Happy Birthday, Goodyear Blimp (Or Not)
March 8, 2010
If you look at several “On This Date” lists online (like this one) you’ll find an interesting bit of info for today, March 8: “1st flight of the Goodyear blimp (1972).”
1972? Hasn’t the Goodyear Blimp been around for a bit longer than that? Uh, yes, it has. But since it now exists only after March 8, 1972 – on the internet, where reality goes to die – we’d like to say “Happy Birthday, Blimp.” What the heck, y’know?
And just for the occasion, here are some blimpy facts, from our very own Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader (page 273).
BLIMP FACTS
- The blimp’s first TV coverage was at the Orange Bowl game in 1960. Now they’re used for about 90 televised events a year. Goodyear doesn’t charge TV networks; the publicity generated makes the free service worthwhile.
- Each blimp is equipped with a crew of 23, consisting of 5 pilots, 17 support members who work on rotating schedules, and 1 public relations representative. The blimps cruise at a speed of 45 to 50 mph (maximum 65 mph unless there’s a really good wind).
- Each blimp can carry 6 passengers along with the crew. They’re normally only corporate guests of Goodyear, but a few celebrities, including President Ronald Reagan and Johnny Depp, have managed to get official invitations.
- The camera operator shoots from the passenger compartment through an open window from about 1,200 feet up, from which you can see everything, read a scoreboard, and hear the roar of a crowd. The hardest sport to film is golf, because the pilots have to be careful not to disturb a golfer’s shot with engine noise or by casting a sudden shadow over the green.
- If punctured, the worst that will happen is that the blimp will slowly lose altitude. Good thing, too, since the company reports that a blimp is shot at about 20 times a year.
Each blimp is 192 feet long, 59 feet high, and holds 202,700 cubic feet of helium. The helium does leak out, like a balloon’s air, and has to be “topped off” every four months or so. - The word blimp is credited to Lt. A. D. Cunningham of Britain’s Royal Navy Air Service. In 1915 he whimsically flicked his thumb against the inflated wall of an airship and imitated the sound it made: “Blimp!”
P.S. Happy actual real and totally not made up birthday, Mr. Mickey Dolenz, you invention monkee, you.
“on the internet, where reality goes to die”
Just one of the reasons I love my bathroom readers!!
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