Virtual Lecture: For the Promotion of Aeronautics: The Daniel Guggenheim Airship Institute and the False Fail Technology during the Second World War
25 September 2025
On Thursday 25 September 2025 at 6pm, Colonel (Retired) Jayson A. Altieri will consider the legacy of the Daniel Guggenheim Airship Institute. This lecture will be hosted virtually via Crowdcast.
Talk Outline
The 20th century saw a transitional bridge from 19th century aeronautical developments like early gliders and lighter-than-air technologies (balloons and early dirigibles) to 21st century technologies including fixed wing, rotary wing, and rockets, which continue to be an integral part of the globe’s economic and military foundations. Like today’s Silicon Valley “Big Tech” companies serving as centres of excellence (CoE) to help shape artificial intelligence and other cyber technologies, in the first half of the 20th century, similar aeronautical CoE helped shape the emerging field of civilian and military aviation. One such centre of excellence was the Daniel Guggenheim Airship Institute (DGAI) operated by The University of Akron, Ohio, from 1932–1949. As part of the College of Engineering, the institute provided researchers with opportunities relating to military and civilian lighter-than-air flight, heavier-than-air flight, and meteorology. Opportunities created by a need to collectively improve the development and safety of emerging aviation innovations also set the stage for the False Fail of Lighter-than-Air (LTA) technologies in the first half of the 20th century. The DGAI, while born in the heyday of the airship, failed to help spark a greater interest in LTA technologies. The Institute did contribute to the greater research and development efforts of United States military airpower during the Second World War, in particular work on radio guided bombs and helicopters. Technologies, while in their early development, would become critical in late 20th and early 21st century warfare, due in part to the efforts of the DGAI engineers.
About Colonel (Retired) Jayson A. Altieri
Jayson A. Altieri is an Assistant Professor of Leadership and Director of Outreach at the Leadership and Innovation Institute, Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. Prior to working at the Air University, Jayson served in several national security positions at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Bethesda, Maryland; NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium, and the National War College, Washington, D.C. In addition to his academic duties, he serves as the Chairman of the College of Liberal Arts, Board of Fellows, Norwich University, Vermont. Jayson is an award-winning author of several books and featured magazine articles and was the winner of the 2020 Best Air and Space Power History Article Award with his submission “Government Girls: Crowdsourcing Combat Aircraft in World War II”. He is an Assistant Curator at the First White House of the Confederacy, Montgomery, Alabama, and his current book project, entitled A Guest of Mr. Lincoln: The Wartime Service of Sergeant Joseph H. Wheeless, Confederate States Army, will be published in late 2024. Jayson’s article, “Cobras, Hawks, and WASPs” originally appeared in the Air Power History, Winter 2018 magazine edition and will appear as a reprint later this year the U.S. Army’s Aviation Digest magazine.
