The early airship designs can bear a striking resemblance to a description that is very familiar. As these two images reveal - the profile bears similarity to more modern early 20th century witness statements about "saucers" (flat ovoid's) and cigars (longer flattened ovoid's). The earliest truly unique sightings of objects doing movements, speeds, etc. beyond the ability of technology in that time are often described by associating their appearance with something common in life: as silver washtub turned upside down, a large serving platter, a cigar and the like.
While one or two of the early airship sightings have aspects that are little odd too many of the stories appear around April 1 and the timing is suspect.
Newspapers of the late 1880's are filled with inventors hawking their real or imagined inventions. Early science was dreaming Jules Verne sized concepts of flight, space and time travel. It was a wonderful time really, filled with an awesome sense of a world being discovered, catalogued, examined, and explained by a host of brand new scientific fields and passionate amateurs and professional's.
The Gifford Airship in the London Science Musuem dates to 1852. Notice the elongated ovoid (cigar or dirigible) shape. The overall profile matches many early sightings of the "mystery airships" of the 1896-1897 period.
Newspapers of the time of the mystery airships reveal that the attitude toward the idea of flying about - controlled or otherwise- was simply "mad". Men in asylums talked such nonsense. With a potential for millions to be made developing the fully functioning airborne craft able to be controlled, steered, loaded with paying passengers or cargo - the minds of many turned toward overcoming the problems. The Europeans paid more respectful attention to the possibilities than did the North American United States.
Even past the Wright Brother's work, when we entered WWI the Germans had been developing a strong air corps in 1910 while most in the U.S. were still merely barnstorming for pennies to curious small-town crowds. The US Army Air Corps was not founded until 1917 with entry into WW1.
Many of those early mysterious airships were reported to carry men in seaman-like uniforms, to be heard speaking a strange language, etc. It was possible that the skills from European inventors - published in papers across the U.S.- might have been imported by wealthy investors or inventors to work on the air-flight issue.
It is something to think about as research into older stories comes to light - due to massive digital projects that are placing early and harder to locate resources - online.
The UFO/UAP researcher has to realize that there will always be a certain portion of objects seen that are a) misinterpretations of contemporary known technology, and b) misinterpretations of natural phenomena. That is how people work. There will also, usually, always be a portion that are sightings of the truly unusual. Researchers have to be able to know the difference.
A good overview of the topic, with locale specific information is found here.
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