The Smithsonian’s Air & Space magazine published an article about Japanese scientist Wasaburo Oishi, discoverer of the jetstream. Why Was the Discovery of the Jet Stream Mostly Ignored?, the article asks. The suggested answer: Maybe because it was published in Esperanto.

[Had] Ooishi not been an Esperantist, U.S. scientists during World War II might have been more aware of a national vulnerability. Between 1923 and 1925, Ooishi completed almost 1,300 observations of fierce high-altitude winds, later named the jetstream. […] Ooishi announced his discovery of the swift, high-altitude river of air in the Tateno observatory’s annual reports, which he published in Esperanto. Not surprisingly, his research was ignored, and the U.S. military was caught off guard […].

Unfortunately, the article never addresses the logical follow-up question: Is there any reason to believe American scientists would have paid attention had Oishi published in Japanese?

Maybe not. A report published by the American Meteorological Society explains that Oishi distributed his report to scientists worldwide, and his goal in using Esperanto “must have been to maximize the comprehension of the report by a world community that had little acquaintance with the Japanese language.”