LIGHTER THAN AIR

THE 'ARROW' BEST EXAMPLE OF DIRIGIBLE BALOONS - 1904      Toledoan aeronaut A. Roy Knabenshue piloting the 52 foot Baldwin airship California Arrow at the Lousiana Purchase Exposition of St. Louis in October, 1904 Collection of Jean-Pierre Lauwers

 

THE 'GELATINE' - 1905 Thomas Scott Baldwin's most successful airship, Gelatine, at Lewis & Clark Exposition, Portland, OR, 1905. Library of Congress Collection, 2-22-08

 

FIRST FLIGHTS IN DIRIGIBLE BALLOONS      "The public disbelief in flight, however, extended only to heavier-than-air craft. Dirigible balloons, filled with hydrogen gas and fitted with engine, propeller, elevator, and rudder, were known to have operated successfully. Captain Thomas Scott Baldwin in the United States, Alberto Santos-Dumont in France, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in Germany, were building and flying airships without great fanfare or furor.

Baldwin at Fort Meyers - 1908 First airship of the U.S. Signal Corp. Collection of Jean-Pierre Lauwers

 

CAPTAIN BALDWIN MEETS GLENN CURTISS      Captain Thomas S. Baldwin, California's pioneer dirigible balloonist, brought Curtiss into the flying fold by ordering one of the lightweight Curtiss motorcycle motors for his nonrigid, gas-inflated, cigar-shaped airship. Baldwin built more than a dozen dirigibles, all equipped with Curtiss motors, and in the summer of 1908 delivered a specially constructed military model to the Aeronautical Division of the U.S. Army Signal Corps in Washington. With Baldwin operating the controls from the rear of the skeleton framework and Curtiss, balanced up forward, looking after the motor, the craft easily met government specifications in a two-hour flight over the Virginia countryside.   FIRST FLIGHT BETWEEN NEW YORK & ALBANY      The New York World in 1909, announced a prize of $10,000 for the first flight between New York and Albany. Two attempts by dirigible, one by Thomas Baldwin and one by George T. Tomlinson, had ended in failure.

 

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