The Metropolitan Tower and the Zeppelin II.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIII, Issue 8, 25 August 1909, Page 54

The Metropolitan Tower and the Zeppelin II.

TWO STRIKING COMPARISONS. Two very big structures which are more or less constantly in the public eye are the new Zeppelin airship, which recently met with disaster, and the Metropolitan Tower, which overtops every Ibuilding in New York. Very few realise, perhaps, how huge the Zeppelin airship and the Metropolitan Tower are, largely ‘because we must ordinarily deal with their dimensions in numbers. To present (their immensity more forcibly, we have performed the photographic miracle of overturning the Metropolitan Tower and of floating the “Zeppelin” over the Louisiana, one of the newest American battleships. On a clear day, the white shaft rises magnificently in the sunlight to a height which justifies the title “Campanile of New York,” that has been given to the building. The stupendous shaft of pure white marble towers to a height of 700 feet above the sidewalk. It has a base measurement of 75 feet by 85 feet. We have previously had occasion to Comment upon the height of this marvel of American tall building construction, and we cannot do better than to recapitulate briefly some of the facts previously brought out. Fully one half of the tower looms above the skyline drawn by New York’s cornices. So tall is the structure, that the snowy pinnacle catches the rays of the rising sun while the street below is still in darkness.

When the sun sets behind the Orange Mountains of New Jersey, and the street lamps light up one by one, its rays will fall upon the top story of the Metropolitan Tower.

The Metropolitan Tower is the loftiest habitable structure in the world. For sheer height, however, it is surpassed'by the Eiffel Tower, which is not an office building, and therefore hardly falls in the same class. The Zeppelin airship, on the other hand, stands without a rival in aeronautic hugeness. Since jfhe craft was primarily intended for military use, it is but fitting to compare it to a modern battleship, for the Zeppelin is a warship of the air, even though it is not likely that it will ever be armed with guns, because of the enormous volume of explosive hydrogen carried in the gas bags. Absolutely accurate figures of the Zeppelin’s size are not available, but from the best information at hand, we gather that the airship is 446 feet long, and that the diameter of the gas bag is 38 feet. That the Zeppelin is comparable in size with a modern battleship is fully borne out by one of our illustratinos, in which the craft is shown hovering over the United States battleship Louisiana in a position never likely to occur in actual experience. The Louisiana measures 450 feet on the water line, and 456} feet over all, so that a very good idea of the bigness of the airship may be gained simply by contemplating the Louisiana. Unfortunately, the two vessels are so widely different in character, that further comparison.is practically impossible. The battleship floats on water, the Zeppelin on air. A rather far-fetched comparison ■might therefore be drawn between the

tonnage of the Louisiana and the lifting capacity of the Zeppelin; in other words, between 16,000 tons of the Louisiana and the 7062 pounds of the Zeppelin: The result shows simply how little can be expected of an airship in carrying capacity, and how very necessary battleships will always be in order to carry heavy guns.