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misinterpretations of the technical data offered by the inventor. Collins thought the objects operated on compressed air, while Hart said they ran on gas and electricity. Compressed air was a favorite with inventors in those days. Gasoline and steam engines and electric motors were primi- tive, heavy and inefficient. A few years previously one man, John Keely of Philadelphia, had built a strange contraption that could bend bars of steel and do other things considered impossible for ordinary machines of the period. Detractors claimed that the Keely engine really operated on compressed air. Actually, compressed-air motors required large, heavy tanks and pumps, spent their energy very quickly, and would be com- pletely impractical for use in any flying machines where weight was an important consideration. The only effective use of compressed air was in World War I torpedoes, which had to travel relatively short distances and were expendable. A summary of the mystery inventor affair appears in Mysteries of the Skies: UFOs in Perspective, by Gordon I. R. Lore and Harold H. Deneault, Jr. UFO historian Lucius Farish has uncovered hundreds of other clippings and reports. When all of this material is carefully studied, it seems, in retrospect, that the ‘‘inventor” was actually some kind of front man for the phenomenon and that he had prior knowledge of the impending flap. He therefore planted his airship story convincingly with Collins and Hart, knowing that their reputations would carry it a long way. It did seem like a reasonable explanation for the sightings that occurred, even though none of the witnesses reported an object which fitted Collins’ description of a winged aluminum craft exactly. And as I have already pointed out, the frequency and distribution of the sightings indicated that several objects were actually in operation at one time. In hundreds of modern UFO events we have repetitions of this tactic, which I call the press-agent game. In these events, small, dark-skinned, dark-eyed gentlemen appear in an area immediately before or immediately after a flying saucer flap. These cases are not widely known and have been poorly investigated because the hard-core cultists have found it impossible to reconcile such seemingly normal beings with “‘extraterrestrial visi- banen ” tants.” Striking examples of the press-agent game can be found in the religious and occult lore, going back thousands of years. Weeks before the birth of Christ, three dark-skinned men with Oriental features arrived in King Herod’s court. They were obviously men of wealth and breeding, just like our mystery inventor. The various records say that they generated great excitement with their revelation that a very special child would soon The Grand Deception / 85