Modern Mechanix magazine. October, 1934. <\/p>\n
Airships have often served as the symbol of a brighter tomorrow. <\/p>\n
Even before the first zeppelin was invented, airships featured prominently in utopian visions of the future. This 1898 poster advertised a musical comedy on the New York stage: <\/p>\n
Musical theater poster. 1898. <\/p>\n
And these German and Frenchpostcardspredicted air travel in theyear 2000: <\/p>\n
German postcard, circa 1900 <\/p>\n
French postcard. 1910. <\/p>\n
Futurists of the early 20th Century often combined lighter-than-air and heavier-than-air technology, as in this urban skyscraper airport and solar-powered aerial landing field: <\/p>\n
Popular Science magazine. November, 1939 <\/p>\n
Modern Mechanix magazine. October, 1934. <\/p>\n
Sometimes futurist airship visions were promoted by companies which were actually involved in the lighter-than-air business. <\/p>\n
For example, the Goodyear-Zeppelin company, which built the American airships Akron and Macon, and which had a financial interest in the promotion of the passenger dirigible, frequently offered alluring illustrations of future airship travel. <\/p>\n
Goodyear president Paul Litchfield and publicist Hugh Allen included the following pictures in their 1945 book, WHY? Why has America no Rigid Airships?: <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
These drawingsfrom Hugh Allens The Story of the Airship(1931)imaginedan Art Deco dining salon, promenade, and even a lounge with a fireplace. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Airships could even advance medical technology, such as this airshiptuberculosis hospital. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Under the illusion that communism was the way of the future, Soviet propagandists loved images of modernity and enlisted the airship in their cause. <\/p>\n
Soviet poster, 1931. (We Are Building a Fleet of Airships in the Name of Lenin. Azeri text) <\/p>\n
Sometimes illustrators got so carried away depicting lavish interiors that they neglected to leave room for much lifting gas, as in this illustration from The American Magazine. <\/p>\n
The article described future airships to be built by the Goodyear-Zeppelin Company, which would be fitted up as sumptuously as a Palm Beach winter hotel: <\/p>\n
The American Magazine. May, 1930. <\/p>\n
This illustration of an atomic dirigible from a Soviet magazine in the 1960s left no room for lifting gas at all: <\/p>\n
Soviet Atomic Dirigible <\/p>\n
Modern Mechanics. July, 1931. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Read more: Modern Mechanix magazine. October, 1934. Continue reading
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