After the November 9th, 1923 fireball event that inspired Nininger, he set out learning as much as could be learned on the subject. He found at that time there was precious little information on the subject written where one could educate themselves on meteorites. He was able to obtain a copy of Farrington’s Catalog of the Meteorites of North America. It had been published in 1909. He learned that even in many of the universities of that day, there was little knowledge and even less knowledgeable people. Figuring that if no program existed during that age that perhaps he could generate some program. He was both disappointed and challenged by this aspect of the field. He realized that he was fast becoming an expert because of his reading and personal field work. He also conceived a plan to try and find meteorites on his excursions looking for new meteorites and of the November 9th fall. He used the money he was paid from lectures at various localities which often just paid for his expenses of travel, near cities he wanted to go. His plan was a simple one and even used today! First he took the public into his confidence and formed a partnership with them. He would often go to the area papers where he could get articles written on the subject by information he supplied and encourage locals to hunt for these precious specimens. He would explain the scientific value and characteristics of meteorites in these articles. He would also offer a fair price for any meteorite found which he determined to be a dollar a pound at that time.
Nininger realized from 1803 to his present time that only about fifty falls or finds had been recorded or about one in two years. His personal field work had yield two specimens from Coldwater Kansas in a little under a year after the November 9th, 1923 fall . He also reasoned that a planned strategy should increase the number of finds in local areas. This and his later experiences taught him that meteorites are widely distributed over the earth and that any considerable search of an large area will probably result in the recovery of new meteorite specimens.
Source: Find A Falling Star by H.H. Nininger
The Nininger Moments are articles or books written originally by Harvey Nininger and put into a consolidated form by Al Mitterling. Some of the items written in the moments might be old out dated material and the reader is advised to keep this in mind.
–AL Mitterling
