Documents / FOIA release
This CIA-released copy of Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 is dated 5 May 1955 and comes from the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It is a statistical analysis of about 4,000 unidentified aerial object reports from 1947 through 1952, coded onto IBM punched cards with the help of a panel of scientists. The report concludes that such objects were highly unlikely to be technological developments beyond present-day scientific knowledge. It also found no valid evidence of physical matter.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
SINGLE OBSERVATION - A SIGHTING consisting of a single report from (1) one OBSERVER with no knowledge of additional OBSERVERS of the same phenomenon, or (2) a group of witnesses of the same phenomenon, each cognizant of the others. The witness who made the report is called a SINGLE OBSERVER.
MULTIPLE OBSERVATION - A SIGHTING consisting of several reports from OBSERVERS of the same phenomenon who were cognizant of each other. The witnesses who made reports are called MULTIPLE OBSERVERS.
ALL SIGHTINGS - (1) The group of reports consisting of one report for each OBSERVER, including both SINGLE and MULTIPLE OBSERVERS. (2) The questionnaire, work sheet, and IBM card representing the report from each OBSERVER in other words, the representation of each report accepted for the statistical study.
UNIT SIGHTINGS - (1) The group of reports consisting of one report for each SIGHTING, including all the reports of SINGLE OBSERVATIONS and the one most representative report from each MULTIPLE OBSERVATION. (2) The questionnaire, work sheet, and IBM card representing the report for each SIGHTING accepted for the statistical study.
A major serial number (four digits) was assigned to each sighting, segregating the year of occurrence by selection of limits for each year, as follows:
$$
0 0 0 1 \mathrm {t o} 0 5 0 0 \mathrm {r e s e r v e d f o r} 1 9 4 7
$$
$$
0 5 0 1 \mathrm {t o} 1 0 0 0 \mathrm {r e s e r v e d f o r} 1 9 4 8
$$
$$
1 0 0 1 \mathrm {t o} 1 5 0 0 \mathrm {r e s e r v e d f o r} 1 9 4 9
$$
$$
1 5 0 1 \mathrm {t o} 2 0 0 0 \mathrm {r e s e r v e d f o r} 1 9 5 0
$$
$$
2 0 0 1 \mathrm {t o} 2 5 0 0 \mathrm {r e s e r v e d f o r} 1 9 5 1
$$
$$
2 5 0 1 \mathrm {t o} 4 9 0 0 \mathrm {r e s e r v e d f o r} 1 9 5 2
$$
While this scheme would serve to identify any individual sighting, identification of each report and its subsequent forms was necessary. The minor subserial numbers (two digits) fulfilled this requirement. For all SINGLE OBSERVATIONS, a major serial number followed by two (2) zeros, for example, 2759.00, was sufficient identification. For MULTIPLE OBSERVATIONS, the major serial number followed by a series of two-digit numbers ranging from 00 to 99 was used to identify the individual reports. In general, the most complete report from the most reliable observer of that FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 312 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.