In an ostensibly non-fictitious article published in 1897 in The San Francisco Call titled "The Secret of Aerial Flight Revealed," science correspondent Frank M. Close, D.Sc., visits an unnamed Hindu man masquerading as a viticulturist somewhere on the Pacific coast who claims to have invented a flying boat that uses an "apergent"—a rare metal called "radlum"—to produce controlled apergic force, allowing the vessel to ascend and descend. The inventor describes apergy as "a force obtained by blending positive and negative electricity with ultheic, the third element or state of electric energy" and calls apergy a "second phase of gravity," hinting at a third phase as well.