… yes they used cow gut/intestines 🐄🐄. 7 layers of cow gut where sewn onto a carrier layer of fabric to create an airtight balloon that could hold hydrogen lifting gas for some days 🎈. 50.000 cows where slaughtered for one gas-cell

Advantages over rubber of cow gut:

  • rubber-cotton balloons got brittle with repeated uses with hydrogen filling. Cow gut is a flexible material that lasted longer, though expensive.
  • rubber balloons can get statically charged. A small spark can flame all the hydrogen at once. Cattle gut does not charge as quickly as rubber.

Source:

  • scratsearcher 🔍🔮📊🎲OPEnglish
    51·
    12 hours ago

    Also German-empire had unreliable access to colonies that produced rubber or cotton during ww1. So they used cow gut as a rubber-balloon replacement.

    Layers where sewn in secret alternating patterns to make it airtight.

    • remotelove@lemmy.ca
      1·
      4 hours ago

      they realized that if layers of goldbeater’s skin were laid on top of each other when wet, they fuse together as they dry.

      https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/zeppelins-made-out-of-cow-intestines.html

      If the skin was moistened again and pieces were patch-worked together into large sheets, they’d dry with airtight seals. No other material — including rubber — could be this tightly sealed.

      https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-events/ridiculous-history-nation-sacrifices-sausage-to-fight-war.htm

      I couldn’t find anything on a specific pattern of the “fabric”, but what I did find was the natural glues(?) worked fine for it being airtight.

      Oh, I am not doubting that there were specific patterns of this stuff, but I can’t find any references. (I have an interest in wartime engineering, s’all)

      • scratsearcher 🔍🔮📊🎲OPEnglish
        3·
        13 hours ago

        So company manufacturing it can make more money with monopoly. Also it had military relevance, if your enemies copy this shit … yout get air-raided. The family holding secret knowledge on this was “Weinling”. Later germans found out on this smh and knitted them in a 7 layer pattern.

        The method of preparing and making gas-tight joins in the skins was known only to a family called Weinling, from the Alsatia London area. The sheets were joined together and folded into impermeable layers