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This article was published in the daily newspaperL'Est Républicain, France, le 7 juillet 1947.
For a few weeks, many people have seen flying at a speed that some evaluate as 2.000 kilometers per hour, flat objects in the shape of "saucers."
The aviation, the army and the navy, alerted, made an investigation whith a negative result. Perhaps for the first time, a clue will make it possible to elucidate this mystery: a coastguard of Seattle claims to have photographed one of these objects. However, discs continue to be reported quite everywhere above the American territory.
Professor Olivier Lee, director of the observatory of the "Northwestern University", expressed the opinion that the "flying saucers" seen by the population of the various States of the North-West of the United States could be "probably machines manufactured by Man and controlled by radio."
The professor specified: "One of the greatest technical achievement realized during the war, the emission of a radar signal towards the moon, was carried out in the absolute secrecy. These "flying discs" could ery well also be a secret invention of the war."
In addition, professor Gerard Kuiper, director of the Yerkes Observatory, in Wisconsin, stated that he favoured a similar theory. He is categorically opposed to the idea according to which these "saucers" could be celestial bodies.
Lastly, the race car manufacturer Léo Bentz, who is established in Los Angeles, stated on this matter that he had known a French inventor, George de Bay, who, in 1928, would have made in Griffith Park, in Los Angeles, experiments with a kind of reversed saucer of oblong shape, propelled using a rubber belt and sailing in the air in the manner of a stone that rebounds on water.
Mr. Benz added: "I lost the trace of Bay. He told me at the time his intent to go back to Europe and perhaps Russia, because he had at this time the greatest difficulty in obtaining funding for his research from the United States."
