The exotic 'also rans'

摘要

Some remarkable flying machines, and airliners, have been sidelined over the years of the first century of flight. In 1939, for example, the popular press in the UK and USA headlined the inauguration of flights by Pan American's Clipper flying boats flights as the start of scheduled air services across the North Atlantic (from New York City to Southampton). This overlooked the thousands of passengers who had already used scheduled flights in the Zeppelins that slowly snarled between Fricdrichshafen in Germany and Lakchurst, New Jersey, right up to 1937, when the Hindenburg burned and then crashed. Between 1910 and 1914 the Deutsche Luftschiffart Aktien Gessellshaft (DELAG) carried 35,000 passengers on scheduled services on airships made by the Zeppelin company within Germany. The fares were astronomical, often more than average annual German earnings, for an intercity flight, yet the fact that enough people could afford them has been used by historians to identify some of the seeds of resentment and inequality festering within its society.