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==Origins==
[[File:
[[File:LochNessUrquhart.jpg|thumb|Loch Ness]]
The term "monster" was reportedly applied for the first time to the creature on 2 May 1923 by Alex Campbell, the [[water bailiff]] for [[Loch Ness]] and a part-time journalist, in a report in the ''Inverness Courier''.<ref name=Sun1975>''The Sun'' 27 November 1975: ''I'm the man who first coined the word "monster" for the creature''.</ref><ref name=Binns>R. Binns ''The Loch Ness Mystery Solved'' pp 11–12</ref><ref name=monster1933>''Inverness Courier'' 2 May 1933 "Loch Ness has for generations been credited with being the home of a fearsome-looking monster"</ref> On 4 August 1933, the ''Courier'' published as a full news item the claim of a London man, George Spicer, that a few weeks earlier while motoring around the Loch, he and his wife had seen "the nearest approach to a dragon or pre-historic animal that I have ever seen in my life", trundling across the road toward the Loch carrying "an animal" in its mouth.<ref name=CourierSpicer>{{cite news |newspaper=Inverness Courier |date=4 August 1933 |title=Is this the Loch Ness monster?}}</ref> Other letters began appearing in the ''Courier'', often anonymously, with claims of land or water sightings, either on the writer's part or on the parts of family, acquaintances or stories they remembered being told.<ref name=Binns33>R. Binns ''The Loch Ness Mystery Solved'' pp19-27</ref> These stories soon reached the national (and later the international) press, which described a "monster fish", "sea serpent", or "dragon",<ref name=DMAug33>''Daily Mirror'', 11 August 1933 "Loch Ness, which is becoming famous as the supposed abode of a dragon..."</ref> eventually settling on "Loch Ness Monster".<ref>The [[Oxford English Dictionary]] gives 9 June 1933 as the first usage of the exact phrase ''Loch Ness monster''</ref> On 6 December 1933 the first purported photograph of the monster, taken by Hugh Gray, was published,<ref>R. P. Mackal (1983) ''The Monsters of Loch Ness'' page 94</ref> and shortly after the creature received official notice when the [[Secretary of State for Scotland]] ordered the police to prevent any attacks on it.<ref name=DMEel>''Daily Mirror'' 8 December 1933 "The Monster of Loch Ness – Official! Orders That Nobody is to Attack it" ... A Huge Eel?"</ref> In 1934, interest was further sparked by what is known as [[#"Surgeon's Photograph" (1934)|The Surgeon's Photograph]]. In the same year [[R. T. Gould]] published a book,<ref name="Gould">{{cite book|author=Gould, Rupert T.|title=The Loch Ness Monster and Others|location=London|publisher=Geoffrey Bles| year=1934}}</ref> the first of many that describe the author's personal investigation and collected record of additional reports pre-dating the summer of 1933. Other authors have claimed that sightings of the monster go as far back as the 6th century (seen below).
==History==
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