The Giant Airships - The Epic of Flight Author:Douglas Botting The air, said Sir George Cayley in 1816, is "an uninterrupted navigable ocean that comes to the threshold of every man's door." The eminent aeronautical pioneer was depicting a tantalizing vision of future flight. The "ocean", however, needed a practical ship of the air to ply it, and as Cayley's century ended, none e... more »xisted.
A few determined men held that the best hope for controlled flight was a motorized, steerable balloon: the dirigible....« less