Rigid airship

A lighter-than-air craft whose shape is maintained by a rigid internal framework enclosing separate gas cells or compartments.

Zeppelin: A rigid airship built by the German Zeppelin company or to its design. Zeppelins became the best-known examples of the rigid-airship type.
Henri Giffard: A French engineer who built and flew a steam-powered dirigible in 1852. His flight demonstrated powered steering before practical rigid airships existed.
Luftschiffbau Zeppelin: A German company founded to develop and manufacture Zeppelin airships. It built many of the rigid airships used for passenger service and military operations.
Non-rigid airship: An airship whose shape is maintained by internal gas pressure rather than a rigid framework. Its pressure-supported envelope avoids the heavy skeleton carried by rigid airships.
Hindenburg disaster: The 1937 fire that destroyed the German passenger airship LZ 129 Hindenburg at Lakehurst, New Jersey. The disaster became a lasting symbol of the risks surrounding hydrogen-filled airships.
Gas cell: A flexible enclosure that holds lifting gas inside an airship or balloon. Separate gas cells provide buoyancy while allowing the hull to retain its overall form.
David Schwarz: A Croatian-Hungarian aviation pioneer who designed an early rigid airship with a metal framework. His late-nineteenth-century design helped establish the metal-framed airship approach.
Imperial German Navy: Germany’s naval force under the German Empire, active from 1871 to 1918. It operated rigid airships for reconnaissance and bombing during the First World War.
Semi-rigid airship: An airship with a flexible envelope supported in part by a structural keel or framework. It occupies a middle ground between pressure-supported and fully rigid designs.
USS Akron: A U.S. Navy rigid airship that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean during a storm in 1933. Its loss exposed the hazards of operating very large airships in severe weather.

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