Abstract
On 9 August 1884 the dirigible balloon ‘La France’ flew for twenty three minutes and managed to return to the point from which it had started: this was the first of several flights. The craft, designed by the French army engineers Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs, was 165 feet long and 27 feet in diameter, with a bamboo gondola 108 feet long. It was propelled by means of an electric motor, powered by batteries whose weight required almost the entire lifting power of the hydrogen with which the balloon was filled. Its best speed was 14 1/2 miles per hour. The craft was technically an excellent design, but the battery-electric system was soon displaced by the internal combustion engine.
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© 1986 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Pinney, T. (1986). In the Clouds. In: Pinney, T. (eds) Kipling’s India: Uncollected Sketches 1884–88. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07710-6_44
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07710-6_44
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-07712-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-07710-6
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