1. By Giuseppe Atzeni. Count Ferdinand Von Zeppelin

2. Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin (also known as Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, Graf Zeppelin and in English, Count Zeppelin) (8 July 1838 – 8 March 1917) was a German general and later aircraft manufacturer. He founded the Zeppelin Airship company. He was born in Konstanz, Grand Duchy of Baden (now part of Baden-Württemberg, Germany).

3. In June 1898, construction began on his first airship with money raised through public donations and his own fortune. Completed in 1900, the LZ-1 (Luftschiff Zeppelin 1) proved a failure because, despite its length of 400 feet (122 m) and diameter of 38 feet (11.59 m), it could lift a payload of only 660 pounds (299.64 kg) and was not very maneuverable. His money gone, Zeppelin dismantled the airship and dismissed his workers, except for his chief engineer, Ludwig Durr.

4. The design and construction of Graf Zeppelin were essentially conservative, based on tried-and-true technology developed over the Zeppelin Company’s decades of experience, and the ship was constructed of triangular Duralumin girders, with frames (or “rings”) spaced 15 meters apart.

5. Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin began construction of his first airship, LZ-1, in June, 1898 in a floating wooden hangar on the Bodensee (Lake Constance) at Manzell (Friedrichshafen) in Southern Germany, not far from the Swiss border. The movable, floating shed allowed the ship to be positioned into the wind to enter or leave its hangar.

6. A list of all flights of the airship Hindenburg, with dates, departures, and arrivals. this is the flight scedual.

7. The ship was completed in the winter of 1899 but von Zeppelin decided to wait until the summer of 1900 before attempting to fly his invention. The ship was inflated with hydrogen gas in June and made its maiden flight on July 2, 1900. The first flight lasted about 18 minutes and covered about 3-1/2 miles over the lake.

8. In 1863, Zeppelin traveled to the United States as a military observer during the American Civil War. With the endorsement of German-born Carl Schurz, who was a general in the Union Army, and the support of others, Zeppelin received a pass signed by President Abraham Lincoln which enabled him to travel with the northern armies. After only a few months, however, Zeppelin left the war zone to explore the American frontier, and it was in St. Paul, Minnesota — far from the battlefields of the Civil War — that Zeppelin saw his first balloon.