|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 7
In Europe not a doubt was thrown on this observation of the stations
in Finmark and Spitzbergen. But what appeared the most phenomenal
about it was that the Swedes and Norwegians could find themselves in
agreement on any subject whatever.
There was a laugh at the asserted discovery in all the observatories
of South America, in Brazil, Peru, and La Plata, and in those of
Australia at Sydney, Adelaide, and Melbourne; and Australian laughter
is very catching.
To sum up, only one chief of a meteorological station ventured on a
decided answer to this question, notwithstanding the sarcasms that
his solution provoked. This was a Chinaman, the director of the
observatory at Zi-Ka-Wey which rises in the center of a vast plateau
less than thirty miles from the sea, having an immense horizon and
wonderfully pure atmosphere. "It is possible," said he, "that the
object was an aviform apparatus--a flying machine!"
What nonsense!
But if the controversy was keen in the old world, we can imagine what
it was like in that portion of the new of which the United States
occupy so vast an area.
A Yankee, we know, does not waste time on the road. He takes the
street that leads him straight to his end. And the observatories of
the American Federation did not hesitate to do their best. If they
did not hurl their objectives at each other's heads, it was because
they would have had to put them back just when they most wanted to
use them. In this much-disputed question the observatories of
Washington in the District of Columbia, and Cambridge in
Massachusetts, found themselves opposed by those of Dartmouth College
in New Hampshire, and Ann Arbor in Michigan. The subject of their
dispute was not the nature of the body observed, but the precise
moment of its observation. All of them claimed to have seen it the
same night, the same hour, the same minute, the same second, although
the trajectory of the mysterious voyager took it but a moderate
height above the horizon. Now from Massachusetts to Michigan, from
New Hampshire to Columbia, the distance is too great for this double
observation, made at the same moment, to be considered possible.
Dudley at Albany, in the state of New York, and West Point, the
military academy, showed that their colleagues were wrong by an
elaborate calculation of the right ascension and declination of the
aforesaid body.
But later on it was discovered that the observers had been deceived
in the body, and that what they had seen was an aerolite. This
aerolite could not be the object in question, for how could an
aerolite blow a trumpet?
It was in vain that they tried to get rid of this trumpet as an
optical illusion. The ears were no more deceived than the eyes.
Something had assuredly been seen, and something had assuredly been
heard. In the night of the 12th and 13th of May--a very dark night--
the observers at Yale College, in the Sheffield Science School, had
been able to take down a few bars of a musical phrase in D major,
common time, which gave note for note, rhythm for rhythm, the chorus
of the Chant du D�part.
"Good," said the Yankee wags. "There is a French band well up in the
air."
"But to joke is not to answer." Thus said the observatory at Boston,
founded by the Atlantic Iron Works Society, whose opinions in matters
of astronomy and meteorology began to have much weight in the world
of science.
Then there intervened the observatory at Cincinnati, founded in 1870,
on Mount Lookout, thanks to the generosity of Mr. Kilgour, and known
for its micrometrical measurements of double stars. Its director
declared with the utmost good faith that there had certainly been
something, that a traveling body had shown itself at very short
periods at different points in the atmosphere, but what were the
nature of this body, its dimensions, its speed, and its trajectory,
it was impossible to say.
It was then a journal whose publicity is immense--the "New York
Herald"--received the anonymous contribution hereunder.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|