For the English rock group, please see Led Zeppelin. For other meanings please see Zeppelin (disambiguation).

A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship pioneered by the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in the early 20th century, based on designs he had outlined in 1874, designs he had detailed in 1893, and that were reviewed by committee in 1894, which he later patented in the U.S. on March 14, 1899. Due to the outstanding success of the Zeppelin design, the term zeppelin in casual use came to refer to all rigid airships.

Zeppelins were operated by the Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-AG (DELAG). DELAG, the first commercial airline, served scheduled flights before World War I. After the outbreak of the war, the German military made extensive use of Zeppelins as bombers and scouts.

The German defeat halted the airship business temporarily, but under the guidance of [[Hugo Eckener, the successor of the deceased count, civilian zeppelins experienced a renaissance in the 1920s. They reached their zenith in the 1930s, when the airships LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin and LZ 129 Hindenburg operated regular transatlantic flights between Germany and both North America and Brazil. In fact, the Art Deco Spire of the Empire State Building was designed originally to serve as a Dirigible Terminal for Zeppelins and other dirigibles to dock. The Hindenburg disaster in 1937, combined with political and economic issues, contributed to the demise of the Zeppelin.

Principal characteristics

The basic form of the first Zeppelins was a long cylinder with tapered ends and complex multi-plane fins. During World War I, as a result of improvements by the competing firm of Schütte-Lanz Luftschiffbau, the design was changed to the familiar streamlined shape and cruciform fins used by almost all airships since. Within this outer envelope, several separate balloons, or "cells", contained the lighter-than-air gas hydrogen or helium. Non-rigid airships do not have multiple gas cells.

Motive power was provided by several internal combustion engines, mounted in nacelles rigidly connected to the skeleton. The R101 airship used diesel engines, which were then untried technology for powering aircraft, and they were unsuccessful. The Graf Zeppelin used spark-ignition engines, but fuelled with natural gas called Blaugas, stored uncompressed. This was similar to propane, and was named after its inventor rather than its colour. The beauty of Blaugas for airships was that it weighed more or less the same as air and so as the fuel was used up, it did not affect the trim of the airship

Steering was made possible by adjusting and selectively reversing engine thrust and by using rudder and elevator fins. The word for these combined control surfaces is empennage.