Dr Eckener's Dream Machine

The year 2000 marks the 100th anniversary of the maiden flight of the first experimental Zeppelin airship. A further 115 giant airships were built and flown by the Zeppelin company (based at Friedrichshafen on the shores of Lake Constance in Germany) - mostly for the purposes of war - but the most successful and best loved was the second to last of them, Dr Hugo Eckener's round-the-world airship, Graf Zeppelin, the dream machine.