An inventor promised flights from San Francisco to New York. He created an air disaster instead.

Posted on July 10, 2022 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Bob P.

Katie Dowd, SFGATE July 10, 2022 Updated: July 10, 2022 6:59 a.m.

Morrell's ill-fated airship takes flight — for a moment — over Berkeley on May 23, 1908. The photo is from the collection of William R. Stein of The Jive Bomber.
Morrell’s ill-fated airship takes flight — for a moment — over Berkeley on May 23, 1908. The photo is from the collection of William R. Stein of The Jive Bomber.From the collection of William R. Stein

J.A. Morrell felt very good about his sausage-shaped airship. In February 1908, the inventor boasted it could “take a businessman to New York from San Francisco in the morning in time for luncheon there and return him to San Francisco to take his evening meal here.” Considering this is barely possible in the 21st century, it was a big claim — and one Morrell was determined to prove.

By late spring, he was ready to send the 450-foot-long prototype into the Bay Area skies. But San Francisco officials, understandably, didn’t think a massive, gas-powered hot dog was a safe thing to try out over a populated area. So Morrell moved his project to quiet, bucolic Berkeley. There, a San Francisco fire chief reportedly cautioned his Berkeley counterparts that Morrell’s airship was a “menace to life and safety.”

Unfortunately for everyone, that warning went unheeded. 

Pages: 1 2
This entry was posted in History. Bookmark the permalink.