strains, and resulting in ultimate breakdown.
Whether he observed the vicissitudes of his rival or not, Count Zeppelin determined that the advantages of a rigid frame counted for more than the disadvantage of its weight. Moreover that disadvantage could be compensated for by increasing the size, and therefore the lifting power of the balloon. In determining upon a rigid frame the Count was not a pioneer even in his own country. While his experiments were still under way, a rival, David Schwartz, who had begun, without completing, an airship in St. Petersburg, secured in some way aid from the German Government, which was at the moment coldly repulsing Zeppelin. He planned and built an aluminum airship but died before its completion. His widow continued the work amidst constant opposition from the builders. The end was one of the many tragedies of invention. Nobody but the widow ever believed the ship would rise from its moorings. It was in charge of a man who had never made an ascent. To his amazement and to the amazement of the spectators the engine was hardly started when the ship mounted and made headway against a stiff breeze. On the ground the spectators shouted in wonder; the widow, overwhelmed by this reward for her faith in her husband's genius, burst into tears of joy. But the amateur pilot was no match for the situation. Affrighted to find himself in mid-air, too dazed to know what to do, he pulled the wrong levers and the machine crashed to earth. The pilot escaped, but the airship which had taken four years to build was irretrievably wrecked. The widow's hopes were blasted, and the way was left free for the Count von Zeppelin.
