Zebulon Vitruvius Pike (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dime_novel_hero) wrote2011-12-07 09:21 pm
dime_novel_hero) wrote2011-12-07 09:21 pm
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Phantom Airship of 1871
As I researched the Airship Flap of 1896-97, I came across a stereocard from 1871 on a number of UFO websites. The card was purported to show a zeppelin-like airship against a towering cloudbank taken from atop Mt. Washington in New Hampshire. Because the card was dated 1871 and zeppelins did not exist until 1901. . . .aliens.
No, really. The reasoning they presented was that straightforward. Because we know airships didn't exist at that time it must be an alien spacecraft.
Except that airships did exist at that time. The first dirigibles, steerable airships, were invented shortly after the first hot air balloons took flight at the end of the 18th Century. In 1852, Henri Giffard flew the first steam powered airship in Paris. Between then and Zeppelin's success in 1901, scores of inventors flew any number of airships successfully. It is not inconceivable that in the 1870s someone had an airship flying above New Hampshire.
Except that the photograph isn't an airship. Nor is it a spaceship.
The believers fail in their due diligence, ignore the scientific process or any sort of investigative procedure altogether and merely base their conclusions on the photograph that they saw posted online by another UFO believer and their ignorance about airships. And Mt. Washington. And weather. And stereocards.
So, lets' take a look at the actual card.
I will agree that it looks like what they say claim; a zeppelin and a cloudbank. However, there are a few incongruities. For one, the “cloud” doesn't seem quite right. I've seen plenty of clouds and this one seems a strange formation, lacking the billowiness of a cloud. A cumulus or cumulonimbus cloud like this should be more fluffy, this seems to have the streaky filaments found only at the tops of storm clouds even to its base.
Anyone who has ever seen a cloud should have these same doubts.
But it could be easily understood why people don't turn a critical eye to what they are looking at because they only have the one image. And a lousy one at that. The link that I have seen floated around by the UFO believers is a 800x381 pixel image. And that is called “large”. Many other sites crop and enlarge the image so that it is even more blurry. When that's the best you have, how are you to apply any sort of analysts to that?
What do you see when you use a 12 megapixel image rather than a 300 kilopixel image?
The “zeppelin” looses much of its airship-like characteristics and looks more like a chunk of wood. The surrounding clouds look less like clouds.
Of course, all this intuitive reasoning is rendered completely moot should one simply turn the card over and see what it written on the back.
This card is number 17 of a set of cards called “Views taken on the summit of Mt. Washington during the winter of 1870-71” published by Clough & Kimball, Concord, New Hampshire. The card's title is “Frost Architecture” and, like all the other cards in the series, present pictures of ice and frost that has formed on various structures at the Mount Washington Weather Observatory, “Home of the world's worst weather.” Not a cloud. Not a zeppelin. Not an alien spacecraft.
Ice.
None of the websites that are putting forward that this is an alien zeppelin ever show you the back of the card or any of the other photographs in the series.
The clincher, at least to my mind, is when you stop looking at the image on a computer screen and actually put it into a stereoscopic viewer. As soon as you do that, parallax immediately shrinks what at first seemed like a cloud to something much more terrestrial. Edges three-dimensionally sharp and the dark spot you might have mistaken for an airship becomes a dark pit, embedded in the surrounding whiteness. All told, and especially when compared to other photographs in the series, the formation is only several feet high and the “airship” spot appears only a few inches long at best.
Ice.
So, why do people insist on believing this false 1870s airship story when a simple search of the Internet can find all of this information that conclusively disproves the hypothesis? Why was this video posted just a week ago as if the poster had only just discovered this world-changing secret?
Dogma and deception.
UFOlogists, on the whole, seem fairly well versed in Internet searches. They are able to comb the Internet for the most obscure things to tie their pet theory together with grand conspiracies of government cover up and alien mind control. But if they were to turn their search engine mojo to the topic of this 1870 airship question, in short order they would be able to find all the information I was able to find. They would find the NY Public Library site with all the other cards. They would find the high-resolution image on Wikimedia. They would find any number of other postings on the subject and with those postings any number of comments debunking the hypothesis or, at the very least, providing a critical eye that they could then utilize to search out the information I've presented here.
So, why don't they?
Actually, I believe that they do. They search and search and when they find something that does not agree with their pre-conceived conclusions they ignore it or suppress it. They don't link to other websites and certainly don't link to those that would refute their views. They don't link to images and instead download them to their own servers, as if they themselves cam into this special image.
They are lying.
Certainly to you. Maybe to themselves. But they are disseminating known untruths and banking on your ignorance. Guys like von Daniken, Art Bell, Graham Hancock, Bob Lazar, Whitley Strieber and Giorgio Tsoukalous have made their careers on this. They sell books, appear on TV shows and charge admission fees to their lectures based on your ignorance.
Stop that.
Don't just be skeptical. They use that word when they are "skeptical" of what the scientific mainstream tells them. They are "skeptical" of what the government tells them. That word does not mean what they think it means. Be skeptical, yes, but then actually check it out. Is your skepticism justified? Can you find a better explanation? Can you find actual evidence? Use Occam's Razor. Bayes' Theorem. Read a book.
In 2002, this card was offered on eBay. Many cards sell there for a few dollars a piece. I've seen some vintage cards sell as high as $50. Samuel M. Sherman, producer of such fine films as “Brain of Blood” and “Raiders of the Living Dead” paid $385 for his proof of a Victorian-age airship.
No, really. The reasoning they presented was that straightforward. Because we know airships didn't exist at that time it must be an alien spacecraft.
Except that airships did exist at that time. The first dirigibles, steerable airships, were invented shortly after the first hot air balloons took flight at the end of the 18th Century. In 1852, Henri Giffard flew the first steam powered airship in Paris. Between then and Zeppelin's success in 1901, scores of inventors flew any number of airships successfully. It is not inconceivable that in the 1870s someone had an airship flying above New Hampshire.
Except that the photograph isn't an airship. Nor is it a spaceship.
The believers fail in their due diligence, ignore the scientific process or any sort of investigative procedure altogether and merely base their conclusions on the photograph that they saw posted online by another UFO believer and their ignorance about airships. And Mt. Washington. And weather. And stereocards.
So, lets' take a look at the actual card.
I will agree that it looks like what they say claim; a zeppelin and a cloudbank. However, there are a few incongruities. For one, the “cloud” doesn't seem quite right. I've seen plenty of clouds and this one seems a strange formation, lacking the billowiness of a cloud. A cumulus or cumulonimbus cloud like this should be more fluffy, this seems to have the streaky filaments found only at the tops of storm clouds even to its base.
Anyone who has ever seen a cloud should have these same doubts.
But it could be easily understood why people don't turn a critical eye to what they are looking at because they only have the one image. And a lousy one at that. The link that I have seen floated around by the UFO believers is a 800x381 pixel image. And that is called “large”. Many other sites crop and enlarge the image so that it is even more blurry. When that's the best you have, how are you to apply any sort of analysts to that?
What do you see when you use a 12 megapixel image rather than a 300 kilopixel image?
The “zeppelin” looses much of its airship-like characteristics and looks more like a chunk of wood. The surrounding clouds look less like clouds.
Of course, all this intuitive reasoning is rendered completely moot should one simply turn the card over and see what it written on the back.
This card is number 17 of a set of cards called “Views taken on the summit of Mt. Washington during the winter of 1870-71” published by Clough & Kimball, Concord, New Hampshire. The card's title is “Frost Architecture” and, like all the other cards in the series, present pictures of ice and frost that has formed on various structures at the Mount Washington Weather Observatory, “Home of the world's worst weather.” Not a cloud. Not a zeppelin. Not an alien spacecraft.
Ice.
None of the websites that are putting forward that this is an alien zeppelin ever show you the back of the card or any of the other photographs in the series.
The clincher, at least to my mind, is when you stop looking at the image on a computer screen and actually put it into a stereoscopic viewer. As soon as you do that, parallax immediately shrinks what at first seemed like a cloud to something much more terrestrial. Edges three-dimensionally sharp and the dark spot you might have mistaken for an airship becomes a dark pit, embedded in the surrounding whiteness. All told, and especially when compared to other photographs in the series, the formation is only several feet high and the “airship” spot appears only a few inches long at best.
Ice.
So, why do people insist on believing this false 1870s airship story when a simple search of the Internet can find all of this information that conclusively disproves the hypothesis? Why was this video posted just a week ago as if the poster had only just discovered this world-changing secret?
Dogma and deception.
UFOlogists, on the whole, seem fairly well versed in Internet searches. They are able to comb the Internet for the most obscure things to tie their pet theory together with grand conspiracies of government cover up and alien mind control. But if they were to turn their search engine mojo to the topic of this 1870 airship question, in short order they would be able to find all the information I was able to find. They would find the NY Public Library site with all the other cards. They would find the high-resolution image on Wikimedia. They would find any number of other postings on the subject and with those postings any number of comments debunking the hypothesis or, at the very least, providing a critical eye that they could then utilize to search out the information I've presented here.
So, why don't they?
Actually, I believe that they do. They search and search and when they find something that does not agree with their pre-conceived conclusions they ignore it or suppress it. They don't link to other websites and certainly don't link to those that would refute their views. They don't link to images and instead download them to their own servers, as if they themselves cam into this special image.They are lying.
Certainly to you. Maybe to themselves. But they are disseminating known untruths and banking on your ignorance. Guys like von Daniken, Art Bell, Graham Hancock, Bob Lazar, Whitley Strieber and Giorgio Tsoukalous have made their careers on this. They sell books, appear on TV shows and charge admission fees to their lectures based on your ignorance.
Stop that.
Don't just be skeptical. They use that word when they are "skeptical" of what the scientific mainstream tells them. They are "skeptical" of what the government tells them. That word does not mean what they think it means. Be skeptical, yes, but then actually check it out. Is your skepticism justified? Can you find a better explanation? Can you find actual evidence? Use Occam's Razor. Bayes' Theorem. Read a book.
In 2002, this card was offered on eBay. Many cards sell there for a few dollars a piece. I've seen some vintage cards sell as high as $50. Samuel M. Sherman, producer of such fine films as “Brain of Blood” and “Raiders of the Living Dead” paid $385 for his proof of a Victorian-age airship.