Airships - an Illustrated History From the first balloon flight, the ascent of a Montgolfiere in Paris in 1783, to the first fully controled flight in 1884, took a century of experiment, of success and failure. When "La France" took off and made a complete circuit, returning to its starting place, man had really conquered the air for the first time. Thereafter, airships grew larger, safer, more complex, culminating in such giants as the "Graf Zeppelin", the "Hindenburg", the "R 100", the tragic "R 101", and the "Akron" and the "Shenandoah". Crisp Book but foxed pages