COUNT ZEPPELIN

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2375, 3 February 1915, Page 7

COUNT ZEPPELIN

THE MAN AND HIS WORK AN INTERESTING STORY , I > ' ~ Ott July 24,, 1870, five young German cavalry officers and seven other horsemen were detailed to make a reconnoitring dash into i'rench territory. The news of , the invasion—it was but a few hours after the declaration of war— travelled like wildfire through the region which French troops were massing to give battle to Moltke's approaching legions. The order was given to take the German riders dead or alive. All except one were taken. Only the leader escaped—though his, horse was shot from under .him and he had to cut his antagonist down with a sabre and jump on the Frenchman's horse to effect his escape. The man's name was Zeppelin—Ferdinand von Zeppelin. Six years ago the German Emperor colled him "the greatest. German of the twentieth century." The cavalry leader had become a great aeronaut, and ,had just landed at the -Emperor's feet from a Zeppelin airship. Count Zeppelin, whose name is on everybody's hps to-day- is 70 years of age. The story of his life is wonderful. Failure after failure was lis lot; then suddenly at 70 success and world-wide fame. Born at Conitance, on the inland sea which washes the shores of Germany and Switzerland —the spot which was afterwards to be the scene of his conquests of the air— ho was the son of a Wurtemberg Court official, and he chose the army as his profession. In 1863, then lieutenant of cavalry, he was wurtemberg's military attache with the Union army in the American war. It was in Dixie that Germany's "future in t'he air" was born. The young lieutenant went up in a captive balloon attached to the Federal army; and it ivas_ then that the call;of the air came to i/im. It remained with him always. ■ Count Zeppelin went through the Prussian campaign against Austria, and he was in the FrancoPrussian War. Always he was thinking of airships; but it was not until 1892 that the theoretical student became the practical one. Though .54 years of age, he began to take practical courees in aeronautics, mechanics, electricity, sail-making, and meteorology; Then he set to work on hisMnventions.

A Creat Aerial "Oookyard." "I never pay any attention to harebrained appeals from visionaries, | wrote an American newspaper owner, in answer to a Tequest from Zeppelin for the loan of £5000. ( And even in his own country {fie prophet had iuf honour. Failure followed failure. The family fortunes vanished. His appeals were in vain/until at last he built Zeppelin ' 111. and made, ' six, successful flights with it, covering 200 milfes in the last one.. That settled it. Disasters befell'some of his ships, but there was plenty of money behind the agid inventor now—in 1908 a fund of no less than £300,000 was placed at_ his disposal—and he went on with his experiments, perfecting his plans. Then it was that the Zeppelin "dockyard" at Friedrichshafen, on Lake Constance, which, before the war was said to he capable of turning out Zeppelins of .the biggest dimensions at the rate of one a month, sprang into being. In the spring of 1909, Zejipelin 11, the second of a new type, established the possibilities of the craft by a continuous 38hour journey from Friedrichshafen to Saxony and back again to Wurtemburg, a drcuit of about 1000 miles. .Fifty miles an hour has become only an average speed. Zeppelin's have crossed and re-crossed the North Sea and the Baltic in non-stop flights in the face ofheavy winds. "Equipped with searchlights, wireless telegraphy, bomb-tubes, and machine guns,' ' said a well-known writer in 1913, "the aerial leviathans which'cary the battle-flags'of the German army and navy, have executed a dozen flights, the equivalent of trips of recognisance along the entire frontier of France or tho coasts of Great Britain." Count 1 Zeppelin himself was at the wheel in October, 1912, when the famous, maiden cruise of the naval Zeppelin over the North Sea was made. A month or two ago the German Emperor desired to bestow a speoial mark of favour upon the great inventor, but tho latter begged His Majesty to wait until he had led a Zeppelin invasion of. England and returned safely to his base. Was hiß the ; guiding hand at Yarmouth? '