New Concord, L6

There’s not much in the Meteoritical Bulletin on New Concord. I was able to track down a PDF of Farrington’s 1915 book, “Catalogue of the meteorites of North America” (36.5 MB download).  New Concord is described on pages 329-342. The use of Farrington’s book on this website is legal, as described in the inserted licensing documentation.

It has also been claimed that a stone from this fall struck and killed a colt.  New Concord is the first academically reported account of a meteorite directly causing an animal fatality in historic times.

The 352.6 gram crusted fragment below was owned by Amos E. Dolbear, an American scientist who acquired the stone shortly after the fall. Dolbear is widely credited with being the true inventor of the telephone, having made a working prototype roughly eleven years prior to Alexander Graham Bell’s filed patent. As noted in the June 18, 1881 edition of Scientific American, if Dolbear “had been observant of patent office formalities, it is possible that the speaking telephone, now so widely credited to Mr. Bell would be garnered among his own laurels.”

The specimen has handwritten labels dating from shortly after its recovery, and from Amos Dolbear’s son, Benjamin L. Dolbear.