Ogneslav Stepanovich Kostovich

Kostovich, Ogneslav Stepanovich 

(also Ignatii S. Kostovich). Born 1851; died 1916. Inventor and designer in aerostatics. Of Serbian nationality. During his youth he lived in Pest (Hungary). In the late 1870’s he settled in Russia. In 1879 he began working on the design of a dirigible, searching for a new type of strong and lightweight material for it; in the early 1880’s he invented arborit, a high-strength plywood. In 1882 he organized the joint-stock Company for the Construction of the Air-ship Rossiia. The dirigible was not completed. Kostovich in-tended to use for the dirigible a gasoline engine that he had designed and on which he filed a claim in 1888. He was granted a license for the engine in 1892.

REFERENCES

Istoriia vozdukhoplavaniia i aviatsii v SSSR: Period do 1914 g. Edited by V. A. Popov. Moscow, 1944.
Vozdukhoplavanie i aviatsiia v Rossii do 1907 g.: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov. Edited by V. A. Popov. Moscow, 1956.