Leonardo Torres Quevedo, 1902-1908. the Foundations for 100 Years of Airship Designs

On 5 May 1902, Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo applied for a Patent in France for “Improvements in dirigible aerostats”, complemented, with a “Note on the calculus of a dirigible balloon with interior suspension and keel” presented together to Madrid and Paris’ Academies of Science. He had conceived a complex inner structure, all along the envelope of the aerostat: a longitudinal frame of triangular cross section made up of non-rigid ropes, permeable curtains and metal cables which “rigidify” altogether through the excess of pressure level of the gas. Again inside the envelope, vertically placed at its bottom and suspended from inside cables attached to the top of the envelope, an articulated plane metal keel, together with the triangular structure, would support the gondola, which was designed to be attached from outside to the bottom of the envelope. The number of possible solutions to the problem of aerial navigation through airships included in this Torresquevedian contribution, i.e. the number of different systems for manufacturing dirigible balloons, would almost cover the whole twentieth century in airship designs. 1. TORRES QUEVEDO’S 1902 GENERAL CONCEPTION 1.1. The ‘problem of Flight’ in 1901 Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo is becoming well known all around the World for his outstanding contributions to the History of Science and Technology . Fig. 1. Leonardo Torres Quevedo (1852-1936) He patented in 1887 the ‘transbordador’, that was to become, once it was opened to the public in San Sebastián (Spain) in 1907, the first cable car for passengers in history. While technicians were constructing mechanical machines as a help for arithmetical operations, Torres Quevedo created in 1893 algebraic machines which solved algebraic equations and printed the solutions. He invented in 1902 the first remote control device, the ‘telekine’. By 1912 he built an automatic chess player, the first machine provided with ‘artificial intelligence’. In 1916 the ‘Spanish Aerocar’ became the first cable car for passengers in North America. In 1920 he presented in Paris the first effective computer, the ‘electromechanical arithmometer’ [5] [10] . Etc. But in 1901 Torres Quevedo embarked on the search for the solution to one of the biggest challenges that mankind faced at the beginning of XXth Century: Flight [6] [7] . In those days Aviation did not exist and it would not become a real solution to the problem until WWI. The only aircrafts were balloons and what would become known as airships: a kind of dirigible balloon which then lacked any in-depth scientific study. By that time there were basically two principal systems: rigids, built according to the designs of German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin; and nonrigids, the best known being those tested in France by the Brazilian sportsman and millionaire Alberto Santos Dumont. The former had an internal rigid metal frame housing several hydrogen cells, and a fabric envelope which covered the whole structure. They had a stable form, but could not be folded when deflated, the volume of the exterior suspended elements resulted in considerable resistance and they also suffered transverse oscillations. The latter had an impermeable envelope without rigid elements which was inflated with hydrogen. They could be disassembled and were easily transportable when deflated, but they were dependent on internal overpressure in order to maintain their shape, and needed ridging along the whole envelope to prevent the gondola from bending the airship in the middle [3] [10] . 7th International Airship Convention 2008