Airship

From Inventing aviation
Jump to navigation Jump to search

The term airship usually refers to a steerable balloon, aka a dirigible. It was occasionally but rarely used to refer to the newfangled aeroplane flying machines.

Sources about airships include https://welweb.org/ThenandNow/index.html; Crouch's book; Holmes's book.

Though cases in which this word is applied to HTA are in the minority, we are noting them. Internal searches on "rare case" or "odd case" or some variant thereof will turn some of these up.

  • We have one case in which we haven't merely inferred this rare usage but have a patent which “relates to airships of the heavier than air type”.[1] We don't know how loosely “type” was used. This explicit usage of “airship” vis-à-vis HTA does indeed stand out. We have another HTA usage, which goes on to mention “that class of air ships in which bodies of extended surfaces are employed as buoying elements that coöperate with suitable propelling mechanisms to effect progress of the ships through the air and that also coöperate with suitable steering mechanism to determine the directions in which the ships are to travel with reference to the vertical and the horizontal”.[2] Patent US-1911-1061445 is another “airship” which is definitively heavier-than-air. It also uses “aeroplane” in the sense of the entire aircraft. We would call it an airplane.
  • Patent US-1912-1076644 also applies “airship” to the airplane. Patent US-1911-1010324 is another titular use of “airship” in the context of HTA.
  • Two of the diagram pages included within the original document of Edward Hoult's Patent CA-1909-126457 depict an undeniable biplane, with the third page depicting something which may only tentatively suggest an LTA component or applicability.
  • The work of Ivan Munroe Sawyer all revolves around one aircraft, and the bulk suggests Australian and Anglo-Canadian use of the word “airship” as applied to HTA. That is, it would be applied to aircraft more generally, and on these patents it is applied to aircraft which are heavier-than-air. Across the international spread of the inventor's work, “aeroplane/aéroplane” and “airship” are used vis-à-vis the same invention.
  • Patent US-1912-1059247 is a hybrid making use of “airship”.
  • Patent US-1912-1080498 is another HTA titular use of “airship”, an ornithopter. Patent US-1906-840078 is another similar case. The HTA usage, on documents of the period, is probably exceptional, though it is not extraordinarily rare.

References

  1. Patent US-1917-1255042

This wiki has 439 patents in category "Airship". Other techtypes related to Airship: CA 244/24, CA 244/25, CA 244/26, CA 244/27, CA 244/28, CA 244/29, CA 244/30, CA 244/31, CA 244/32, CH 129a, HU V/h, RU Group V

Patents in category Airship

More...

Publications referring to Airship

More...

Enclosing categories Simple tech terms, LTA
Subcategories
Keywords Dirigibles, Balloons
Start year
End year