The Airship: Its Design, History, Operation and Future

by Christopher St. John Sprigg, Adam Starchild

Since the early days of practical aviation, the rival claims of heavier-than-air and lighter-than-air craft have been a subject more of controversy than constructive comment. Indeed, those who have studied the history of aeronautics will be aware that man's desire for the conquest of the air has run in two channels. For one the goal is a real air "ship", the "clipper of the clouds" that Jules Verne so admirably anticipated - for the other it is a pair of wings, for which men will "call as familiarly as for their boots" - a kind of aerial motor car. The lighter-than-air craft and the heavier-than-air craft translate these two desires into practical terms.

In England, for instance, the first rigid was constructed in 1910 to a specification which involved the fulfillment of various novel clauses. It broke while being handled on the water, and rigid airship construction ceased entirely in Britain until immediately before World War I.

Germany, pioneer of the airship, has also suffered, though from different causes. Before World War I, German Zeppelins on short pleasure cruises had covered a distance of 100,000 miles without injury to passengers.

It is impossible to appreciate, first the possibilities and next the problems of the airship, without a knowledge of the factors influencing airship design and operation, and of the work which was done up to 1931.

316 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1931

About the author

Christopher St. John Sprigg aka Christopher Caudwell was a British Marxist writer, thinker and poet.

He was born into a Roman Catholic family, resident at 53 Montserrat Road, Putney. He was educated at the Benedictine Ealing Priory School, but left school at the age of 15 after his father, Stanhope Sprigg, lost his job as literary editor of the Daily Express. Caudwell moved with his father to Bradford and began work as a reporter for the Yorkshire Observer. He made his way to Marxism and set about rethinking everything in light of it, from poetry to philosophy to physics, later joining the Communist Party of Great Britain in Poplar, London.

In December 1936 he drove an ambulance to Spain and joined the International Brigades there, training as a machine-gunner at Albacete before becoming a machine-gun instructor and group political delegate. He edited a wall newspaper.

He was killed in action on 12 February 1937, the first day of the Battle of the Jarama Valley. His brother, Theodore, had attempted to have Caudwell recalled by the Communist Party of Great Britain by showing its General Secretary, Harry Pollitt, the proofs of Caudwell's book Illusion and Reality. Caudwell's Marxist works were published posthumously. The first was Illusion and Reality (1937), an analysis of poetry.

Caudwell published widely, writing criticism, poetry, short stories and novels. Much of his work was published posthumously.