Pierre Ferrand’s Corkscrew Airship

This is Pierre Ferrand de Montfermeil’s 1835 design for an airship, featuring a giant screw mechanism and an elaborate system of fins. Unfortunately details of the design are scarce, and this appears to be the only image we have. According to the authors of the book L’Aéronautique des origines à 1922, it originally appeared in a brochure titled Projet pour le Direction de l'Aérostat par les Oppositions Utilisées, or Project for the Direction of Airships used by Oppositions.[1]

At first glance, it’s tough to get a sense of scale, but a closer look reveals three small pilots along the craft’s main horizontal bar. Each works a crank that helps to rotate the spiral above. There’s five cranks in total, each connected to the gas bag with a system of pulleys and ropes. This appears to be the only means of spinning the spiral, and it’s hard to believe these small cranks could get the bag spinning fast enough to propel the entire machine forwards. Such is the nature of fantastical designs like this, I guess.

Questions abound when trying to figure out how this thing is supposed to fly. As far as I can tell, the big gas bag spins around and the system of fins allows the pilots to control the movement. How this happens is unclear, especially because everything appears to be tied together with ropes. The only rigid piece of structure seems to be along the main horizontal bar where the pilots are. This works for the main body of the machine, but the two fins at the rear are only connected by these ropes. This suggests the machine is shown moving so fast that the rear fins are pulling the ropes taught as they’re dragged through the air. Another unknown is the actual shape of the fins themselves. They appear to be umbrella-shaped, which suggests they could be opened and closed by the pilots to further control the machine’s flight.

Illustrations like this tend to raise more questions than provide answers, which is one reason why I love them. It’s unclear if the original brochure had additional illustrations of the craft, or if Ferrand had thought through the design more than this illustration suggests he did. For me, this is part of its charm. It’s quirky, it’s fantastical, and most likely it wouldn’t fly, but it puts interesting ideas on the page as food for thought. Plus, how amazing would an actual prototype of this thing look?

Read more about other ideas for flying machines here.


[1]: De la Vaulx, Comte, Paul Tissandier and Charles Dollfus. L’Aéronautique des origines à 1922. Paris: H. Floury, 1922. 34.