… yes they used cow gut/intestines 🐄🐄. 7 layers of cow gut where sewn onto a carrier layer of fabric to create an airtight balloon that could hold hydrogen lifting gas for some days 🎈. 50.000 cows where slaughtered for one gas-cell
Advantages over rubber of cow gut:
- rubber-cotton balloons got brittle with repeated uses with hydrogen filling. Cow gut is a flexible material that lasted longer, though expensive.
- rubber balloons can get statically charged. A small spark can flame all the hydrogen at once. Cattle gut does not charge as quickly as rubber.
Source:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldbeater's_skin#Applications
- https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldschlägerhaut german article mentions some more numbers data.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship#Envelope
Why was it important that the patterns be secret?
So company manufacturing it can make more money with monopoly. Also it had military relevance, if your enemies copy this shit … yout get air-raided. The family holding secret knowledge on this was “Weinling”. Later germans found out on this smh and knitted them in a 7 layer pattern.