Page Content (OCR)
recently recovered from an illness, the constant clangor is not conducive to his good nature. “‘.. closely watched by mysterious men!” A member of the Aero Club of New England, J. Walter Flagg, managed to obtain an audience with the elusive inventor, and he later told reporters that Mr. Tillinghast had not only repeated his claims of the September flight to Boston and back to New York, but that ‘the had done far more wonderful things.”’ These ‘far more wonderful things” were not AnGAAA defined. The good citizens of Worcester were understandably upset by all of the furor, and a committee from the local Board of Trade was organized to confront Tillinghast and demand proof of his claims. He responded through a spokesman, one William Hunt. On December 30, Hunt told reporters in Boston that the marvelous Tillinghast machine would be publicly displayed at the Boston Aero Show planned for the week of February 16-23, 1910. Sightings in the New England states ceased. The ten-day wonder became a memory. So far as we have been able to learn, no Tillinghast machine was displayed at the Aero Show. He slipped back into oblivion, and the contents of that 100-foot shed on the Gough estate were never eneenal nd revealed. On the basis of what we know, we can draw some parallels between the 1896 flap in San Francisco and the 1909 events in New England. Just before the San Francisco wave, an impressive mystery man visited lawyer Collins, a prominent attorney, and made a seemingly rational claim. He had invented a wonderful new airship and wanted Collins to handle the patent problems. When the UFO flap broke in the area a few days later, Collins, in good faith, told the press that there was no mystery. His client had perfected an airship and was probably testing it in the San Francisco area. The wave came and went. The “‘inventor’” disappeared. No patents were ever filed. The great new invention was lost to humanity, and tinkerers like the Wright brothers and Count Zeppelin were obliged to perfect crude machines that were in no way as remarkable as the objects seen in California. In the summer of 1909, a new airship flap began in New Zealand and northern Europe. And an even bigger wave was planned for New England that December. The planners had enjoyed considerable success with their Flexible Phantoms of the Sky / 105