Billed as the culmination of the development of transport in the first half of the twentieth century, the airship was supposed to revolutionise modern commercial travel and open up the globe to the average consumer. Indeed, in a June 1936 article for the Popular Science magazine, expectation for the maiden flight of the “enormous silver Von Hidenburg” was rife. The article describes the invention of the airship as realising the “impossible dream” of commercial global travel, comparing it to the convoluted existing network of "train, automobile, boat and aircraft" travel that was needed to travel large distances. However, the infamous crash of the Hindenburg airship in May 1937 crippled public interest in airship travel; the shock immortalised by Herbert Morrison’s reaction in a local radio broadcast: “And it’s falling, it’s crashing… it’s crashing terrible… Oh, the humanity… oh, ladies and gentlemen…” Rather than symbolising a new era of commercial air travel, the airship proved to be far too dangerous and, in the long run, far more expensive that the passenger plane that would come to replace it. Nevertheless, the invention of the airship does reveal the anticipation of greater global connections in the beginning of the twentieth century, and it did signal the start of technological innovation in global air travel that plays an essential role in the contemporary globalised world.
June 1936, Popular Science Article (pp.34-36)
<https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=eSYDAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&rview=1&lr=&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false>
May 6, 1937 Radio News Broadcast, Chicago WLS
<http://chicagoradioandmedia.com/multimedia/audio/571-wls-broadcast-of-the-hindenburg-disaster-1937>