Popular Science Monthly 



Vol. 88 



No. 4 



239 Fourth Ave., New York 



April, 1916 



$1.50 

 Annually 



A Pigmy Zeppelin 



A PIGMY Zeppelin (pigmy as Zep- 

 pelins go) with a basket-work 

 frame of layered wood has been 

 recently built for the British Govern- 

 ment by a number of American con- 

 structors, including T. Rutherford Mac- 

 Mechen, president of the Aeronautical 

 Society of America, and Walter Kamp, 

 a prominent American aeronautical de- 

 signer. 



One of the chief efforts of the designer 

 has been to reduce the weight of the hull 



and car without sacrificing strength, and 

 this has been accomplished, he believes, 

 by the substitution of laminated wood 

 for the aluminum which composes the 

 framework of the Zeppelin. The rings 

 which are used to keep the hull in cylin- 

 drical form are made of thirty-nine thin 

 layers of mahogany, carefully glued to- 

 gether, and covered by a steel collar. 

 Thirty-two wooden ropes, hardly as 

 thick as a man's thumb, wind again and 

 again around the hull, weaving the whole 



A pigmy Zeppelin which is being built ftji iIk bntish G()\ cniiiKiit by a company of American 



constructors. The framework of this novel airship is made of ropes and laminated wood, so 



closely woven together as to resemble a huge mesh of wood and wire 



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