Viewing page 25 of 60

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

tour, Baldwin decided to build a completely new dirigible and sold the "California Arrow" to Colonel Hildebrand of the German Imperial Army.  Its ultimate fate remains obscure.  The "California Arrow," however, had become the model for virtually every dirigible built in the United States during the next ten years.  Its frame was in reality the result of aeronautical knowledge of Baldwin and the mechanical genus of Curtiss, and the flying skill of Knabenshue.

After Knabensue returned to Toledo, he enlisted financial aid to build his first dirigible which was called the "Toledo I."  The dirigible was powered by a four-cylinder motor that Knabenshue constructed from four Yale motorcycle engines.  The bag was of silk and a network of ropes held it to a long and narrow framework of spruce, which was large enough to carry one man.  A pair of pliers, and a screwdriver, and a saw were about all the tools Knabenshue used in building the "Toledo I."

In June, 1905, the dirigible was completed and on June 30 Kanbenshue flew it from the Dorr Street Fairgrounds at Door and Upton Avenues (now Lucas County Fairgrounds) and landed on the roof of the ten-story Spitzer Building in downtown Toledo.  His accomplishment not only made Toledo air conscious but won him $500 from A.L. Spitzer, who had offered the prize to the first airman who could land on the building.  Later, he took off the building and flew back to the fairgrounds.

Knabenshue was so pleased with his dirigible that he decided to begin making exhibition flights.  Knowing of Baldwin's success on the West Coast, Knabensue decided to go East, where dirigibles were not well known.