Shenton could not understand why someone had not previously thought of this idea until he discovered, in the reading room of the British Library at Bloomsbury that Archbishop Stevens, a friend of Lady Blount, the founder of the Universal Zetetic Society, had suggested an aircraft design similar to his own. He was son of an army sergeant major, born in Great Yarmouth, and by the 1920s claimed to have invented an airship that would rise into the atmosphere and remain stationary until the Earth spun westwards at 1,000 km/h (620 mph) to the desired destination at the same latitude. Samuel Shenton was a signwriter, who lived with his wife Lillian in a ginger-brick terrace in suburban Dover.

He lectured tirelessly on this to youth clubs, political and student groups, and during the Space Race in the 1960s he was frequently seen on television and in newspapers promoting his views. Samuel Shenton (March 1903 – 2 March 1971) was the founder in 1956 of the International Flat Earth Research Society, based in Dover, England.

Flat earth research society