The idea of Flying Saucers pre-1940s

Big Freakin' Whoop!!! I mean, seriously, we know of Jules Verne, there are paintings of UFOs from the 1500s! Wake up, already! We need to learn that no concept or story is ever original! It's all been done before! I'm saying big freakin' whoop about the concept, not necessarily this thread.

reply to post by TheMythLives


I cant believe what Im seeing there - see that blue picture of an saucer landing (other UFOs in the background) in that city - thats supposed to be from 1900 - could that be true????

It must be some date-mistake. Mags didnt look like that in 1900?

Anyway - nice pics, thanks!

[edit on 16-2-2010 by Skyfloating]

reply to post by DoomsdayRex

Notice who the cover story is by, Richard S. Shaver, the author of the Shaver Mysteries, which also ran in Amazing and had a considerable influence on the more outrageous UFO conspiracy beliefs.

Good spot Rex. A Paracast show (Kevin Randle?) recently implicated Shaver as the guy that popularised the 'hollow Earth' myth. His life reads like a conspiracy theorists wet dream. Sectioned, arrested, followed by 'strange figures' and all the while turning his experiences into pulp fiction.

The bar is set very high in Sci-fi nowadays. Iain M Banks exemplifies it as an art form. Back then, a good imagination and some Zeitgeist ideas went a long way. Some ATSers could've been contenders...

Originally posted by Skyfloating
I cant believe what Im seeing there - see that blue picture of an saucer landing (other UFOs in the background) in that city - thats supposed to be from 1900 - could that be true????

It must be some date-mistake. Mags didnt look like that in 1900?

Yeah, the date is wrong. That website has every magazine dated 1 Jan 1900. Fantastic Universe wasn't published until 1953.

Originally posted by Kandinsky
Good spot Rex. A Paracast show (Kevin Randle?) recently implicated Shaver as the guy that popularised the 'hollow Earth' myth. His life reads like a conspiracy theorists wet dream. Sectioned, arrested, followed by 'strange figures' and all the while turning his experiences into pulp fiction.

If any of it was true. Shaver may have been schizophrenic. He claimed his wielding gun allowed him to hear the thoughts of those around him and the Deros were responsible for every ill, great and small. Ray Palmer admitted to re-writing Shaver's letters and spicing them up; I think he was exploiting the mentally ill.

Here I am, scouring eBay for more magazines...damn you Skyfloating for awakening old demons!

reply to post by Skyfloating


In the 1890"s there was a rash of so called "airship" sightings in the central and southern midwest. These were written up in numerous papers of the day. (I'l try to get a source, it will have to be something microfilmed or from local municipality records). This of course is prior to the Wright brothers flight in 1903. By then we could build small air ships with the technology of the day, but it was by no means common. I'm not sure but I think the first helium airships were built in the 1920's. I will check that.

What I found really interesting was people were reporting a technology that woulden't be widely known for twenty plus years. The tone of news reports were a cross between the Weekly World News and the New York Times. And the debunkers could learn some thing about human nature by reading first hand accounts of these sightings. There was no panic, but it's clear many people who saw these things had the attitude "as long as they don't piss on my fields or steal my horse, I just don't care" It's interesting from a sociological point of view the reaction of people over a hundred years ago and today. If something is so strange, and we have no idea what it is, the ego walls that information off, and we just go on with our lives. Some what like the emotional re-setting, defibulator like, we go through when we are over powered by conflicting, confused signals.

If its disturbing enough, it can produce PTSD. Often this involves amnesia of the event or events. Sound familiar? I lecture , part time, at the University level on understanding the way people and societies react to an event, based on the back drop of the technology of the time. It's a chicken and egg thing; do we drive technology by actions of our society, or does the technology drive society? (in my view it's about 50/50). Anouther thing I noticed. The farther back you go in trying to figure out what drives social views, and seeing an ET/UFO will sooner or later drag psychological and technological dynamics into the light, as it would shatter some peoples world view, the numbers of people "shattered" by such an event would be quite low. The most vulnerable(in freaking out) to such an awakining would be those with rigid and judgemental religious and social views.

There was a small town in Texas that had something crash, (from what I read, it hit the windmill of a judge's house by the name of Proctor). Like Roswell, there's a hell of a lot of "noise" associated with this story. This "crash" happend in the 1890's. Some people did not speak up from what I can tell, for fear of ridicule. (also sound familier?). To understand the motivations of people of that time, you have to know some thing about that time. I mean hard core, nuts and bolts stuff. The industrial revolution was ramping up, after an awkward and painfull start. This time introduced electricity, central heat, reliable public transportation (to get all those happy people to work...), cars (so the rich would not have to mix with the great unwashed), and my favorite; toilets that flush. You had the start of radio, the telegraph aka; telephone, and a whole lot of other stuff.

Today technological progress is a given. We DEMAND computers run faster, new medical concepts will extend our life, that corporations and the government will act not just their interests, but in ours. (that last line I call "the people are pissed off manifesto"). Could people in the 1890"s build an "air ship" of any kind? Well, yes, but it would have had to be some what small. Not to mention the internal combustion power plants were also in their infancy. They were heavy, unreliable. Not to mention from time to time they would blow up. But I looked into the airship scare of the 1890's using the same methods I would use now. And I get the same statistical back-drop. I mean its spooky because it's close to 100%

Not wanting to over look something very obvious, I looked at U.S. and German archives from that time period. The Germans were far ahead of the U.S. at that time in total "systems" needed to build an airship that can actually do usefull work. The Germans bombed London in the first world war using air ships. Concerning UFO folklore, (and don't forget UFO's have replaced King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table in our collective mind), I have come to the conclusion there is no doubt massive psychological manipulation going on here. The big question is who's behind it? From a historical point those with the god like security clearences have taken the place of the elders in native American history, and the priests of ancient Egypt. We stand in awe of them, or we hate them because of their cult like control over the rest of us.

Governments, and even large multinational corporations have always worried about one thing above all other. It's not war. It's uncertainty. History records civilizations have weathered all manner of attack, disease, famine. Civilizations usually don't fall because of those alone. But they can contribute to the thing every national leader faces in the back of their mind, and fears above everything else. A loss of confidence by the people in it's government. Rome did not fall because they were over powered by the barbarian tribes. They in fact were not. Rome fell because it's people at all levels of society just no longer gave a damn.

Last, I need to state that every great civilization that has come and gone all had one fatal flaw. They thought their culture was immortal

reply to post by arbiture


That was a very thoughtful post, thanks.

Ive considered UFOlogy from the social-engineering perspective too. I wouldnt completely discount the possibility.

Originally posted by DoomsdayRex
If any of it was true. Shaver may have been schizophrenic. He claimed his wielding gun allowed him to hear the thoughts of those around him and the Deros were responsible for every ill, great and small. Ray Palmer admitted to re-writing Shaver's letters and spicing them up; I think he was exploiting the mentally ill.

Here I am, scouring eBay for more magazines...damn you Skyfloating for awakening old demons!

Shaver sure had the "mental-illness"-vibe about him, I agree with that. Or maybe he was channeling some other reality not present on earth.

Hey guys, really enjoy stuff like this. Since you're looking for pre-20s illustrations of flying disks...look to some of the Mideviel tapestries and paintings...you'll see disks that look like wide brimmed hats, eliptical clouds that look suspiciously like flying saucers, bright orbs with a "pilot" and even adamski-style craft...all in the backgrounds of a "Madonna and Child" painting.

I still believe that what was seen in the 1950s by Ken Arnold were actually captured/copies of the Horten Bros Nazi fighters-interceptors-bombers. How better to disguise what was seen as a UFO/Saucer. Most Americans did not realize how advanced the Nazis were, and what a blow to morale if they did. Not to mention letting the Russians know just how much we knew and had captured.

i did something simmilar to this with ETs and disclosure
www.abovetopsecret.com...

[edit on 16-2-2010 by zaiger]

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
ListenD, if there are grays, then they look to me to be more likely time travelers from the future (such as our descendants perhaps?) than aliens, based on my belief that it's unlikely an independent evolution on an independent world would evolve something that looks so similar to us.

I agree that a lineage is more likely but why keep it secret? If 'contact' has been made then why is there so much confusion about what they are and why they're here? Maybe it's as simple as they are from here but that still leaves the question of why the secret? What would the be the potential harm of learning time travel before our destined time?

Let's suppose that today a quote, unquote time machine had definitively been invented. What if someone took said time machine, traveled back to an early civilization and handed over the machine...

I'm getting the sense that the probability of missuse of the machine on behalf of the early civilization could be quite high when compared to the ethical use of the later civilization. To the point where the later would certainly question or even be forced to regulate use of the machine by earlier man. This is amplified when considering the method of time travel could possibly be achieved by anyone at anytime!

"To be, or not to be? That is the question." - Shakes

reply to post by Skyfloating


You may be right, and thanks for the illustrations never scene those before. They where called spaceships before the roswell more likely and once the disk phenomenon started to take root after Roswell, people started to refer to them as flying saucers instead of spaceships. Here's something that might hit on why it was called and let to be flying saucers. If the public kept saying that a spaceship crashed in Roswell and/or that so and so saw instead of those line of flying saucers but a line of flying spaceships, people would give it more respect instead of the masses calling those people lunatics or off their rocker. Calling it a spaceship give it an air of respectability, but calling it a flying saucer calls you a kook.

reply to post by DoomsdayRex


You sure have alot of ATS points: 19600

Any ideas?

Originally posted by Perseus Apex
You sure have alot of ATS points: 19600

Any ideas?

I have a lot of ideas about a lot of things. Perhaps you could be more specific?

reply to post by arbiture


Here is link to account of what was called the "GREAT AIRSHIP SCARE oF
1896" when newspapers reported rash of strange sitings of "airships"

www.suite101.com...

reply to post by DoomsdayRex


easy media collaberated with the military producing such things, even such films as the day the earth stood still it was one of the very first military film indusrty collabertations made in order to get out to the genral public that no we are not alone in the galaxy but were not gonna say yes aliens exist or no they dont exist we will just let the public run with it and see how they react and what happened next thing u know flying saucer hysteria swept the nation in the 40s and it turned up every where in pop culture since

also ppl have been seeing these beings and saucers since the beiging of time and drew pictures of them so why wouldnt they have depictions of them from all centuries including the 1800s and and other century

all im saying is people in the stone ages seen them and people from now see them and all the people in between that time seen them and it isnt gonna stop any time soon the reason they had such a huge impact in society and media and art is because whatever they are obviously had a great impact on the people they encountered and influenced the people in some way enough to record it

the one with the sattelite looking thing is pretty intresting the people with the glasses on are they us leaving earth? or are they aliens that look human? or is it some kind of machine that transports people like a worm hole technology.or somekind of mind control machine what is going on here?anybody have any insight to that particular cover?