A belated letter to the editor

Dear New York Times,

I was reading through your Sunday June 7, 2009 television section, and I noticed an error in your article, "Commercials you can't Zap". On page 10, you said, “…there aren’t many other names associated with a blimp except perhaps Hindenburg.” The Hindenburg was a zeppelin and not a blimp. A zeppelin is different from a blimp in that it has a rigid inside frame and inside gasbags holding the lifting gas, generally hydrogen. This allows for interior walkways and rooms inside the main body of the airship. A blimp, on the other hand has no rigid internal structure, and is generally lifted with helium. The only place crew can be is in the gondola, also the location of the engines. After the Hindenburg, zeppelins suffered for a huge PR disaster, even though most US zeppelins were helium inflated (unlike the Hindenburg), blimps became the airship of choice. Also, there are plenty of famous blimps and zeppelins, like Graf Zeppelin, USS Malcolm, USS Los Angeles, or LZ-126. I know that I’m being nitpicky, but I didn’t have anything else to do today.

Sincerely,
JTS

More importantly, who is the idiot that thought this was a zeppelin?