Luftschiffbau Zeppelin

Luftschiffbau Zeppelin is the German aircraft manufacturing company founded by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in 1908 to continue his pioneering work on rigid airships, which came to be called Zeppelins. It became the leading maker of large lighter-than-air vehicles for military and civilian use and founded DELAG, the first airline to fly an aircraft in revenue service, in 1909. After the count's death in 1917 control passed to Hugo Eckener, and between the wars the firm built the Hindenburg, the largest rigid airship ever made. Its airships were scrapped in 1940, and the company was revived from residual assets in the 1980s and is a major shareholder in the maker of the Zeppelin NT.