Development
The modern development and construction was financed from an endowment, initially funded with money left over from the earlier Zeppelin company, that had been under the trusteeship of the Mayor of Friedrichshafen. A stipulation on the endowment limited use of its funds to the field of airships. Over the many years, the investment value of the endowment grew to a point where the time seemed right to use it for the design, development, and construction of a new Zeppelin.
The initial design study was prepared in 1989. The ZLT was founded as a spin-off of the Zeppelin company in September 1993. It began to construct a prototype in 1995. The prototype first took to the air in September 1997.
On July 2, 2000, the centennial of the first Zeppelin flight, the prototype SN 01 was christened D-LZFN Friedrichshafen. Subsequently, it traveled some 3,600 km in test flights.
In 2001 the company began manufacturing the Zeppelin NT in series and began to exploit the airships commercially. The second ship SN 02 was christened D-LZZR Bodensee on August 10, 2001 and started to give joyrides five days later. By the end of that year, it had already transported 3,222 passengers, a figure that rose to about 30,000 by November 2003.
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Famous quotes containing the word development:
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—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“For the child whose impulsiveness is indulged, who retains his primitive-discharge mechanisms, is not only an ill-behaved child but a child whose intellectual development is slowed down. No matter how well he is endowed intellectually, if direct action and immediate gratification are the guiding principles of his behavior, there will be less incentive to develop the higher mental processes, to reason, to employ the imagination creatively. . . .”
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“I can see ... only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.”
—H.A.L. (Herbert Albert Laurens)