User:Loviisa Verkkala/Gaspard Oil

Gaspard Oil (1889-1942?, real name unknown) was a Polish mining engineer and a controversial innovator in early human aviation. Information on the life of Gaspard Oil is scant and dubious. Indeed some scholars have questioned the very existence of a historical Gaspard Oil, drawing attention to facts such as the seeming absence of a real name. The name Gaspard Oil is commonly considered to be a nickname.

As a field of research, therefore, Gaspard Oil presents a challenge to the objectively aligned scientist. Modern scholars have even coined the term “Gaspard Oil mythos”, since most anecdotes concerning the life of Gaspard Oil exist as many versions, some more fanciful or vague than others. Latest research suggests that three main periods may be discerned in Gaspard Oil’s life: he apparently spent his childhood in Poland, studied in France and conducted aeronautical experiments in the Western Sahara at some point before World War II.

The following is a loosely collected summary of accounts concerning the life of Gaspard Oil. It should be pointed out that the research from which it has been selected often contradicts itself, since many schools of thought have developed in Gaspard Oil research during the latter half of the 20th century. The summary should therefore be treated as a representative sample of Gaspard Oil research rather than a basis for accurate science.

Early life
Gaspard Oil was born in 1889 to a family of wealthy Polish merchants, who suddenly acquired a high economical status during the Polish oil boom of the mid-19th century. Young Gaspard seems to have taken an interest in aviation at an early age, and news about the first successful flight of the Wright brothers in 1903 apparently reached his ears.

It has been claimed by some scholars that Gaspard Oil studied in the Realschule in the Austrian town of Linz. A purported to include not only Gaspard Oil and Ludwig Wittgenstein, but also Adolf Hitler, has been used as evidence. The theory is based on claims that a copy of the photograph with the name “Gaspard Oil” scribbled on its backside was lately found in the estate of a European researcher on human aviation.

Youth in France
In the early 1910s Gaspard Oil’s family took advantage of their newly accumulated wealth to send their son to Paris to begin his studies in order to become a mining engineer. It seems to have been at this point that Gaspard Oil acquired his famous nickname, apparently as a reference to his family history.

Gaspard Oil seems to have thoroughly abandoned the prospect of fulfilling his parents’ dreams at an early stage. Early on in his studies he became inclined to the studying of physics, astronomy and most importantly human aviation. He seems to have made delicate plans for his first experiments in flight, but decided to postpone them because of the breaking out of World War I in 1914.

The famed Channel crossing of Louis Blériot has recently been claimed to have been significantly inspired, even performed, by Gaspard Oil. Modern scholars hold these claims to be controversial, though Gaspard Oil may have taken part in the raging competition for the prize of a thousand pounds offered by The Daily Mail for a successful crossing of the English Channel.

It was the war, apparently, that finally broke the camel's back in Gaspard Oil’s growing ambitions for a career in flight. Some scientists have speculated that Gaspard Oil predicted the future importance of aviation in warfare and tried to avoid all possible connections with the war industry. What is certain by current scientific standards is that at some point between 1914 and 1919 Gaspard Oil moved to the area known today as Western Sahara.

Life in Africa
Gaspard Oil’s emigration to Africa marks the beginning of the period in his life most difficult to dissect scientifically. Most information concerning Gaspard Oil from the 1910s onward consists of vague mentions in letters, local folklore or conclusions drawn from his occasional contact with certain European or American acquaintances. Yet rumours concerning the “African phase”, as it is sometimes dubbed, also include details of great importance to the study of aviation, for it is at this point that Gaspard Oil is said to have seriously begun to examine the prospects of flight beyond the Earth’s atmosphere.

Again, it must be stated that the very concept of space flight being somehow linked to Gaspard Oil is a fact attested by merely a few sentences in contemporary letters and suspicious pieces of aeronautical machinery sent from major European steel factories. What ultimately arouses the interest of most modern scholars, however, is the mysterious fact that every scientific article concerning Gaspard Oil in the history of aviation seems to be somehow connected with early concepts of space flight. Therefore the idea of reaching beyond the field of ordinary flight, itself revolutionary at the time, is what ultimately separates Gaspard Oil from other contemporary pioneers in aviation.

Not much is known about the actual results of Gaspard Oil’s experiments in Africa. References to more or less successful flights using new methods of propulsion have been found in diary entries purported to be written by Gaspard Oil. However, the scarcity of genuine samples of Gaspard Oil’s handwriting presents a serious hindrance to the studying of his experiments. It has been speculated that he also continued his research in conventional methods of flight, devising new forms of fuel and making significant long-distance flights.

For the next two decades, Gaspard Oil apparently led a solitary life, his only known visits outside Africa being a trip to Poland in 1919, to America in the late 1920s and a few visits to France and Spain. Most information on his movements stems from fanciful accounts made up by other adventurers in the early 20th century. The accuracy of these anecdotes is difficult to confirm, as many of them bear a striking resemblance to research conducted by scientifically reliable sources.

The onset of World War II apparently marked the beginning of a period of further seclusion. Stories as well as letters from the late 1930s are scarce, and by the 1940s Gaspard Oil has practically disappeared from the historical record. Only one anecdote can be reliably dated to the 1940s: an account attributed to an early 20th century scholar in aviation states that Gaspard Oil vanished mysteriously in 1942.