The Mysterious Airships of 1896-97 (2014) | Hacker News Reader

The Mysterious Airships of 1896-97 (2014)

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67 pointssamclemens19 comments

They have been reported in Europe at during that period. Here are some reports from all over the country.

https://www.americanghostwalks.com/articles/1897-milwaukee-a...

https://www.wildquincy.com/blog/1897-quincy-mystery-airship-...

https://www.audacy.com/podcasts/dark-histories-49725/phantom...

I'm not sure why this was posted. Perhaps it was due to recent blogging by Nick Pelling on the subject at https://www.ciphermysteries.com/ ? There are quite a few entries now over a period of months that started from a reported cipher at Roswell.

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

I didn't mean that it shouldn't have been posted. I really meant to say something like 'why this was posted now.'

I'm seeing an uptick of public interest in UFOs in my channels. I'm guessing it was sparked by Tucker Carlson talking about UFO coverups during one of his recent Twitter shows.

Why is the cynic in me absolutely sure all the UFO coverage and news and Senate things are just a way to get more funding for the space force?

DOD has no issue securing funds no matter what they are squawking about in congress. For example, they ran a secret war in Cambodia during the Vietnam war that only came to light after a leak. I imagine there are probably hundreds or thousands of such campaigns we will never learn of.

I think it is more likely that they are trying to divert our attention from something.

Lol they don't need to ask for funding for the military, they just get it.

Such a weird phenomenon. Hard to say if they were UFOs seen through the eyes of the 1800s.

Then on the other hand I find the classic “they wouldn’t have been able to understand what they saw” theory unlikely because an airship made of shiny metal or something else would have been distinguishable.

Honestly sounds like it was a hydrogen airship & some flights of fancy by the—not known for their intellectual rigor—local writers

The "flapping fins" and "two great mugs thrust out from each side" certainly seem like ailerons and ballast. And the mentions of it going at "a great rate of speed" sound like what happens to dirigibles when they get caught broadside in side drafts. What's interesting is the mention of a metal prow. Later dirigibles had docking tips and lightning rods on their noses, but a metal prow seems like it would cause a lot of issues with center of lift. My only guess is it was some kind of lifting surface and the entire craft was an aerostat and not a true lighter-than-air craft.

The great speed referred to for some in this article was estimated at 250mph. For someone in 1897 that might have just been shorthand for incomprehensibly fast. These accounts feel a lot more similar to the navy pilot accounts of the pill/cigar shaped craft they’ve been tracking, which are also capable of a rapid change in speed along a new vector.

I mean… they sound vaguely similar. Mostly though that’s because they’re both describing unknown airships moving in unexpected ways.

Or a bunch of hot air... in an enclosed space..

I'm inclined to believe that these accounts are true stories of something that real people reported seeing for a long period of time before the end of the 19th century and that this airship flight would be the first successful contraption to fly under its own power while transporting men. I'm working on figuring out how to support that conclusion. LOL. Wish me luck as I think all the participants are history. Luckily I love history.

EDIT: After reading a bunch of contemporary accounts I am starting to think most of these stories are talking about dirigibles. There was evidently a lot of work going on internationally to get men up in the air and flying under their own control. Several accounts suggest that it would be a useful military tool that would be more flexible than tethered balloons. Since Langley at the Smithsonian actually demonstrated a steam-powered model contraption that won him a Navy contract in about 1896 and resulted in several failed flights including one only 8 days before the Wright brothers flight in 1903, it is obvious that a lot of effort was being expended on mastering powered flight at the end of the 19th century.

Evidently not all of the inventors were interested in the enormous profits that one could earn as one article in a California paper noted after interviewing the lawyer supposed to be associated with the inventor of the airship observed in those 1896-1897 sightings. That article's author said "So far as the public is concerned the inventor does not ask any one to invest in the enterprise. Perhaps this may be evidence of insanity. I will admit that this is the first time to my knowledge that anybody had anything in California in which he did not want anybody to invest money." [0 - Hart's inventor has three aerial fliers.] LOL. Some things never change I guess.

[0] https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1896-11-2...

I wonder if this was a part of the inspiration for Columbia in Bioshock Infinite?

Chums of Chance.

Time travelers.

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