Fitzgerald enterprise. (Fitzgerald, Ga.) 1895-1912, 1910-11-12
Edgar Allan POe's
Great Balloon Hoax
How He Fooled the Whole World
With a Flying Machine
in 1914. 4

The recent attempt If Walter Well
man to cross the Atlantic ocean in a
dirigible balloon, and the admission
last week of Edgar Allan Poe to the
Hall of Fame, recall one of the great
est fakes in history. Poe came to
New York from Philadelphia in 1874.
His wife was i'll and he was without
employment. He had just $3.50 and
he was determined to make some
money. He wrote the great balloon
hoax and sold it to the New York
Sun. That paper published the
story as fact on April IS, 1874, and
the whole world was amazed. The
story related that a Monck Mason
had invented a steering balloon in
which he had crossed the Atlantic
ocean in three days. Mason carried
seven passengers, among them Rob-
,ert Holland, Harrison Ainsw0rth, a
well-known author;Sir George Cayley
and Others. Scientists in America
and Europe fastened to congratulate
the aeronaut, but before the hoax
was exposed Poe himself confessed
the fake. The story occupied four
columns of detailed information, and
shows the brilliant imagination of
the unfortunate Poe. Here are some
extracts from the story, the wealth
of detail that fooled the public
The great problem is at length
solved! The air, as well as the earth
and the ocean, has been subdued by
science and will become common
and convenient highway for man
kind. The Atlantic has been actu
ally crossed in a balloon! and this
too, without difficulty-without any
great apparent danger-With tho
rough control of the machine-and
in the inconceivable brief period of
rs hours from shore to shore! By
the energy Of an agent at Charleston,
S. c.. we are enabled to be the first
to furnish the public with a detailed
account of this extraordinary voy-
age, which was performed between
Saturday, the 9Th instant, at Ii a. m,
and 2 p. m. on Tuesday. the 9th
instant. by Sir Everard Pringhurst,
Mr.. Osborne, a nephew of Lord BEN
tinck's; Mr.. Monck Mason and Mr..
Robert Holland, the well-known ae-
ronauts; Mr.. Harrison AinsWorth,
author Of Jack Sheppard" etc, and
MIR. Henson, the protector of the late
unsuccessful flying machine with
two seaEnen from Woolwich--in all,
eight persons. The particulars fur
nished below may be. relied on as
authentic and accurate in every res
pect, as with a slight exception they
are copied verbatim from the joint
diaries of Mr. Monck Mason and Mr..
Harrison Ainsworth, to whose polite
ness our agent is indebted for much
information respecting the balloon
itself, it's construction and other
matters of interest. The only alter
alton in the MS. received has been
made for the purpose of throwing
the hurried account of out agent, Mr..
Forsyth. into a connected and intel
ligble form. xxx
1T was at this juncture that Mr..
Monck Mason (whose voyage from
Dover to Weilburg in the balloon
Nassau occasioned so much excite
ment in 1887 conceived the idea
of employing the Archimedean
screw for the purpose of propulsion
through the air-rightly attributing
the failure of Henson's scheme and
of Sir George Cayley's to the inter-
ruption of surface in the indepen-
dent vanes. He made the first pub
lie experiment at Willis rooms, but
afterward removed his model to the
Adelaide Gallery.
Like Sir George Cayley's balloon
his own was an ellipsoid, Its length