Zeppelin, Ferdinand Adolf August Heinrich, Count von Zeppelin (1838–1917)

German airship pioneer. His first airship was built and tested in 1900. During World War I a number of zeppelins bombed England. They were also used for luxury passenger transport but the construction of hydrogen-filled airships with rigid keels was abandoned after several disasters in the 1920s and 1930s. Zeppelin also helped to pioneer large multi-engine bomber planes.

Zeppelin was born in Constance, Baden, and entered the army 1858. In the 1860s he joined an expedition to North America to explore the sources of the Mississippi River, and in 1870 at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, he made his first ascent in a (military) balloon. Zeppelin rose to the rank of brigadier general before retiring from the army 1891. He devoted himself to the study of aeronautics, and by 1906 he had developed a practical airship. The German government then subsidized him with a National Zeppelin Fund.

In World War I zeppelins were used extensively for air raids on Britain and France 1915–16 but the large size and slow speed of the zeppelin made it a relatively easy target, and it remained in use only as a supply transport.