French
inventor of the first passenger-carrying powered and steerable airship,
called a dirigible, built 1852.
The hydrogen-filled
airship was 43 m/144 ft long, had a 2,200-W/3-hp steam
engine that drove a three-bladed propeller, and was steered
using a saillike rudder. It flew at an average speed of 5
kph/3 mph.
In the early 1850s Giffard,
an engineer, began to experiment with methods for steering
balloons, and then built his airship. On 24 Sept 1852 he
took off from the Hippodrome in Paris and flew to Elancourt,
near Trappes.
Giffard went on to build another airship 1855, and a series
of large balloons. This was funded by money from other
inventions, such as an injector to feed water into a
steam-engine boiler to prevent it running out of steam when
not in motion.
Giffards Steam Airship, 1852
The first steam balloon
was constructed by Frenchman Henri Giffard in 1852, and
produced promising results. His second machine, tested in
1855, was unstable, however, and crash-landed on its first
flight. It was not until 1872 that anyone was able to
produce a full-scale machine that improved on Giffard's
design.
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