torchwood_1920, and I found this page of Cardiff history timeline stuff, and on it was the note "1918 = E.T.Willows of Cardiff set up in business manufacturing Balloon Airships" and I'm like, wait, what? And googled him, and found this explanation of his visionary development of the first directed airship to circle the Eiffel Tower, and then this page of photos, among which was this photo of a guy on a rope descending from an airship onto a speeding locomotive...!OMG! Totally fucking metal! Can you imagine how much effort went into setting up that shot? I've done that in games, but here in 1913 someone's doing it in real life! Who knew the past had moments that cool?
ETA: Hah, another page on early British airship development. On his first Cardiff-London flight Willows only made 14 mph because he had to keep descending to shout at people with a megaphone to find out where he was.
