How did airships get associated with Steampunk?

[Julian]

This has been bugging me for awhile.  How did airships get connected with steampunk?  My guess is that it has to do with anime or some book I don't know about. 

To add on to that, how do you get airships that are zeppelins?  Balloons or airships that look like sea ships powered by coal makes sense to me, but not helium filled rigid airships. 

Just curious as to how these all got connected up with "steampunk" and I thought someone on here might know. 

[oldskoolpunk]

Interestingly, Verne, arguably the defining author of steampunk, wasn't into airships. Robur the Conqueror (1886) is a put-down of dirigibles.  His hero uses a multirotor helicopter.



This machine is shown to be vastly superior to an airship.

[Narsil]

I suspect the underlying reason is that steampunk has a lot to do with looking at ways to get the same type of modern infrastructure and technology that we have today a lot earlier. One way of looking that this is to ask yourself the question 'How far is it possible to take Victorian era technology forward while making the minimum amount of historical changes'.

Obviously a bit part of he modern world is air travel, both as a practical technology and for its symbolic value. An airship is one of the most credible and practical ways to get to practical powered flight with Victorian era technology.

The attractive thing about airships is that you can design one which is inefficient and unreliable but will still just about work, whereas an inefficient fixed wing aircraft simply won't get of the ground.

Large hydrogen or helium filled airships are simply the logical engineering conclusion of this technology. Just taking a sailing ship and atatching a baloon to it isn;t really a sensible way to go about solving the problem and is really pure fantasy.

[The Corsair]

If I'm not mistaken, the two were introduced to each other by their mutual friend Awesome at a party hosted by Sir Geekdom

[Unsubtle Pete]

The above two answers more or less sum it up 

[Capt. Dirigible]

Airships feature heavily in Michael Moorcock's 'The Warlord Of The Air' (1971)

This from Wikipedia: (my bold type and underlining)

The Warlord of the Air is a 1971 British alternate history science fiction novel written by Michael Moorcock. It concerns the adventures of Oswald Bastable, an Edwardian-era soldier stationed in India, and his adventures in an alternate universe, in his own future, wherein the First World War never happened. It is part of Moorcock's 'A Nomad of the Time Streams' trilogy and, in both its use of technology extrapolated from the Edwardian era (such as airships) and a cod-Victorian / Edwardian era writing style, is generally considered a precursor to steampunk fiction[/i]

[akumabito]

If I'm not mistaken, the two were introduced to each other by their mutual friend Awesome at a party hosted by Sir Geekdom

You sir, just won the Internets. (it's just a series of tubes, but we'll polish them for you)

[Atterton]

Just like many things in steampunk, it is a victorian technology that could have worked but never got the chance. There were experimental airships since at least 1855. In fact in the 1890s US there were many sightings of airships, despite them not being supposed to exist yet. A kind of early UFO craze.

[Julian]

The Moorcock makes sense, although it seems Edwardian not Victorian.  If we look at steampunk as technology that could have happened as well as trying to add in modern contraptions built earlier, this also makes sense. 

I suppose what doesn't make sense are helium zeppelins instead of airships powered by hot air.  You can also look at a game called Skies of Arcadia.  It has airships, many of them looking like wooden ships. 

[Atterton]

The experimental airships were generally using a lifting gas. A hot air airship would require a lot of fuel, which all adds to the weight.

[Argus Fairbrass]

The first successful power-driven airship was built by French engineer Henri Giffard (1825-1882) also the inventor of the steam injector.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So by my understanding it was a Victorian era invention perfected later (to a degree) by Count Ferdinand Von Zeppelin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Giffard

This fired up C19th imagination in to areas that were often purely fantastical, and continues to do so today.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Zeppelin Kapitan Fritz]

     I was interested in airships (along with pre jet age aviation in general) long before I had ever heard of steampunk. Steampunk just turned the interest into an obsession.

[Julian]

The first successful power-driven airship was built by French engineer Henri Giffard (1825-1882) also the inventor of the steam injector.

Now we are getting somewhere!  So at least there is now an obvious connection between steampunk and airships in general.  He did use steam engines, not internal combustion found on zeppelins. 

[Captain]

Interestingly, Verne, arguably the defining author of steampunk, wasn't into airships. Robur the Conqueror (1886) is a put-down of dirigibles.  His hero uses a multirotor helicopter.



This machine is shown to be vastly superior to an airship.

Jules Verne's other stories do glamorize balloons if not airships.  Airships were simply the stuff of dreams and today represent autonomy and freedom. 

[Argus Fairbrass]

The first successful power-driven airship was built by French engineer Henri Giffard (1825-1882) also the inventor of the steam injector.

Now we are getting somewhere!  So at least there is now an obvious connection between steampunk and airships in general.  He did use steam engines, not internal combustion found on zeppelins.  

He did indeed, it wasn't terribly practical but nevertheless the idea was born in the C19th.

I highly recommend this book, if you are curious about wacky Victorian inventions generally. They are truly where Steampunk derives a lot of inspiration. http://www.amazon.com/Victorian-Inventions-Leonard-De-Vries/dp/0719550068

http://www.aerofiles.com/patents-pre1904.html

[Narsil]

The first successful power-driven airship was built by French engineer Henri Giffard (1825-1882) also the inventor of the steam injector.

Now we are getting somewhere!  So at least there is now an obvious connection between steampunk and airships in general.  He did use steam engines, not internal combustion found on zeppelins. 

the thing is that steam, in itself, isn't a compulsory feature of steampunk, its really no more than a handy metaphor for a a particular technological context.

There is a common misconception that internal combustion engines came along and  'replaced' steam engines but this isn't really true. Steam and IC engines coexisted for quite a long time while steam was dominant and even when IC engines found their niche in road vehicles and aircraft around the turn of the century they didn't really displace steam engines from its established application until at least the middle of the 20th century.

So it's reasonable to suppose that, if  airships had been developed much earlier then they would have pulled IC engine development along with them as a fairly natural consequence.

[Matthias Gladstone]

Aside from Giffard's ship, there were quite a number of airships in the latter half of the 19th century - all non-rigids, and featuring a variety of propulsion devices, including electric motors.
-Matt

[Captain Brandsson]

In addition to many of the already excellent answers, I will add that airships in steampunk are not entirely unlike rockets in 50's sci-fi: a romanticising of the supposed "next big thing".

[Prof. DDs Flashbang Box]

just ona  side note steam turbines are still a common feature in chemical plants and industrial works.

[Voltin]

Just like many things in steampunk, it is a victorian technology that could have worked but never got the chance. There were experimental airships since at least 1855. In fact in the 1890s US there were many sightings of airships, despite them not being supposed to exist yet. A kind of early UFO craze.

Nicely put Atterton!