The Forgotten Legend of Silicon Valley's Flying Saucer Man (bloomberg.com)

Reader pacopico writes: Humans have been spotting UFO-like objects for hundreds of years. But, in the late 1920s, an obscure engineer/artist named Alexander Weygers actually designed a flying saucer and later patented the craft. Bloomberg Businessweek spent two years reporting on the strange tale of Weygers, uncovering a Da Vinci type figure who lived on the outskirts of Silicon Valley in a house he built from recycled materials. Weygers was an engineer, sculptor, photographer, wood carver, tax evader and generally weird dude who lived off the land for decades. He became convinced the military stole his flying saucer design and built the vehicles, and there's some evidence he might be right. Weygers was largely forgotten until an art collector became obsessed with his story and found out everything there was to know about the guy. Overall, he's a symbol of a different, purer time in Silicon Valley.

Comments

Disk craft [Re:There are other ways to buil...]

[Geoffrey.landis]

Well, the Northrup YB-49 was a flying wing-- not at all a disk craft.

There have been some flying-saucer-looking disk aircraft, though. Check out the Avrocar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

or the V-173 "flying flapjack": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:words words words words words flying saucer man

[goose-incarnated]

Yeah, the article looks like it was written to increase the value of this guy's art. I can sum it all up for you (yep, I read the article): The guy (Weygers) was born to a well-off family with lots of land. He traveled the world at an early age. He started out as a blacksmith. Studied at the very best schools in the world, as a mechanical engineer. Later he became an artist. After that he sort of meshed the two aspects of art and engineering, and that's where the flying saucer came from. After Weygers died, a guy stumbled upon lots of pieces of his art and bought all of it. Now, it appears, this guy's looking to let others know about Weygers' story, probably to try to make a profit from the art.

"This guy" is dead, you moron. The bit about the author going to his funeral was a dead (hehe) giveaway.