Karl Arnstein (March 24, 1887, Prague – December 12, 1974,

Bryan, Ohio Bryan is a city in, and the county seat of, Williams County, Ohio, United States. It is located in the state's northwestern corner, southwest of Toledo, Ohio, Toledo. The population was 8,729 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Histo ...

) was one of the most important 20th century

airship An airship, dirigible balloon or dirigible is a type of aerostat (lighter-than-air) aircraft that can navigate through the air flying powered aircraft, under its own power. Aerostats use buoyancy from a lifting gas that is less dense than the ...

engineers and designers in

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and the

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. He was born in

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

Bohemia Bohemia ( ; ; ) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. In a narrow, geographic sense, it roughly encompasses the territories of present-day Czechia that fall within the Elbe River's drainage basin, but historic ...

(now the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...

) to Jewish parents. He developed

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methods that have been incorporated into

bridges A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or railway) without blocking the path underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somet ...

s and

airplane An airplane (American English), or aeroplane (Commonwealth English), informally plane, is a fixed-wing aircraft that is propelled forward by thrust from a jet engine, Propeller (aircraft), propeller, or rocket engine. Airplanes come in a vari ...

materials. Before his involvement in airships he was one of the main engineers in building the Swiss Langwieser Viaduct. In World War I Arnstein worked on improvements to the design of the German Zeppelin airships; see

Zeppelin A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship named after the German inventor Ferdinand von Zeppelin () who pioneered rigid airship development at the beginning of the 20th century. Zeppelin's notions were first formulated in 1874Eckener 1938, pp. 155� ...

. He was the chief designer of the

U.S. Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest displacement, at 4.5 million tons in 2021. It has the world's largest aircraft ...

airships, USS ''Akron'' and USS ''Macon'', and was employed by the Goodyear-Zeppelin Corporation in Akron Ohio. He also designed one of the largest airship sheds in the US for sheltering huge Zeppelins.

References

External links

Finding aid for the Karl Arnstein Papers
* Dale Topping, Eric Brothers

University of Akron Press, 2000 {{DEFAULTSORT:Arnstein, Karl 1887 births 1974 deaths 20th-century American Jews Engineers from Prague 20th-century German engineers American aerospace engineers German people of Czech-Jewish descent Emigrants from Austria-Hungary Immigrants to the German Empire Immigrants to the United States 20th-century American engineers