PDF A Visit to Minnesota

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ENGLISCH
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INGENIEURE
März 2012
HISTORY AUDIO-DATEI
A Visit to Minnesota
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History
Audio-Datei
A Visit to Minnesota
Ein junger, deutscher Kavallerieoffizier
nimmt als Beobachter am amerikanischen
Bürgerkrieg teil und gönnt sich während
seines Aufenthalts eine Ballonfahrt, die
sein Leben verändern sollte. Die Geschichte
eines der größten deutschen Luftfahrtpioniere beginnt in Minnesota.
A twenty-five-year-old cavalry officer came to
America from Germany in 1863 as a foreign
observer of the Union Army. He was a Prussian
nobleman, and when I say his name, you‘ll all
recognize it. But first, I want to tell you about
his adventure here.
He narrowly escaped capture by Lee‘s Army in
Virginia. He watched draft riots in New York. He
flirted with young ladies on a Great Lakes boat
from Cleveland, Ohio, to Superior, Wisconsin.
He ate muskrat and hunted with Indians. His
long odyssey eventually brought him to the
International Hotel in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Just across the street from his hotel, a balloonist named John Steiner was offering rides in his
observation balloon.
Our German officer decided to add a balloon
ride to his American adventure. Steiner sent
him up on a solo flight at the end of a sevenhundred-foot tether rope. The young man wrote
a formal letter-report about the experience.
Outwardly it was straightforward reporting of
the military potential of observation balloons.
But between the lines bubbled a barely controlled excitement.
He returned to Germany in 1870, while his
Minnesota experience festered. Finally, in 1891,
he retired as a brigadier general and devoted
himself to lighter-than-air flight. He tried,
without success, to interest the German army
in its potential.
By then, many people had built rigid navigable
balloons – or dirigibles. The French experimenter
Giffard had flown the first successful one in
Paris, eleven years before that balloon ride in St
Paul. But no one had yet made a commercially
viable dirigible.
But the name of our German officer was
Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. And Zeppelin
took up dirigible-building just after his sixtieth
birthday. He flew his first airship in 1900.
Zeppelin managed to synthesize all the
elements other inventors had been identifying
down through the nineteenth century. He lived
and worked another fourteen years, creating
the grandest machines in the air. The spectacular Zeppelin airships continued to dazzle the
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amazing
source
planted
airborne
onlooker ... *see list
*see list
avoided arrest
*see list
enlistment demonstrations
*see list
tie up cable
event
On the surface ... simple
*see list
enthusiasm
brewed
stopped working ... dedicated
stiff controllable
air ships
feasible
*see list
impress
world until the whole technology went up in
flames with the Hindenburg at Lakehurst, New
Jersey, in 1937.
And we‘re left with the astounding fact that the
seed for all this European high technology had
been sown in Western America just after the Civil
War. Shortly before he died, Zeppelin wrote:
While I was above St. Paul I had my first idea
of aerial navigation strongly impressed on me
and it was there that [the idea of] my Zeppelins
came to me.
Perhaps Zeppelin was so successful just
because he was fulfilling a dream as atavistic
as Daedalus and Icarus. Those great graceful
whales in the sky had literally gestated throughout Zeppelin‘s entire adult life. n John Lienhard
Dieser Text ist Teil der Radioserie „Engines of Our Ingenuity“
und wird hier mit freundlicher Genehmigung des Autors und
der Radiostation KUHF wiedergegeben. Den Originaltext und
weitere 2600 Kurzberichte über die Geschichte der Technik
finden Sie unter www.uh.edu/engines
aerial
astounding
atavistic
bubble, to
capture
Count
dazzle, to
devote, to
dirigible
draft
escape, to
excitement
experience
fester, to
gestate, to
muskrat
navigable
observer
outwardly
Prussian
retire, to
rigid
riot
rope
seed
sow, to (sowed, sown)
straightforward
tether
viable
Lufterstaunlich, verblüffend
atavistisch
blubbern, sprudeln
Gefangennahme
Graf
blenden, schillern
widmen, hingeben
Luftschiff
Einberufung
entkommen, entfliehen
Erregung, Aufregung
Erfahrung, Erlebnis
schwären, eitern
tragen, schwanger sein
Bisamratte
lenkbar
Beobachter
nach außen, äußerlich
preußisch
sich zur Ruhe setzen
steif, starr
Unruhe, Aufstand
Seil, Leine
Saat
aussäen
einfach, geradeheraus
Halteleine, Strick
rentabel, machbar
!
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