to the UFO. His story, even though it
was fifty-six years old, smacked of others I'd heard when he said
that no one at the newspaper ever told anyone what they had seen;
they didn't want people to think that they were "crazy."

On November 30 the mystery ship was back over the San Francisco area
and those people who had maintained that people were being fooled by
a wag in a balloon became believers when the object was seen moving
into the wind.

For four months reports came in from villages, cities, and farms in
the West; then the Midwest, as the airship "moved eastward." In early
April of 1897 people in Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Wisconsin,
Minnesota, and Illinois reported seeing it. On April 10 it was
reported to be over Chicago. Reports continued to come in to the
newspapers until about April 20; then it, or stories about it, were
gone. Literally thousands of people had seen it before the last
report clicked in over the telegraph wires.

A study of the hundreds of newspaper accounts of this sighting that
rocked the world in the late 1890's was interesting because the same
controversies that arose then exist now. Those who hadn't seen the
stubby-winged, cigar-shaped "craft" said, "Phooey," or the nineteenth-
century version thereof. Those who had seen it were almost ready to
do battle to uphold their integrity. Some astronomers loudly yelled,
"Venus," "Jupiter," and "Alpha Orionis" while others said, "We saw
it." Thomas Edison, _the_ man of science of the day, disclaimed any
knowledge of the mystery craft. "I prefer to devote my time to
objects of commercial value," he told a New York _Herald_ reporter.
"At best airships would only be toys."

Thomas--you goofed on that prediction.

I had one more important point to cover before I finished my
briefing and opened the meeting to a general question-and-answer
session.

During the past year and a half we had had several astronomers visit
Project Blue Book, and they were not at all hesitant to give us their
opinions but they didn't care to say much about what their colleagues
were thinking, although they did indicate that they were thinking. We
decided that the opinions and comments of astronomers would be of
value, so late in 1952 we took a poll. We asked an astronomer, whom
we knew to be unbiased about the UFO problem and who knew every
outstanding astronomer in the United States, to take a trip and talk
to his friends. We asked him not to make a point of asking ab