What is ufology?
The acronym UFO – for Unidentified Flying Object – is so prevalent and commonplace today, that it’s easy to forget the term is only about fifty years old. There is even some dispute about the acronym’s exact origin. In his classic account of his years spent as the director of Project Blue Book – the Air Force’s official UFO “investigation” agency – Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt says unequivocally that “UFO is the official term that I created to replace the words ‘flying saucers'” (Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, Doubleday, 1956, p. 6). Presumably, this would have been sometime between 1951, when Ruppelt took over Project Grudge, later renamed Blue Book, and September of 1953, when he left the agency and the Air Force. Elsewhere in the same book, however, Ruppelt says of Project Grudge’s final 600-page report, released in December of 1949, that it was “officially titled ‘Unidentified Flying Objects – Project Grudge, Technical Report No. 102-AC-49/15-100. But it was widely referred to a
