The UFO Singularity (9 page)

Scads of similar reports would ensue after the strange lights were witnessed above Sacramento, and soon an entire “airship scare” was underway, with reports of similar objects coming in from other parts of the country. According to some witnesses, the large white light drifting silently through the sky had been only one part of the strange object in question; some accounts divulged that a larger apparatus existed that the light had been attached
to, variously resembling a huge egg or having an oblong shape similar to a cigar. Some of the more imaginative descriptions included fanciful descriptions of rudders, paddle wheels, or even propellers helping to keep the massive floating fortress aloft, becoming starkly reminiscent of Verne’s depiction of a heavier than air warship in
Robur the Conqueror.

Airship artwork by Scotty Roberts.

Such stories of “phantom airships” seen throughout the United States during the late 1890s are largely taken tongue in cheek, and are considered among the better examples of newspaper hoaxes that were common among the various daily newspapers throughout the late 19th century. And yet, though many of the stories lumped
in alongside the phantom airship reports are obviously the pure imaginings of clever (or bored) newspapermen of the day, there are a few aspects to the mystery that remain worthy of consideration. For one, the more credible sightings—especially those from the Sacramento area in November of 1896—generally seem to describe what could be likened to some kind of dirigible craft, though perhaps with certain capabilities that may have been capable of outperforming various known airships of the day. Second, the veracity of some of these reports could, arguably, rest more soundly on the groupings of individuals who had claimed to see the strange object over Sacramento. As stated, these seemed to include city officials and a number of other respectable members of the community. In other words, some would argue that it not only seems likely that something
was
seen over Southern California and surrounding areas in the late autumn of 1896, but also that it is far from impossible for certain technologies to have existed around the time, which would be needed to produce an aircraft similar to those described in the “phantom airship” reports.

One of the best presentations on this subject in the available literature is J. Allen Danelek’s
The Great Airship of 1897.
Danelek’s book, although highly speculative in its presentation, discusses the possibility that some private entity—perhaps an individual funded by wealthy investment dollars stemming from somewhere in Southern California—could have built an exotic-looking aircraft that, while utilizing comparatively primitive technology
available just before the turn of the last century, nonetheless outperformed other known aircraft of the day. Hoping to protect the obvious potential for profiting from such technology (especially once it became a feasible option to go public with the design and incorporate commercial enterprises thereafter), the craft, along with the clandestine sources behind its creation and funding, might have been kept largely a secret from the public. Then, by April 1897, very little was heard anymore regarding the blimp-like mystery airships, which Danelek supposes could indicate the onset of some kind of disaster; perhaps the vessel crashed or was destroyed in some other way.
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Interestingly, the United States wasn’t the only country in which reports of strange “mystery airships” would begin to occur quite early, especially with relation to the kinds of technology apparently being used. Little more than a decade after the strange aircraft first seen over Sacramento made its rather curious presence known, similar reports then began to emanate from Australia that involved bright, colored lights seen in the skies. According to an August 9, 1909, story that appeared in
The Barrier Miner
:

The Rev. B. Cozens, of the Port Melbourne Seamen’s Mission, tells an interesting story regarding the mysterious lights which appeared in the air over the Dandenong Ranges on Saturday night. Going outside at 10 o’clock, he saw, half a mile up in the air, two revolving lights moving over
the ranges. They slowed down, dipped, and rose up again, then changed from white to red and to blue. Mr. Cozens called his wife and three neighbours. They all watched the lights until midnight, by which time one had almost moved out of sight over the ranges. Again at 2 o’clock Mr. Cozens saw the second one, which almost crossed the ranges. Five more appeared in the distance, moving in the direction taken by the other two.
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Australian researcher Andrew Nicholson brought this report, along with several others from around the same time, to my attention, noting that: “Passengers on the Melbourne express also witnessed the light, which had been seen the previous two nights flying above the Southern Highlands and the coast between Mittagong and Wollongong.”
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According to an article in the
Sydney Morning Herald
that described the event, it was believed that the witnesses had probably seen “a balloon or airship.”
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Many point out that, although approaches by those like Danelek are indeed speculative endeavors (and to be clear, the author himself states this early on in his book), the thesis Danelek presents does illustrate a few important elements worthy of consideration. Because the technology needed to produce the craft described in various eyewitness reports could easily have existed by 1896, the case could also be made that the craft being seen around the time would hardly fit the conventional “extraterrestrial” model of what many take UFOs to be. In fact, Danelek’s own feelings seem to be quite the contrary:

What I found most curious about the whole affair—and a point which I believe has been overlooked by most commentators over the years—is that at the time, most witnesses thought the vehicle was neither imaginary nor extraterrestrial. Instead, most believed it to have been a very man-made machine—a powered balloon perhaps or, more accurately, a dirigible—being tested in the chilly night air of North America. In other words, they saw it as neither hoax nor alien visitor, but simply as an example of nascent technology being put through its paces by some mysterious but intrepid inventor.
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Although the clandestine nature of this statement seems both incredible and intriguing, how much more incredible would it be than the literal idea that the craft in question were extraterrestrial, assuming of course that reports of its presence were more than mere newspaper hoaxes? Again, however, we must remember that Danelek and others have pointed out already how a number of respectable local officials and other individuals had claimed to see the “craft” during the Sacramento event, whatever it actually was. Additionally, despite the view that journalists of the 19th century were held to less scrupulosity than those in media today, the newspapers reporting the story at the time
did
have similar reputations to uphold; it seems the story of an airship drifting through the night skies above Sacramento would hardly have been considered worthy of the front page, had it been the result of
mere tomfoolery. And yet, in a few instances, this story
had
actually been a front-page feature. Obviously, somebody felt there was real merit to the entire story.

Finally, it would serve us well to note here the exploits of David Schwarz, the Croatian inventor who managed to design an airship that, though not entirely functional, was at least similar in design to reports of the object seen over parts of the United States between 1896 and 1897. On November 3, 1897, one of the designs procured by Schwarz (who, sadly, had died shortly before attempts at taking his design to the air were successful) did manage to become airborne with a degree of success during a test flight at Tempelhof near Berlin, Germany.
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While Schwarz’s work could hardly have matched the ingenuity displayed by the airship being seen around the same time over America, it does show us that others were experimenting with this sort of technology by the late 1890s and were even achieving limited success with their designs. And yet, as Danelek notes in his subsequent book,
Phantoms of the Skies: The Lost History of Aviation from Antiquity to the Wright Brothers
, his interactions with many aviation historians showed that a general knowledge of the experiments of Schwarz and others around the late 19th century remains curiously absent.
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In other words, these more obscure escapades in the history of human flight, although very real and historically accurate, are just clandestine enough to remain unknown by many otherwise-well-researched experts in the field of avionics and machine-driven aircraft today.

Though such exploration of our hidden history of air travel may be interesting, some would ask what even the most thorough understanding of clandestine aviation history might lend to the understanding of modern UFOs. Furthermore, how could this concept contribute at all to ideas like a coming technological Singularity, or the future of air travel and space flight?

What must be taken into consideration here is that, whereas we are constantly applying Occam’s Razor and looking to space and the outer cosmos for answers to the strange things we occasionally see in the skies, we less often look at the obvious clues right here in our midst. In truth, even many of the finest historians and researchers are simply limited in terms of knowing where and what to look for, due to the specialized nature of their studies in any particular given field. Hence, it’s often the case that writers, researchers, and journalists, though lacking in the scientific expertise of a well-trained specialist in one subject or another, will have the tendency to look beyond the confines of their niche in their quest for facts and details. Hence, they also may become exposed to a far broader range of subjects, and thus those little details in their minutiae do begin to emerge in ways that others simply may not see.

When it comes to UFOs, we have generally become so entrenched with the idea that we are dealing with the obvious presence of interplanetary visitors from a distant star system that we seldom stop to consider whether seemingly exotic technologies could have their origins
here on Earth. By the middle part of the last century, people had begun to look back to the seemingly fantastic airship reports of the 1890s, and had begun to suppose (according to popular UFO-related lines of thought from the 1940s onward) that these reports may have been early encounters with extraterrestrial aircraft. This explanation is far easier to digest than the idea that someone here in our midst could have been doing unique things with existing technology around 1896, and thus might have achieved things that, according to many at the time, would have been considered utterly impossible. But once we incorporate knowledge of what aviation principles were indeed being utilized already close to the end of the 1800s, we can certainly begin to suppose that a scenario involving private industry, perhaps funded by wealthy investors from the West Coast, as Danelek supposes, would seem even more likely than alien visitors.

In other words, part of our ultimate understanding of the UFO mystery may rely less on leaping to conclusions about alien visitors, or even secret government projects. In truth, there may have been a number of secret
private enterprises
throughout the years, which might have contributed to reports of unexplainable and otherworldly looking things in the skies. Similarly, could we suppose that such trends might have continued throughout the decades, and that advanced technologies might also be in production behind the scenes today?

Indeed, thinking along these lines may compliment the incorporation of advanced future science into the
equation, just as well. Consider the oft-espoused axiom, invoked recently by a television producer I had been chatting with over the phone, which supposes how government technology is always at least two decades ahead of what the public knows about. If this were indeed true—and history has shown, to some extent, that it is—then we may also need to consider more carefully the ideas of the proponents of a coming Singularity in this context. Ray Kurzweil, among others, speculates that the beginnings of technologies that will eventually lead to smarter-than-human artificial intelligence will begin to emerge within
the next two decades.
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Furthermore, a host of other unforeseeable technological innovations will likely begin to contribute to exotic infrastructure that, by many accounts, would seem very much like the sorts of things already described in UFO literature. If Kurzweil is right, does this mean that someplace here on Earth, and at this very moment, various kinds of “secret” technology may already be nearing a technological merging between man and machine? Perhaps even stranger than the idea of a Singularity occurring behind the scenes today is the notion that exotic technologies may have already been in development for some time now. For all we know, the humble emergence of those clumsy “mystery airships” more than a century ago could represent the chronological beginnings of a series of innovations that would eventually far exceed the capabilities of those known to even the most well-educated aviation historians among us today. Depending on the level of technological sophistication such “secret groups”
might have achieved, these could also have contributed to a host of reports of strange unidentified flying objects seen as far back as prior to World War I. As Danelek puts it, “The history of manned flight may be far richer and more remarkable—and incomplete—than we can begin to appreciate.”
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