After my last post, I went looking for a source for the 1896 Airship Flap that concentrated specifically on the reports of flying machines and strange lights in the California sky in late 1896. Specifically, I wanted to know whether there was anything particular about the California sightings that might differentiate the 1896 Airship Flap in California from the 1897 Airship Flap in other states.
Eventually, I found scans of a privately printed book by Loren E. Gross: this had first been published in Fremont, CA in 1974 as “The UFO Wave of 1896”, before being reprinted (2nd edition) in 1987 as “UFO’S: A History 1896”.
Despite the title, Gross’ overall angle was far more Fortean than Ufological. Apart from quoting a local “W.A.” [I read elsewhere that this was “William Ahern”] at the end (who thought that the airship had been sent by “The Lord Commissioner of Mars” [p.27]), the phenomena were largely reported as if they were man-made, with some dissenters thinking it was a hoax.
William Randolph Hearst
In many ways, the story painted by Gross is as not so much about airships and strange lights in the sky as about how the competition between San Francisco newspapers shaped and presented that unfolding history. On one side, The San Francisco Chronicle and particularly The San Francisco Call eagerly searched out airship stories to an engaged public who couldn’t wait for the mysterious airship to do its (much anticipated) Big Reveal downtown so that everyone could see the unknown geniuses behind it. Yet on the other side, William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner went out of its way to rubbish the coverage (particularly from the Call) at every step.
We can see this in a poem (ok, doggerel) in the Examiner 26th November 1896 (reproduced in Gross’ Foreword), where the penultimate verse is aimed squarely at the paper’s competition (might this have been the Call’s editor John McNaught?):
One editor is certain / You really are a ship,
And most adroitly manage / To give his sleuths the slip,
He thinks that now, or later, / The human race will fly;
So can’t you, as a favor, soon / Take him aboard and try?
For if your motive power consists / Of force akin to wind,
He is as large a bag of that / As you will ever find.
The final verse continues the Examiner’s jabbing, basically asserting that the other paper is more interested in profiting from what the Examiner thinks is basically a fake story, designed to catch “suckers”:
Our faith it might be stronger, / But earth is rich in liars
Who do not pause to ponder / The future and its fires.
They’d see a ghost on every cloud / To sell the tale for space,
And spend the price for pie and cake / Wherewith to feed the face.
But come again, oh, toy balloons! / We rather like your style–
We see your catch of suckers / And join you in a smile.
Previously, William Randolph Hearst had taken the reins of the Examiner from his father in 1887 at the age of 17, but by 1896 had switched his day-to-day attention to the New York Journal. Even though Hearst lived on the East Coast, it was well-known that he kept a steely grip on the Examiner‘s editorial policy back in California.
All of which was why The San Francisco Call took so much relish, in late November 1896 at the end the Californian Airship Flap, in pointing out that the two Hearst papers had (in Gross’ words, pp.25-26) “engaged in a two-faced game”. While the Examiner on the West Coast “warred against the Call’s big headlines about mysterious airships by vigorously blaming the aerial visions on people who were under the spell of the Roman god Bacchus”, the New York Journal on the East Coast “excited New Yorkers with sensational tales of powered balloons zipping all over California”.
From the point of view of a modern-day historian looking back at the whole sequence, I think it’s quite clear that there really were plenty of witnesses who saw strange lights in the sky at dusk and at night, many of whom were able to see enough of the shape of the form to identify it as an airship, albeit one with an electric arc-like light and a strange lolloping bat-like motion. The only real reason the Examiner printed so many hoax-y / doubting stories was, I think, to supply a counter-narrative to the Call, not because its editors thought that counter-narrative was actually true.
So, the real battleground here was arguably the bitter American newspaper war of 1896, where Truth was always going to be the first casualty: any pretence at honest reporting was to be jettisoned like useless ballast if it got in the way of elevating Hearst’s newspapers’ circulations yet higher. In fact, my suspicion is that the Examiner‘s dishonest reporting of the 1896 California Airship Flap may well have been what caused so many later writers to erroneously conclude that this was merely some kind of “mass hysteria”. All Hearst’s Examiner needed was a counter-narrative not to inform but to annoy and enrage: you shouldn’t have too far to look these days to find newspapers that still employ this trick to great profit.
The 1896 California Airship Flap begins..
According to Gross, the first substantial sighting of the 1896 California Airship Flap was made by the household staff of silver magnate Mayor Adolph Sutro, at his (somewhat implausible-looking French chateau-style) mansion overlooking the Pacific Ocean west of San Francisco.
It seems a “strange object” had hovered in the air just offshore over Seal Rock. The darkness had masked the features of the unknown aerial thing, but a powerful light had been discernable on the rear portion as well as a row of lights down its side, as the object suddenly flew away toward the east, passing overhead at an estimated 500 foot altitude. [p.1]
We can see Seal Rocks roughly 200m due west of Cliff House in this early map of San Francisco:
What I find hugely interesting about this is that all the key elements of the mystery airship ‘template‘ we see throughout the main 1897 Airship Flap are already fully present here. We have a mystery airship with an unusually strong light (like an electric arc lamp) at the rear, a row of lights down the side, rapid acceleration, dusk or night-time flights, and a flight-path close (but not too close) to large cities and to nearby railway lines.
From a template to a secret history…?
What I’ve been trying to do is to use this template to ‘build’ my way back into the secret history of the device. For what they’re worth, here are my current thoughts:
The only practical means of achieving lift available in 1896-1897 was hydrogen gas: but because there are no descriptions of the airship ascending rapidly, my working theory is that it was not primarily intended to rise by dropping ballast, but that it instead used hydrogen gas to achieve neutral buoyancy. I further suspect that it had no air ballonet inside its main gasbags, to control its height above the ground.
In turn, what I think that means is that despite staying buoyant in the air like an airship, it handled more like an aeroplane (i.e. by driving it forward and adjusting its wings to rise or fall slowly in the air) even though aeroplanes hadn’t yet been invented. This mystery flying machine was, in short, a hybrid.
I also suspect that dusk to night-time flights were chosen not primarily for secrecy, but because of technical problems with maintaining stable buoyancy during the (hot) day-time. This makes me suspect that the airship design had practical problems with managing the pressure of its internal gasbags.
Furthermore, I suspect that railway lines were a hugely important part of the airship’s testing process, because they would have provide a reliable means for night-time navigation, and possibly a way for owners to track progress (via messages from telegraph offices, often located near railway lines).
As an aside, an airship flying at 500 feet or higher should have had no fear of running into things: the tallest building in San Francisco in 1896 was the Chronicle Building, which was a mere 120 feet high.
Finally, I think the bright light has to be a huge tell. Anything on board an 1896 airship would have had to have there as a matter of R&D necessity, not as a luxury or a nicety. And the kind of huge battery that would have been needed to power an arc lamp would have weighed (not literally, but not far off) a ton. Hence something else on board must have been creating that intense light, and it must have been creating it for a really good reason.
Having now spent a while trying to link all these strands together, I come back time and again to Dr Sumter Beauregard Battey’s airship design. This was a dirigible based on neutral buoyancy, with means for (what one might call) external combustion to propel it forward (in a moderately steerable way), and with controllable ‘wings’ to adjust the altitude. My suspicion is therefore that what people thought was the “bright light” was in fact actually the flying machine’s means of propulsion, the core inventive step of Battey’s patent.
I also can’t help but wonder if the mystery airship was built elsewhere in California and followed (on this very early test flight to Cliff House and Seal Rocks) the railway tracks going west through Oakland, specifically the Overland Route that headed way across to Nebraska and Iowa. The most obvious location on this line would have been the state capital Sacramento, some 90 miles distant from Mayor Sutro’s gingerbread-style Cliff House. It is perhaps no coincidence that the first newspaper report of a sighting (on the night of the 17 Nov 1896) was by Charles Lusk “at his place of residence at 24th and “O” Streets” in Sacramento [Gross, p.1].
The attorney E. B. Collins, who claimed to be representing the inventor (and whom the San Francisco Call harassed for days), asserted that it started its flight from “Oroville, in Butte County, and flew sixty miles in a straight line over Sacramento”. But… I have to say that I have my doubts that this was true. Dr Charles Abbott Smith at one point was registered to vote in East Bear River Township near Yuba, so I’m actually wondering whether Collins was representing Smith (and I believe that Smith wasn’t yet ready to build anything in 1896).
Thoughts on Gross
I think that Loren Gross did a very good job of bringing these newspaper reports together, and his book offers an excellent (if necessarily all-too-brief) walk-through of the 1896 California Airship Flap: well worth a read!
His first (1974) edition was based on a set of newspaper clippings collected by Vincent Gaddis. His second revision (1987) relied instead on folklorist Thomas E. Bullard’s “The Airship File: A Collection of Texts Concerning Phantom Airships and Other UFOs, Gathered from Newspapers and Periodicals Mostly During the Hundred Years Prior to Kenneth Arnold’s Sighting” and its supplements.
I cannot, of course, find enough words to say how much I now want to see Thomas Bullard’s Airship Files. I’ve contacted Bullard via Academia.edu, but if anyone has any other suggestions as to how I might get to see “The Airship Files” and its supplements, I am – like an overevolved rabbit – all ears.
Beautiful bit of research as ever. Thanks for this.
Hope you won’t mind Nick but I felt other bloggers and tech-y people here might be able to shed light on another peculiar occurrence.
Over the past several days, some one(s) with the ISP Singapore, Amazon have been busily and systematically visiting and apparently reading but more likely downloading fairly much in order – including comments – all the posts that have ever been posted to voynichrevisionist. I mean, enthusiasm’s really nice, but it’s making a real mess of the average stats. Just today, el/la Singaporean Amazon has racked up 170+ visits – and today has yet several hours to go.
.
What do Nick’s readers think? Is Amazon Singapore more likely an enthusiast? A plagiarist? A fan who has decided my brilliant thoughts shall appear for sale in an Amazon edition will-I, nill-I? Perhaps an ad/spam planter so successfully blocked by my anti-spam that not a one has even reached ‘moderate before posting? All the above/none of the above?
As a rule I think 60 visitors a day is a pretty good day. 100 and I must have said something controversial. But more than that and its time for smelling salts..:)
Diane: I had the same kind of Singapore ‘wave’ about three weeks ago, so I guess it’s just someone’s pet web project crawling the web.
Diane: Singapore ‘sting’, neither wave nor sling.
Nick, to help clarify…is your interest at all in UFO abductions? Bullard has another book about abductions that is out of print about that phenomena. Roswell was not an abduction event (that I am aware). It is interesting you cannot get the one you are after I think. You can’t buy it I take either?
Matthew Lewis: Thomas Eddie Bullard worked mainly as a folklorist, so looked at UFOs and abductions as a kind of (largely twentieth century) folk story that was unfolding and evolving, as far as I can tell. Though I am aware of his other books, his collection of newspaper clippings on the 1896-1897 Airship Flap is basically what I’m after, and seems hens-teethingly rare.
Nick,
Oooh – I’m in the Singaporean’s A-list. So Chuffed. 🙂
Mr. Pelling is correct– original sources are essential. The first step is fact checking– do the people quoted turn up on the census, and if so are their occupations consistent with those listed in the news reports?
That much said, The19 November 1896 report in the ‘San Francisco Call’ passes the smell test. (Find it in the comments to the previous post: 15 May 2023.) The reporter identifies multiple sources, and lists their accounts in detail. The accounts present a consistent big picture, but vary in detail. This is exactly what you would expect of a real event. The reporter carefully differentiates between first hand report and rumor. If the report checks out and is not falsified elsewhere, one can conclude a real object passed over Sacramento on 17 November 1896 (unless the reporter and his witnesses were members of E. Clampus Vitas). But there are some things to consider:
Eyewitnesses do not always reports accurately. We remember reading a research paper (decades ago, unfortunately) which compared eyewitness accounts of airplane crashes to forensic examinations of the wreckage. Naïve witness accounts were wildly inaccurate– for example reporting that the airplane was on fire before it crashed, when in reality the fire started on impact. On the other hand, pilots and air traffic controllers were spot on in their observations.
The planet Venus did not pass over Sacramento traveling in a westerly or southwesterly direction.
The weather on 17 November 1896 was not encouraging. Gross (page 1) recounts:
‘On Tuesday, November 17, 1896, Charles Lusk, cashier of the Central Electric Street Railway Company in Sacramento, California, stepped outside for some fresh air at his place of residence at 24th and “0” Streets. The weather had been worse than usual that winter, and the black evening skies, troubled with intermittent rain, drew his attention. Suddenly there appeared over the rooftops a bright light sailing on a westward course at a 1,000 ft. altitude.’
Rain and condensation play havoc with the buoyancy of an airship or balloon, and sudden or shifting winds would risk structural failure. This is clearly no weather for a test flight. Whoever was responsible was either entirely confident or entirely reckless.
When we get time, we’ll react to Mr. Pelling’s guesses above, and (with some luck) reproduce some of the original newspaper reports.
Nick, thanks for the explanation. Yes if it’s newspaper clippings about the events that is quite specific and good luck.
Overall from my brief study of your research Bullard separated folk tales of group sightings and such, differently than abduction encounters which had less chance for embellishment after being passed along.
I think the abduction phenomena might need more study as it may go unreported by people who feel obvious stigma for doing so. People are I think flat out not served well, (if indeed at all), in such mental health matters. To think they are this way because because of some fantastical MIB minders, while fanciful not beyond the realm of possibility.
Is the report you are looking for classified, to your knowledge?
Think you’ve heard it all on results of Nick Pelling’s escape to the California UFO fields of 1896/7. You might think again on authentication on the far from square affair after you’ve copped this lot which just happens to be true believe it or not. Engineer Jules Henri Giffard (1825-1882) was assuredly the first man to build and fly a passenger-carrying powered and controllable airship. The hydrogen filled dirigible was 144 ft/ 43 m. long, had a 2000W/3HP steam engine driving a three baded propeller and was steered by a sail like rudder. It flew at an average speed of 5 kph/3mph. On 24 September, 1852 Jules baby took off from Hippodrome in Paris and flew to Elancourt near Trappes, a distance comparable at least with Louis Bleriot’s fixed wing powered prize winning entry for the race from Caiais to Dover 57 years later.
Oh dear…Nick has spent way too long looking into the historical cipher mysteries abyss, and it has finally looked back into him…
* Never underestimate the level of hoaxing in 19th century newspapers.
* Never overestimate the reliability of either eyewitness testimony or the accuracy of its reporting.
* Consider the ’78 panda sightings case discussed in https://skepticalinquirer.org/newsletter/lake-monster-lookalikes/ — it is not that uncommon for people to report seeing things they didn’t see (and in that particular case we know they *couldn’t* have seen).
* All the usual night time perceptual errors that generate UAP sightings today apply (other than wishful thinking about conventional aircraft lighting), although some of the daytime ones admittedly may not be as likely (i.e., lenticular clouds, which account for a shocking fraction of modern daytime UAP sightings, but aren’t very airship-like in shape).
* My evaluation of the Bayesian probability that the airship(s) were real given the lack of any public disclosure by the supposed inventors (as opposed to sightings) — not to mention the end of the wave (as opposed to further development/continued sightings) — obviously differs from Nick’s.
* The Dellschau material (which Nick tangentially mentioned in one post) is fascinating, but (and other folks’ mileage obviously differs) my bet it that it reflects a rich inner life rather than a factual record.
The 1890’s airship flap is a fascinating episode, but I doubt there was any “there” there….(on the other hand, _chacun à son goût _ [which is French for “you do you”]).
Here are the reports from the Sacramento Record-Union. Gross (page 4) makes an error when he refers to them. The Sacramento Union-Record and the Sacramento Union are one and the same newspaper. From 1875 to 1891, the paper was known as the Sacramento Union Record. Before and after that period, it was known as the Sacramento Union. [All sources: University of California Riverside– California digital newspaper collection] https://cdnc.ucr.edu/ ]
____
Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 92, Number 91, 19 November 1896 THAT MYSTERIOUS LIGHT.
Was It an Air-Ship or a Will-o’-the-wisp?
Stories That are Floating Around Concerning the Supposed Floating Visitor.
Regarding the aerial visitor that passed over Sacramento Tuesday evening, and which was described at the time as being a pure white light of about double the power of an electric arc light, many queer stories are told. “Whether the light was a meteor, or attached to a balloon, or whether it was a genuine flying machine, is not positively known, though ninety-nine out of 100 men in the city regard the matter in the light of a huge hoax. The stories told by some of the parties who saw the light follow, and the reader can pay his money and take his choice:
R. L. Lowry, who was formerly in the employ of the street railway company in this city, but who has been absent for some time and only recently returned, says he was near East Park and saw the apparatus when it was not more than fifty feet from the ground. He declared that the machine was Cigar-shaped and was operated by four men who sat aside the cigar and moved as though they were working their passage on a bicycle. He stated that the machine was fitted with wing-like propellers after the fashion of those of an ocean steamer.
T. P. De Long, whose residence is not mentioned in the city directory, said he saw the light and heard voices, but couldn’t hear what was said.
Daniel Curl, a horse-trainer, is authority for the statement that he nodt only saw the light, but heard someone suggest that “they go up higher.”
F. K. Briggs, a motorman on a J-Street car. said he saw the light and called attention to it. His passengers requested him to stop, which he did. He heard singing which appeared to come from the direction of the light, and seemed to be wafted down in gusts.
If. F. Shelley, a motorman on a J-Street car, saw the light and heard a voice shouting orders.
C. H. Lusk, Secretary of the street-car company, noticed the light. He said it had an up-and-down and side-to-side motion.
G. C. Snider, foreman of the streetcar barn, saw the light, and gave it as his opinion that it was an aerial machine of some kind.
Frank A. Ross, Assistant Manner of the street railway company, said he he talked with many persons concerning the matter, and, having seen the light, is fully assured that it was some kind of a flying machine.
Thomas Allen stated very seriously that a flying machine, the invention of a citizen of Sacramento, actually did ascend from the vicinity of Oak Park, and that four men, among whom was Nat Liebling, ascended with it. The machine, he related, was fastened to the earth with a cable, which broke and let the aerial wonder float away. It would not, owing to a defect in the steeling apparatus, be guided, and sailed around at random. First it made for Suisun, but after having accomplished half the journey veered around, once more passed over the city, and is now at a point near Arcade Station, ten miles northeast of this city.
It puzzles one to understand how the machine could have started from Oak Park, which is southeast of the city, and passed over from the northeast to the southwest, and it is also puzzling to know how Nat Bidding could have taken such a wild, wild ride, when he was seen near the Postoffice only two hours later.
There are other puzzling things also, but the average citizen will choose what he wishes; and the burning question still is, “What was it?”
____
Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 92, Number 92, 20 November 1896
AIR FANCIES.
Considerable amusement and no little speculation has pervaded the community for the last three days concerning a supposed flying machine, which it is alleged passed over the city on Tuesday night, operated by four men, whose voices, say several witnesses, could be heard. Hundreds of people agree that a strange, strong light was seen floating in the heavens for half an hour, rising and falling, and moving slowly. But there appears to be but two or three who hold that they saw the machine, and but one of these gives any rational description of it.
The story goes that the machine was built near the city, and broke from its moorings while being experimented with, and that the riders were unable to control the direction of its movements. We take no stock in any of these stories for two sufficient reasons, namely, that no such machine could be built here or near here, and the matter be kept a profound secret; secondly, if any such machine came from anywhere else the news-gatherers would have learned of it; besides there is no reason why any inventor should be particularly secretive about such a thing. The truth certainly is that a strange light was seen slowly floating above the city and pursuing a rather erratic course. Beyond that there is nothing definite, and a light in the sky as described is to be accounted for in several rational ways, disassociated from any flying machine. People are very apt to, by the repetition of tales, to permit them to grow out of all proportion to the truth. There was, we believe, no flying machine in the business. The most skilled enthusiasts in aerial transportation have been at work upon flying machines and navigable balloons for a century. In 1864 a flight of eight miles was successfully made by a machine carrying several people who had it under perfect control, and made it rise and fall at will. Many other tests of ability to navigate the air have been made, and some of them with fair success, but mostly with ill and sometimes fatal results to the experimenters.
In later days the experimenters have nearly all settled down upon the principle of the aeroplane, abandoning the use of inflated spheres to sustain the weight of the navigators. They are nearly all agreed that if man is to be floated in the air it will be done on the principle upon which the birds proceed to mount. It will not do to laugh at the idea of aerial navigation. It has been accomplished in a small way; it may be made practical in a large way. In this day and age we should smile at scarce any of the efforts of man to overcome the laws of gravitation. But that there has been anything new invented and operated for aerial navigation In or near this city and the people kept in profound ignorance of it is absurd. Balloon flights we have had in plenty, and in them there is nothing novel. No one went flying through the air on Tuesday night on a machine with a powerful electric light. Nor were the voices of the navigators heard. Those who think they heard them were deceived. Viewing the light above them as it passed along they might very easily associate sounds of the human voice heard near the locality of the floating light, whether it was that of a hot-air balloon, or was indeed a gas balloon sent up by some one, and which is not uncommon as an amusement. On the basis of what is known, the practical joker has probably built the fanciful stories which filled the air of rumor and have led one San Francisco paper to give a picture of what the so-called air ship looked like, and of the moans used to propel. The light was seen; all else is fancy or a joke, or imagination and a joke combined.
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Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 92, Number 92, 20 November 1896 HAVE YOU SEEN IT?
That is the Question Now—The Latest News From the Aerial Mystery. There is at least one man left in Sacramento who really believes that an airship passed over Sacramento early Tuesday evening, and he did not even see the light. Further than this no telegraphic news has been received showing that such a machine ever reached Suisun.
Rumor had it yesterday, however, that such a ship really did exist, but that the men who worked it, quadruped fashion, gave out when a short distance beyond Rio Vista, and the contrivance came down in one of the sloughs of that section of the country. A farmer who was out early trying to bag poachers on his preserves, saw the hole left in the water, and is positive the ship is at the bottom of it.
Another story goes that a Solano County hunter saw the craft and emptied both barrels of his No. 2 bore into it, breaking a wing. His dog brought it in and it is now on the Sacramento market, but looks too tough to swallow.
The question oftenest asked throughout the town is. “Have you seen it?” and the stereotyped reply comes back. “No; but I saw a man who saw a man who said he saw a man whose aunt’s uncle’s cousin saw two moons while going home, both of which were wabbling.”
The man who is alleged to have heard the chorus while the machine was doing the “Corbett duck.” has put his remembering tank to work, and recalls that one line was “Just Tell Them That You Saw Me.” and he now goes about mournfully whistling. “It Never Came Back.” Another who heard the music declares the words to have been, “Will You-Miss Me When I’m Gone,” and the refrain was, “I Gave That young Man a Fill.”
Several men have been heard of who took the strange light for a forerunner of dire disaster, and immediately spliced the main brace at numerous joints in order to meet their fate with resignation. These are some of the stories floating about concerning the aerial mystery, and “there are others.” Still the citizen pays his money and takes his choice, and, as this is a free country, has a right to his opinion. The lunacy commission is taking a vacation now. so the danger is reduced to a minimum. The question yesterday was not “What was it?” but “Have you seen it?”
Follow-up to previous comments about the Singapore wave.
More good news. Once known as the world’s piracy capital, Singapore’s laws these days are more in keeping with world standards.
https://www.mlaw.gov.sg/news/press-releases/2021-07-06-legislative-changes-to-strengthen-singapores-copyright-regime/
Mr. Pelling’s inferences about the craft fit well with the descriptions in the initial newspaper reports. At very least, he makes good guesses. Pelling proposes a sophisticated airship, one that for the most part employs features that already existed or were developed in the first decade of the twentieth century.
We take exception to the idea that the ‘arc light’ was as means of propulsion similar to that proposed by Battey. According to the ‘Scientific American’ article Mr. Pelling cited in his 8 May 2023 post, Battey’s engine utilizes high explosives, and: ‘The explosions, as they take place in this tube, exert a powerful backward pressure upon the air.’ Suffice to say a combination of a hydrogen gas and high explosives is not recommended. If the light were a means of propulsion, it would have to be something else entirely. But what?
Rather, we suspect the craft carried a light because it could be seen from the ground. Someone may have been tracking the craft as a precaution, or perhaps in order to recover it when it landed.
Rather than an arc light, we suspect one or more gas mantel lights. These were quite bright, and when mated with Fresnel lenses served in lighthouses. Though gas mantel lights are not as bright as arc lights, brightness is difficult to judge without a medium of comparison.
In 1896 the best method of powering an airship was an internal combustion engine, but these were noisy and whatever flew on the night of 17 November 1896 was silent. The simplest explanation would be that the craft was unpowered and simply sailed with the wind. However, we are not entirely comfortable with this explanation.
We spent the first 20 years of our life in Sacramento, and as we remember rain was usually accompanied by wind from the west and south. But the craft flew from northeast to southwest. The Sacramento Union-Record newspapers do not contain weather reports. Knowing the wind direction and speed is critical.
On the other hand, if the 1896 mystery airship could silently buck a wind one is tempted to look at supernatural explanations.
____________
One final note. While the Chronicle Building was 120 feet high, Mt. Sutro is within the city limits and stands at 909 feet (277 m). San Francisco is famous for its steep hills, which create updrafts, downdrafts and other wind currents– most of which are not easily predictable.
LeifFraNorden: it seems that you’re slightly reversing my argument here. The idea I’m floating is that the thing powering the airship was a steerable “external combustion engine” close to the one in Battey’s patent, and that observers misinterpreted the light incidentally produced by the device as being from an electric arc lamp.
Nick Pelling: seems both you and commenter Jo were not overly impressed with my Jules Henri Giffard contribution to the UFO discussion. He is reported to have flown a sophisticated dirigible in France four decades before they were reported in Sacremento or elswhere in California. In that my source had provided satisfactory credentials for validation, i’m wondering if there be fair grounds for Jo’s scornful ribuke and if so, do you have similar doubts as to authenticity and/or grounds for my bringing it to notice.
John Sanders: Giffard did indeed build and fly a steam-powered airship (though it wasn’t powerful enough to fly back against the wind). The flying machine behind the 1896-7 Airship Flap would seem to have been a much more powerful (and much more controllable) device, but one still shrouded in mystery even now.