Luftschiffbau Zeppelin in the context of "Zeppelin"

LZ 129 Hindenburg (Luftschiff Zeppelin #129; registration: D-LZ 129) was a German commercial passenger-carrying rigid airship, the lead ship of its class, the longest class of flying machine and the largest airship by envelope volume. It was designed and built by the Zeppelin Company (Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH) on the shores of Lake Constance in Friedrichshafen, Germany, and was operated by the German Zeppelin Airline Company (Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei). It was named after Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, who was President of Germany from 1925 until his death in 1934.

The airship first flew from March 1936 as a Nazi propaganda vessel until it burst into flames 14 months later on May 6, 1937, while attempting to land at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in Manchester Township, New Jersey, at the end of the first North American transatlantic journey of its second season of service. This was the last of the great airship disasters; it was preceded by the crashes of the British R38, the US airship Roma, the French Dixmude, the USS Shenandoah, the British R101, and the USS Akron.

The Zeppelin NT ("Neue Technologie", German for new technology) is a class of helium-filled airships being manufactured since the 1990s by the German company Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH (ZLT) in Friedrichshafen. The initial model is the N07. The company considers itself the successor of the companies founded by Ferdinand von Zeppelin which constructed and operated the very successful Zeppelin airships in the first third of the 20th century. There are, however, a number of notable differences between the Zeppelin NT and original Zeppelins as well as between the Zeppelin NT and usual non-rigid airships known as blimps. The Zeppelin NT is classified as a semi-rigid airship.

There are various roles for the Zeppelin NT; traditional roles have been aerial tourism purposes and for conducting passenger services. The Zeppelin NT have also been used for observation platforms, such as for aerial photographers and by television commentators covering major events. Due to their capability for low-vibration flight for up to 24 hours at a time, ZLT considers the airships suitable for research missions for environmental observation, troposphere research and natural resource prospecting. The envelope of the airship has also been used for advertising purposes.

LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin (Deutsches Luftschiff Zeppelin 127) was a German passenger-carrying hydrogen-filled rigid airship that flew from 1928 to 1937. It offered the first commercial transatlantic passenger flight service. The ship was named after the German airship pioneer Ferdinand von Zeppelin, a count (Graf) in the German nobility. It was conceived and operated by Hugo Eckener, the chairman of Luftschiffbau Zeppelin.

Graf Zeppelin made 590 flights totalling almost 1.7 million kilometres (over 1 million miles). It was operated by a crew of 36 and could carry 24 passengers. It was the longest and largest airship in the world when it was built. It made the first circumnavigation of the world by airship, and the first nonstop crossing of the Pacific Ocean by air; its range was enhanced by its use of Blau gas as a fuel. It was built using funds raised by public subscription and from the German government, and its operating costs were offset by the sale of special postage stamps to collectors, the support of the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, and cargo and passenger receipts.

A rigid airship is a type of airship (or dirigible) in which the envelope is supported by an internal framework rather than by being kept in shape by the pressure of the lifting gas within the envelope, as in blimps (also called pressure airships) and semi-rigid airships. Rigid airships are often commonly called Zeppelins, though this technically refers only to airships built by the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin company.

In 1900, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin successfully performed the maiden flight of his first airship; further models quickly followed. Prior to the First World War, Germany was a world leader in the field, largely attributable to the work of von Zeppelin and his Luftschiffbau Zeppelin company. During the conflict, rigid airships were tasked with various military duties, which included their participation in Germany's strategic bombing campaign. Numerous rigid airships were produced and employed with relative commercial success between the 1900s and the late 1930s. The heyday of the rigid airship was abruptly ended by the destruction of the Hindenburg by fire on 6 May 1937. The disaster not only destroyed the biggest zeppelin in the world, but the film caused considerable reputation damage to rigid airships in general. Several nations had ended military rigid airship programs after serious accidents earlier in the decade, but widespread public safety concerns in the wake of the Hindenburg disaster led several nations to permanently ground their existing rigid airships and scrap them in subsequent years.

Maybach (German: [ˈmaɪbax] , MY-baakh) is a German luxury car brand partially owned by Mercedes-Benz. The original company was founded in 1909 by Wilhelm Maybach and his son Karl Maybach, originally as a subsidiary of Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH, and it was known as Luftfahrzeug-Motorenbau GmbH until 1999.

In 1960, Maybach was acquired by Daimler-Benz. The name returned as a standalone ultra-luxury car brand in 2002, sharing significant components with Mercedes-Benz cars. In 2013, after slow sales, Maybach ceased to be a standalone brand. In 2015, it became a sub-brand of Mercedes-Benz, which the Mercedes-Benz Group owns. As of 2021, Daimler produces an ultra-luxury edition of the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, the Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV, the Mercedes-Benz GLS-Class, and the Mercedes-Benz SL under the Mercedes-Maybach name.