'Le Ballon Dirigeable', French game [ Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin; Alberto Santos-Dumont; Wright brothers; August von Parseval]
Publication details:
French. Unattributed and undated (pre-First World War?).
£50.00
1p., 8vo. On cheap paper stock. Aged, and with chipping and closed tears to extremities. Stamped on the reverse by the Paris bookseller C. F. Labarre (fl. 1970). Printed in the bottom left-hand corner: 'No. 6012.' 37 lines of text.
Seven pages, 8vo, sewn as issued, very good condition, with additional leaf inserted (one printed page), edges staine. The insertion is a Postscript on gun cotton. Two copies on COPAC.
Dimensions 14 centimeters by 9 centimeters. In good condition, although grubby and with creasing to one corner and ink from postmark along one edge. Sepia photograph of airborne balloon with a tangle of guyropes and mass of people beneath it. Hangars in background. The airship pioneer August von Parseval (1861-1942) worked in partnership with the engineer Hans Bartsch von Sigsfeld and the businessman August Riedinge. The "Dragonballoons" (Drachenballone), which he designed for military observation, are predecessors of the present-day blimp.