I had a long talk with Jeff Glickman. He has been traveling and just got home last night. He'll start working with the print I FedExed to him. It's really lucky that we got that print from the Miami Herald when we did. It was probably made from the original negative, now long lost. All the other images are now digital scans which introduces distortions that make forensic analysis unreliable (that's why we had to go to NZ to take photos of the 1938 negatives). How much detail he can pull from the print remains to be seen.
Jeff and I agreed, as I'm sure all of you will, that the potential importance of this research is so great that we must proceed with the utmost diligence. We're still in the preliminary stages of testing the hypothesis that 2-2-V-1 is the patch, or rather, most of the patch. So far, the quick and dirty comparisons look promising but we now need to get much more precise. Here's the plan.
Jeff will spend the next few weeks working with the print and with the other images we have that show the patch. Sometime probably in early August we'll rent a portable Hyperspectral Imager. Jeff will come here and we'll do a detailed hyperspectral examination of 2-2-V-1. It's Jeff's feeling that a hyperspectral analysis of 2-2-V-1 could bring out new information critical to confirming (or disproving) the hypothesis. Jeff will donate his time but renting the imager and Jeff's travel will run about $2,000 so we'll have to find the money. We'll solicit donations to the 1937 Fund for that purpose.
This new research is getting good media coverage and, if all continues to go well, should help attract sponsorship for NIKU VIII.