By 1898, he had enough financial support to form a company and construction finally started on Zeppelin LZ1. The first flight of LZ1 lasted for 20 minutes on July 2, 1900 over Lake Constance in ...

The very first Zeppelin produced, dubbed the LZ-1, or Luftschiff Zeppelin 1, looked promising when it was first built in 1899, but when it flew in 1900, it went over like a proverbial lead balloon.