Jonathan Edward Caldwell
Jonathan Edward Caldwell (born March 24, 1883, date of death unknown) was a self-taught aeronautical engineer who designed a series of bizarre aircraft and started public companies in order to finance their construction. None of these was ever successful, and after his last known attempt in the later 1930s he disappeared, apparently to avoid securities fraud charges. His name was later connected with mythical German flying saucers, and he remains a fixture of the UFO genre. Little of Caldwell's early life is known, and what has been documented was reconstructed from college records. He appears to have been born in Hensall, Ontario, Canada, the fifth son (and one of twelve children) of William Thomas Caldwell (1848–1930) and Sarah Alice Chamberlain (1852–1933). He emigrated to the United States in 1910, and attended Oregon State College, from 1912 to 1913, majoring in mechanical engineering. In the 1920s, according to statements he made later in life, he became interested in aviation and began to study the fundamentals of aerodynamics. Cyclogyro In February 1923 Caldwell filed for a patent on a device he called the "cyclogyro". It consisted of an airplane fuselage with two paddle-wheel like attachments in place of the wings. The wheels