David Schwarz (1852 - 1897) was a timber merchant from Zagreb (more precisely Županja). Although without official technical training, he knew a lot about the mechanics and construction of airships because that was his love from a young age. He thought the spacecraft should be like a pointed, short pencil with a solid aluminum structure and a metal steering gondola.
Wanting to learn as much as possible about aluminum and its alloys, Schwarz began working in an aluminum factory for Carl Berg.
Together they discovered a new aluminum alloy - duralumin or Scwarz's aluminum, as it was then called. Duralumin has a slightly higher specific gravity, but its strength is much higher than that of aluminum.
Duralumin is still widely used today, especially in aircraft construction.
The construction of Schwarz's airship followed very quickly.
The first flight was made on October 8, 1896, with Schwarz at the helm when the ship was lifted just one meter from the ground.
Everything went according to plan - except for one little thing that was overlooked. The entire test was unofficial because the public did not attend the test.
This was Schwarz’s big mistake, because, had the public been present, no one could have hidden the fact of the world’s first aircraft designer.
The first official flight was scheduled for January 15, 1897, but two days earlier, while Schwarz was expected to arrive in Berlin, he died in Vienna from the effects of a stroke.
After his death, mechanic Ernest Jagels on November 3, 1897, elevated Schwarz's ship to 464 meters where an accident occurred due to the belt falling off the pulley to drive the side propellers.
Realizing the possibilities of this spacecraft, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, a German aircraft designer, bought a design project from Schwarz's widow for 15,000 German marks, on the basis of which he built his LZ1 (zepelin( in 1900, and gained the fame of creating the first aircraft.
Subsequently, Zeppelin and its factory (founded in 1909) built a total of 129 rigid aircraft. Such ships are still called → zeppelin, while Schwarz's contribution to the history of aviation has only recently been revealed.
Nisam do sad cula za njega. Definitivno sam naucila nesto novo.