The article below was published in the daily newspaper The Willimantic Chronicle, Willimantic, Connecticut, USA, on January 1, 1910.
From the New Haven Journal-Courier:
Where does it come from? What is it? Who does it belong to? These are the questions which have come to the mind of newspaper readers all over New England and in New York during the last fortnight. From a score or more localities reports have come of a wonderful mechanism, which has been seen skimming along, high in the air, above our cities. It has invariable come in the night time, when big searchlights of tremendous power have gleamed from out of the darkness like the eyes of some monster living creature the imagination. It is quite impossible to believe we are all suffering from a common hallucination.
If the wonderful flying apparatus is the product of the brain of Wallace Tillinghast of Worcester, as the public tends to believe, then that gentlemen has good reason to be secretive about it. Apparently, as compared with this creation, the flying machines of the Wright brothers, who have been generally recognized as being the leaders of the world in aeronautics up to the present moment, seem very crude. Mr. Tillinghast, presuming him to be the owner and inventor, undoubtedly has in mind a thorough perfection of this airship before giving the public more than an inkling about it. He may realize that this or almost any government would pay a fabulous sum for airships as successful as this one is, provided their details have been kept in strict secrecy. On the other hand, it is scarcely to be believed that such a phenomenal invention could be successfully and continually kept secret.
The Springfield Republican suggests a gigantic hoax in this connection. "The idea suggests itself," it says, "that the Worcester Telegram is trying to emulate the New York Sun by bringing out a sort of semicentennial edition of Edgar Allan Poe's celebrated balloon hoax. in that story, it will be remembered, Poe pictured a "dirigible balloon's voyage across the Atlantic ocean with a party of seven or eight men." But the stories of how this strange craft of the air had been seen have come from so many different localities that it is well-nigh impossible to be believe there could be any hoax back of it. Indeed, as the Republican says, undoubtedly referring to the recent Cook affair: "it will be observed that hoaxes are not popular just now."
