AERIAL NAVIGATION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9133, 4 July 1908, Page 5

AERIAL NAVIGATION.

COUNT ZEPPELIN'S AIRSHIP.

A SUCCESSFUL FLIGHT. Received July 3, 5.15 p.m. BERNE, July 2. Count Zeppelin's aerial warship, which is 450 feet in length, with a dozen passengers, made a twelve hours' flight at a great height from Lake Constance to Zurich and Lucerne and back at the rate of thirty miles per hour.

Count Zeppelin, who inherited a magnificent landed estate at Gysiar, in the kingdom of Wurtemburg, together with a residence at Stuttgart, and other landed property in Switzerland, began to study the problem of flight at eighteen years of age, in the year 1856, when railways were in their infancy, steamships a novelty, and telegraph lines few and far between. It is, therefore, fully comprehensible that the Count's contemporaries regarded him rather aa a madman than as a genius. Year by year passed, and still the aristocratic mechanic continued to construct all sorts of flying contrivances that for the most part refused to fly. .As time went on expenditure increased, and the revenues of Count Zeppelin's estates diminished. He was forced to sell land and houses, and, finally, after many years, had to face ruin. After devoting something like forty years to futile at< tempts to construct a successful flying machine, Count Zeppelin abandoned this particular branch of his task, and devoted his energies to the construction of a navigable airship. He waa obliged to borrow all the necessary funds from sympathetic friends. His first great airship took the form of a cigar-shaped balloon of huge dimensions, fitted with powerful motors, and with a steering aparatus, and the work of constructing it lasted nearly four years. After a number of unsuccessful tests in 1900 Count Zeppelin announced that he would resume the voyage in the following year. They failed, and the ship was broken up and cast away as a worthless curiosity. The Count, who had then reached the age of 63, was in deep despair at his failure. He publicly announced that he had decided to abandon his efforts to solve the problem of aerial navigation! During the last few years he has been living very humbly on an allowance made to him by a wealthy relative—inhabiting a four-roomed cottage in a remote village in South Germany. He succeeded in collecting the necessary funds, for the ci nstruction of another airship, and that was completed hi3t year.