Robert Kenneth Wilson

Suddenly, tourists began photographing the water, hoping for something extraordinary.

On the nineteenth of April, nineteen thirty-four, a general surgeon named Robert Kenneth Wilson took what would become the most iconic image.

The photograph shows an elongated neck and head-like silhouette against a cloudy sky.

Initially, it was celebrated by newspapers across Britain as evidence of a hidden creature living in the loch's depths.

His description lined up with that of a plesiosaur-like animal, though skeptics suggested he might have seen an otter or a seal.

That same year, though, the famed surgeon's photograph was taken by a London doctor named Robert Kenneth Wilson, the most recognized picture of Nessie.

Initially considered proof of the monster's existence, it was later revealed to be a hoax that involved a toy submarine.

In 1938, a GE tailor filmed an unidentified object in the lock for three full minutes.

He said it made, quote, "Two great bounds and disappeared into the water." But the thing that would define the Loch Ness Monster for the next 60 years arrived in April of 1934.

It was another photograph, a single, elegant, black and white image of a slender neck and a small head rising up out of the rippling water, and is credited to a man of real standing, a respected London surgeon named Robert Kenneth Wilson.

This became known as the surgeon's photograph, and it was different from everything that came before.

Every other piece of evidence was a hump, or a wake, or a blurry smudge.

This was his revenge on the Daily Mail, the paper that had made him a laughing stock.

He pulled in family to help build and photograph the model, including his son, Ian Wetherell.

And then to make it believable, they recruited that respectable London surgeon, Robert Kenneth Wilson, to be the public face of it.

Nobody would suspect a distinguished doctor of pulling a prank.