German engineers constructed the gas cells of early Zeppelin airships during World War I using the outer membrane of cow intestines, a material known as goldbeater's skin.

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German engineers constructed the gas cells of early Zeppelin airships during World War I using the outer membrane of cow intestines, a material known as goldbeater's skin. It required the guts of over two hundred and fifty thousand cows to build a single zeppelin, leading the German military to temporarily ban the production of sausages so all available intestines could be redirected to the aviation war effort. There is absolutely nothing that screams intimidating military dominance quite like floating over your enemies in a giant, highly flammable balloon constructed entirely out of bovine digestive tracts. The fact that an entire nation had to sacrifice their bratwurst just to slowly drift a giant sausage over London truly highlights the unglamorous and deeply absurd logistical realities of historical warfare

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German engineers constructed the gas cells of early Zeppelin airships during World War I using the outer membrane of cow intestines, a material known as goldbeater's skin.

A closer look

A bigger world.One discoveryat a time.

Keep exploring

Tony Jannus piloted the world's very first scheduled commercial airline flight in 1914, transporting a single paying passenger across Tampa Bay in a trip that lasted a mere twenty-three minutes.

Why stealth pilots brought beanbags into the cockpit

Flight data recorders, universally known to the terrified flying public as black boxes, are actually painted bright international orange so investigators can find them in the smoldering wreckage of a crash.

Helicopters pluck Christmas trees from steep slopes

Boeing engineers originally designed the iconic 747 jumbo jet with a distinctive front hump because they were entirely convinced that supersonic travel would render it obsolete as a passenger plane within a few years.

Passenger airships utilized lightweight aluminum frames

A bigger world.
One discovery
at a time.