Still, the greatest exposure for such obscure bits of history came with the advent of the Internet Age, and the accessibility to information that it provided. With the publication of books like Tom Crouch’s The Eagle Aloft: Two Centuries of the Balloon in America (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1983), some of the more obscure records of early flight in America began to make their way to to wider audiences. To put things in perspective a bit, it is interesting that until more recently, information about early aviators such as Andrews had seemed to elude the debates about whether an airship had, in fact, been seen over parts of California and other areas between 1896-97. Andrews’s efforts were unrewarded, however, for the Aereon failed to secure government backing. Employing the same principle that enables a sailboat to sail into the wind, Andrews demonstrated the Aereon’s ability to travel in any direction as he circled his craft above an incredulous crowd.Įncouraged by success of his prototype, Andrews began an energetic campaign to interest federal officials in the airship the New York Herald called “the most extraordinary invention of the age.” He secured an audience with President Lincoln, petitioned Congress, and even flew a model of the Aereon in the Great Hall of the Smithsonian “Castle” for members of a special scientific commission that included Smithsonian Secretary Joseph Henry. Comprising three cigar-shaped balloons, a rudder, and an operator’s car equipped with moveable weights, the Aereon made its maiden flight on June 1, 1863. He resigned his commission and, at his own expense, began constructing the world’s first self-propelled, steerable airship. While serving with the Union army in 1862, Andrews became convinced that a navigable, lighter-than-air craft would prove vastly superior to the tethered balloons that were used for military reconnaissance. However, his project resurfaced again in the 1860s, as discussed in this excerpt from a Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery News piece: One design he had created dates back as early as 1847, for which he was unsuccessful in gaining financial support to build. The big question remains as follows: did the technology to build airships like this even exist in the 1890s? Interestingly, yes, some technology on par with the airships did exist, and in fact, record of a few crude attempts to build such things dates back even further, to around a half century before the reports of aircraft began to appear in the San Francisco area.Įven before hopeful aviators in Europe began constructing their versions of primitive airships in the 1870s, inventor Solomon Andrews had begun pursuing ways to fund the construction of an airship here in the United States. Of course, even minor details such as these, while lending a bit more credibility with their specificity, really are not enough yet to substantiate the airships and their existence. Then there were the reports from locations like San Francisco and parts of Texas, where names of officials and prominent citizens with certain municipalities were given in the newspaper reports, all of whom had purportedly witnessed these “aircraft” themselves. In the midst of such claims, it becomes hard, at times, to hope for a germ of truth to emerge in the midst of silliness, and as is often the case, if any truth were to exist, it becomes overshadowed by the more sensational absurdities that accompany it. One hum dinger from the period involved a farmer who came upon one of the landed ships, whose occupants, a man and a woman who were apparently naturists on the planet they hailed from, were enjoying a bit of nude sunbathing as they indicated to the amazed farmer their extraterrestrial origins. In truth, many of the airship reports from the 1890s–perhaps a majority–seemed to be riddled with absurdities. Long surmised as being cultural “predecessors” to modern UFO sightings, the majority of the newspaper reports detailing such incidents, particularly those pertaining to a wave of sightings that occurred between 18, have been dismissed as being likely newspaper hoaxes. Skeptically minded researchers have argued in the past what only seemed logical: that the technology to build aircraft similar to dirigibles simply didn’t exist in the nineteenth century, at least on a scale to match the descriptions of aircraft being witnessed at the time. It’s a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine: digging for information about mysterious airships that may have been in production during the middle and late 1800s.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |