Toliver Aerial Navigation Co. (Airship vignette) - Arizona 1901

Beautiful stock certificate (low number #20) from the Toliver Aerial Navigation Co. issued in 1901. This historic document has an ornate border around it with a vignette of the company's airship. This item has the signatures of the Company’s President, J. H. Soper and Secretary, J. H. Aydellote and is over 119 years old.


Certificate

As Reported in 1910:

The Toliver Aerial Navigation Company of San Diego, Cal., is building an airship of the rigid type, 250 feet long and 40 feet in diameter. The cabins are designed to hold forty passengers. Observations will be made from Conning towers. Six propellers will drive the big dirigible.

It had four 18-horsepower engines driving six propellers, one on each end of the envelope and two on either side. They were mounted so they could be adjusted in any direction and thus eliminate the need for a rudder. Each of the engines had 25 gallons of gasoline and 10 gallons of oil available for the trip.

Nine years of work at a cost of $60,000 went into the Golden Hill project at 32nd street, between B and C streets, to ensure the Toliver Aerial Navigation Company had the premier mode of transportation on the West Coast. .

A completely rotary and vibrationless aeronautical engine that weighs only 172 pounds and develops 32 horsepower. Methods of construction that give the ship 200% greater strength and lightness than any airship ever before constructed. Closer application of power to propellers than on any other airship and such control of propellers that they can be made to push or pull in any direction. Arrangement of propellers so that the airship can ascend or descend perpendicularly. Location of all cabins in the gas bag. A process of covering silk with aluminum so that it will hold gas for nine months." City: San Diego State: California Date: 1911

The project was a failure and couldn't get off the ground once built. Investors lost everything.

According to the San Diego Community News Group , On the evening of May 25,1912, Herbert G. Lewis, Toliver’s former secretary and chauffer — and, more importantly, a disgruntled stock investor — waited in the shadows as Toliver and his wife returned home from an evening out. As they pulled into their garage, Lewis emerged and shot them both to death. After the police captured him, Lewis admitted his guilt, saying simply, “He ruined my home; if I had not done it, someone else would have had to.”

History from Wikipedia and OldCompany.com (old stock certificate research service)