From "Cincinnati Commercial Tribune", April 16, 1897
Throughout the summer and autumn of 1897, H.G. Wells published his ground-breaking science-fiction novel, “War of the Worlds,” in serial form, over several issues of Cosmopolitan magazine. Simultaneously, the United States reported hundreds of UFO sightings, with dozens of witnesses in Cincinnati alone. Coincidence?
They didn’t call the mysterious aerial objects UFOs in those days, of course. They called them airships. To be precise—despite sightings occurring in widely dispersed locations at the same time—they called it “The Airship” in the apparent belief that it was one swiftly moving aircraft. Sometimes they blamed Martians. The Washington Times-Herald [April 14, 1897] opined:
“The mysterious and awful airship has been seen careering in its mad course over Omaha. There are fears that it may contain a reconnoitering party from the planet Mars.”
Maybe they were reading Mr. Wells’ new novel. The Memphis Commercial Appeal [April 19, 1897] pooh-poohed this idea based on the obvious fact that the possibility of interplanetary travel was ridiculous:
“The airship seems to be an accomplished fact, and the question is Where is it from, and how is it constructed? Conceding that the inhabitants of Mars or some nearer planet have succeeded in overcoming the force of gravitation, it is impossible that human life could be sustained while making the voyage to the earth.”
This belief seems not to have dissuaded Mr. Wells, who published his Cosmopolitan serial in book form the next year, to great acclaim.
For a month or more, as airship sightings transfixed Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, Illinois and Tennessee, Cincinnatians saw nothing floating through our muggy atmosphere. The Cincinnati Post [April 17, 1897] thought the airship might be avoiding the big telescopes at the Cincinnati Observatory:
“The managers of The Airship have manifested a spirit of indifference toward Cincinnati, which is duly appreciated. We have one of the five large telescopes of the country here, at Mt. Lookout, and with it would soon puncture the bauble reputation of the mysterious aeronauts.”
John J. Noonan, manager of the Ludlow Lagoon amusement park, smelled dollars to be had. Noonan sent a representative to Illinois to locate the airship’s owner and offer “any amount of money” so The Airship would soar about the Lagoon by opening day on May 2. The Cincinnati Times-Star [April 19, 1897] reported:
“If there is such a thing as a real airship, Manager Noonan of the lagoon will have it here in time for the opening of his pretty summer resort.”
As April ended and the month of May dawned, the airship at last appeared over the Queen City, usually in the wee hours, with no indication of owner, inventor or pilot. The Cincinnati Enquirer [May 5, 1897] reported a mass sighting:
“A number of people on Garfield place saw the airship last night about 9 o’clock and are willing to make affidavit that they have sighted the mysterious navigator that has been creating so much excitement over the country.”
From "Cincinnati Post", April 17, 1897
One observer that night, Dr. Louis Domhoff, said the airship was egg-shaped, red in color, and emitted beams of light. A retired businessman named William Thompson concurred that it was egg-shaped and looked like “an egg flying flat.”
Cincinnati Police Officer John Ringer told the Cincinnati Commercial-Tribune [April 29, 1897] that he saw the airship pass right over the city:
“I was standing at the corner of Eighth and Walnut streets at 10 o’clock, when my attention was called to a string of lights moving across the sky. I could see one large light in front, like the headlight of an engine, only much smaller, while behind this was a long row of little lights not much bigger than stars, and one right behind the other.”
The next day, the Commercial-Tribune reported that Philip Meagher, a bill-poster for the Cincinnati, Portsmouth & Virginia Railroad, saw the airship at the same time as Officer Ringer. The superintendent at the county infirmary claimed to have seen the airship, as did a retired businessman in Cumminsville, as did twenty members of a men’s club meeting at the Lion Brewery.
On May 9, the Commercial-Tribune announced that it had identified the airship’s inventor—a German immigrant living in Newport. He was too poor to afford a patent application, so he tested his invention only in the late-night darkness, in the presence of very few witnesses. The newspaper gave this second-hand description:
“The ship ascended so rapidly that it was only a few seconds until it was high in the air. A few moments more and it was speeding over Newport, over the river, over Cincinnati and out of sight. At first there was only a small light shining from the ship, but its general outlines could be distinguished for all that. After the altitude of about 200 feet had been reached two other lights were turned on, and as the ship passed over Cincinnati all who saw it agree to the reddish glare of its fairly large headlight.”
The identity of the Newport airship inventor was never revealed but, as it turns out, there was an authentic airship with a known pilot that year, cavorting above the grounds of the Tennessee Centennial Exhibition in Nashville. The pilot was Arthur Wallace Barnard, born in Massachusetts and more enthusiastic than knowledgeable, although he did not object when newspapers referred to him as “Professor Barnard.”
In late May and early June, Barnard only managed to loft his airship a handful of times from the Nashville exhibition grounds, in each case returning to earth in what might be termed controlled crashes, but his airship could fly and he could control its flight to a certain extent.
From "Valentine Nebraska Democrat", May 27, 1897
Barnard’s airship was a cigar-shaped gas bag filled with hydrogen, from which was suspended a bicycle that powered a flimsy sort of canvas propeller. As it later emerged, Professor Barnard had copied the design of a prior airship, known as the “Skycycle,” invented by a New Yorker named Carl Myers, who had been sailing bicycle-powered balloons since 1892 and had—two years previously—demonstrated his invention over the small town in Maine where “Professor” Barnard worked at the YMCA.
In fact, there were at that time quite a few very similar airships undergoing testing in the United States. Almost all of them involved a bag filled with lighter-than-air gas and almost all were powered by pedals or lightweight steam engines. All were decidedly short-range vehicles and couldn’t possibly have achieved the range or velocity of powerful airships reportedly whizzing throughout the country. Some newspaper editors, noting that airship sightings mostly occurred after last call at the saloons, suggested that hallucination might be involved. The Commercial-Tribune [April 18, 1897] proposed a chronic condition:
“It is a remarkably dull month when the American public does not have an attack of some kind of mental fever. This month it is the airship, and pretty nearly every section of the Nation has succumbed to the disease.”
The Cincinnati Post [April 29, 1897] editor commented with wry humor:
“An Iowa paper thinks that some empty beer bottles picked up in that State were thrown from an airship. This is a clear case of mistaking cause for effect—the airship came from the bottles.”
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