For the airship captains among us...

[Tinker]

Here's a fun link.  I don't think this one's been posted before.

http://bizarrelabs.com/airship.htm

Not neccesarily a safe method of construction, but I imagine at least a few folks made their own.

A.

[Tinker]

After digging a bit more, there's plenty of other good information at the site as well, especially in the electricity and magnetism sections.  There's even a tesla coil from tesla's earlier work that looks a lot more like an air-core transformer than the transmitter style he made later on.

A.

[NazT]

Excellent!  Thanks for the link!   

[Miles (a sailor)Martin]

must keep link alive.    miles

[Renquist Von Reik]

Ah haha, what a wonderful link.  I didn't even know popular mechanics was around in 1909 let alone instructing daring would-be captains on how to build their own airships.  Indeed there are quite a few other interesting articles there as well.

Now to try and find a resource of these 100 year old popular mechanics.  Imagine what other wonders are tucked away in those articles!

[Argus Fairbrass]

I know very little about this subject, and that actually made a lot more sense than I thought it would. So is his basic calculation correct then? as in 1,000 cubic feet of hydrogen lifting about 65 lb.

[Captain]

Just to bring this cool link (thanks) up to date try: http://smallblimps.lefora.com/ 

[von Corax]

Now to try and find a resource of these 100 year old popular mechanics.  Imagine what other wonders are tucked away in those articles!

Here you go — Popular Mechanics archives at Google Books. For some reason the list of issues only goes back to 1921, but there are more there somewhere, because I just flipped through an issue from 1905. (Home-made crosshead-pin oiler, anyone?)