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Force on an Asymmetric Capacitor
By Thomas B. Bahder and Christian Fazi
ARL-TR-3005 June 2003
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Approved for public release; distribution unlimited. 20030822 162
Best Ccp
NOTICES
Disclaimers
The findings in this report are not to be construed as an official
Department of the Army position, unless so designated by other authorized documents.
Citation of manufacturers' or trade names does not constitute an official endorsement or approval of the use thereof.
Army Research Laboratory
Adelphi, MD 20783-1197
ARL-TR-3005 June 2003
Force on an Asymmetric Capacitor
Thomas B. Bahder and Christian Fazi Sensors and Electron Devices Directorate, ARL
Best Available Copy
Approved for public release; distribution unlimited.
REPOT DCUMNATGAETFOorNm Approved
REPOT DCUMNTATON
AGEOMB No. 0704-0188
Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average I hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing the burden, to Department of Defense, Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports (0704-0188), 1215 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 1204, Arlington, VA 22202-4302. Respondents should be aware that notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person shall be subject to any penalty for failing to comply with a collection of information if it does not display a currently valid OMB control number. PLEASE DO NOT RETURN YOUR FORM TO THE ABOVE ADDRESS. 1. REPORT DATE (DD-MM-YYYY) 2. REPORT TYPE 3. DATES COVERED (From - To) June 2003 1Final August 2002-December 2002 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE 5a. CONTRACT NUMBER Force on an Asymmetric Capacitor
5b. GRANT NUMBER
5c. PROGRAM ELEMENT NUMBER 62705A
6. AUTHOR(S) 5d. PROJECT NUMBER Thomas B. Bahder and Christian Fazi 3NE6BC
Se. TASK NUMBER
5f. WORK UNIT NUMBER
7. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES) 8. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION U.S. Army Research Laboratory REPORT NUMBER Attn: AMSRL-SE-EE ARL-TR-3005 2800 Powder Mill Road Adelphi, MD 20783-1197
9. SPONSORING/MONITORING AGENCY NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES) 10. SPONSORIMONITOR'S ACRONYM(S)
U.S. Army Research Laboratory 2800 Powder Mill Road 11. SPONSORIMONITOR'S REPORT Adelphi, MD 20783-1197 NUMBER(S)
12. DISTRIBUTION/AVAILABILITY STATEMENT Approved for public release; distribution unlimited
13. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES AMS Code 622705.H94 DA Project AH94 14. ABSTRACT
When a high voltage (-30 kV) is applied to a capacitor whose electrodes have different physical dimensions, the capacitor experiences a net force toward the smaller electrode (Biefeld-Brown effect). We have verified this effect by building four capacitors of different shapes. The effect may have applications to vehicle propulsion and dielectric pumps. We review the history of this effect briefly through the history of patents by Thomas Townsend Brown. At present, the physical basis for the Biefeld-Brown effect is not understood. The order of magnitude of the net force on the asymmetric capacitor is estimated assuming two different mechanisms of charge conduction between its electrodes: ballistic ionic wind and ionic drift. The calculations indicate that ionic wind is at least 3 orders of magnitude too small to explain the magnitude of the observed force on the capacitor. The ionic drift transport assumption leads to the correct order of magnitude for the force,
however, it is difficult to see how ionic drift enters into the theory. Finally, we present a detailed thermodynamic treatment of the net force on an asymmetric capacitor. In the future, to understand this effect, a detailed theoretical model must be constructed that takes into account plasma effects: ionization of gas (or air) in the high electric field region, charge transport, and resulting dynamic forces on the electrodes. The next series of experiments should determine whether the effect occurs in vacuum, and a careful study should be carried out to determine the dependence of the observed force on gas pressure, gas species and applied voltage.
15. SUBJECT TERMS
Electrostatic propulsion, capacitor, high voltage, dielectric, ion propulsion, Bieheld-Brown effect, thermodynamics, force, electric
17. LIMITATION 18. NUMBER 19a. NAME OF RESPONSIBLE PERSON 16. SECURITY CLASSIFICATION OF: OF ABSTRACT OF PAGES Thomas B. Bahder
a. REPORT b. ABSTRACT c. THIS PAGE 19b. TELEPHONE NUMBER (Include areacode) UNCLASSIFIED UNCLASSIFIED UNCLASSIFIED UL 301-394-2044
Standard Form 298 (Rev. 8/98) Prescribed by ANSI Std, Z39.18
Best Available Copy
Contents
List of Figures iv
Acknowledgments v
1. Introduction 1
2. Biefeld-Brown Effect 1
3. Preliminary Experiments at ARL 7
4. Previously Proposed Explanations for the Biefeld-Brown Force 11
4.1 Ionic Wind: Force Too Small .................................................................................... 12
4.2 The Ion Drift Picture: Scaling Theory of Force ...................................................... 13
5. Thermodynamic Analysis of the Biefeld-Brown Force 18
6. Summary and Suggested Future Work 22
7. References 24
Appendix A. Short Patent History Dealing With Asymmetric Capacitors 27
Appendix B. Force on Asymmetric Capacitor in Vacuum 29
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111,i
List of Figures
Figure 1. Excerpt from Thomas Townsend Brown British Patent No. 300,311 entitled "Method of and Apparatus or Machine for Producing Force or Motion,"issued on
November 15, 1928 ........................................................................................................... 2
Figure 2. Excerpt from Thomas Townsend Brown U.S. Patent No. 2,949,550 entitled
"Electrokinetic Apparatus," issued on August 16, 1960 ...................................................... 2
Figure 3. Excerpt from Thomas Townsend Brown U.S. Patent No. 2,949,550 entitled
"Electrokinetic Apparatus," issued on August 16, 1960 ...................................................... 4
Figure 4. Figure excerpt from Thomas Townsend Brown U.S. Patent No. 2,949,550 entitled
"Electrokinetic Apparatus," issued on August 16, 1960 ...................................................... 5
Figure 5. Excerpt from Thomas Townsend Brown U.S. Patent No. 3,018,394 entitled
"Electrokinetic Transducer," issued on January 23, 1962 ................................................... 6 Figure 6. Excerpt from Thomas Townsend Brown Patent No. 3,187,206, entitled,
"Electrokinetic Apparatus," issued on June 1, 1965 ............................................................. 6
Figure 7. Our first attempt at making an asymmetric capacitor (a "lifter"), according to the specifications given by J. Naudin (1) on Internet Web site <http://jnaudin.free.fr/> ........... 8
Figure 8. The second attempt at making a lighter asymmetric capacitor ................................... 8
Figure 9. Flat-shaped (or wing-shaped) asymmetric capacitor used to test whether closed
electrode geometry is needed ............................................................................................... 9
Figure 10. The capacitor consisting of a single wire. No bias applied ................................... 10
Figure 11. The wire capacitor showing displacement from the vertical (35 kV applied) ...... 11
Figure 12. Schematic diagram of the side view of electric field for the asymmetric capacitor
in Figure 9 ................................................................................................................................ 14
iv
Acknowledgments
T. Bahder thanks W. C. McCorkle, Director of U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command, for the suggestion to look at the physics responsible for the net force on an asymmetric capacitor. The authors wish to thank Jean-Louis Naudin (JLN Labs) for his permission to reproduce the letter of Thomas Townsend Brown in Appendix B. T. Bahder is grateful for personal correspondence with Jean-Louis Naudin (JLN Labs).
v
INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
vi
1. Introduction
Recently, there is a great deal of interest in the Biefeld-Brown effect, i.e., when high voltage (-30 kV) is applied to the electrodes of an asymmetric capacitor, a net force is observed on the capacitor. By asymmetric, we mean that the physical dimensions of the two electrodes are different, i.e., one electrode is large and the other small. According to the classical BiefeldBrown effect (see Brown's original 1960, 1962, and 1965 patents cited in Appendix A, and a partial reproduction in section 2), the largest force on the capacitor is in a direction from the negative (larger) electrode toward the positive (smaller) electrode. Today, there are numerous demonstrations ofthis effect on the Internet in devices called "lifters," which show that the force on the capacitor exceeds its weight (1). In fact, these experiments indicate that there is a force on the capacitor independent of polarity of applied voltage. In the future, the Biefeld-Brown effect may have application to aircraft or vehicle propulsion, with no moving parts. At the present time, there is no accepted detailed theory to explain this effect, and hence the potential of this effect for applications is unknown. The authors are aware of only two reports (2) and theoretical papers that address such issues (3, 4).
In section 2, we describe the history ofthe Biefeld-Brown effect. The effect of a net force on an asymmetric capacitor is so surprising that we carried out preliminary simple experiments at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) to verify that the effect is real. The results of these experiments are described in section 3. Section 4 contains estimates ofthe force on the capacitor for the case of ballistic ionic wind and drift of carriers across the capacitor's gap between electrodes. In section 5, we present a detailed thermodynamic treatment ofthe force on an asymmetric capacitor, assuming that a nonlinear dielectric fluid fills the region between capacitor electrodes. Section 6 is a summary and recommendation for future experimental and theoretical work.
2. Biefeld-Brown Effect
During the 1920s, Thomas Townsend Brown was experimenting with an x-ray tube known as a "Coolidge tube," which was invented in 1913 by the American physical chemist William D. Coolidge. Brown found that the Coolidge tube exhibited a net force (a thrust) when it was turned on. He believed that he had discovered a new principle of electromagnetism and gravity. Brown applied for a British patent on April 15, 1927, which was issued on November 15, 1928 as Patent No. 300,311, entitled, "Method ofProducing Force or Motion." The patent and its figures clearly
1
describe Brown's early work on forces on asymmetric capacitors, although the electromagnetic concepts are mixed with gravitational concepts (Figure 1).
This invention relates to a method of
controlling gravitation and for deriving
power therefrom, and to a method of prndueing linear force or motion. The
method is fundamentally electrical.
Figure 1. Excerpt from Thomas Townsend Brown British Patent No. 300,311 entitled "Method of and Apparatus or Machine for Producing Force or Motion," issued on November 15, 1928.
The discovery ofthe Biefeld-Brown effect is generally credited to Thomas Townsend Brown. However, it is also named in honor of Brown's mentor, Dr. Paul Alfred Biefeld, a professor of physics and astronomy at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, where Brown was a laboratory assistant in electronics in the Department of Physics. During the 1920s, Biefeld and Brown together experimented on capacitors.
In order to find a technical description of the Biefeld-Brown effect, we performed a search of the standard article literature and found no references to this effect. It is prudent to ask whether this effect is real or rumor. On the other hand, the Internet is full of discussions and references to this effect, including citations of patents issued (1), see also Appendix A. In fact, patents seem to be the only official publications that describe this effect.
On July 3,1957, Brown filed another patent entitled "Electrokinetic Apparatus," and was issued a U.S. Patent No. 2,949,550 on August 16, 1960. The effect in this patent is described more lucidly than his previous patent No. 300,311, of November 15, 1928. In this 1960 patent, entitled "Electrokinetic Apparatus," Brown makes no reference to gravitational effects (Figure 2).
This invention wias disclosed and described in my appli
cation Serial No. 293,465, filed June 13, 1952, which ap.
plication has become abandoned. However, refercnce
may be made 40 this application for the purpose of com
pleting the disclosure set forth below.
The invention utilizes a heretofore unknown electrokinetic phenomenon which I have discovered; namely,
that when a pair of electrodes of appropriate form are
held in a certain fl'ed spavecd relation to each other and
immersed in a dielectric medium and then oppositely
charged to an appropriate degree, a force is produced
tending to move the pair of electrodes through the me
dium. The invention is concerned primarily with ccrtain
apparatus for utilizing such phenomenon in various man
nets to be described,
Figure 2. Excerpt from Thomas Townsend Brown U.S. Patent No. 2,949,550 entitled "Electrokinetic Apparatus," issued on August 16, 1960.
2 Best Available Copy
The claims, as well as the drawings in this patent, clearly show that Brown had conceived that the force developed on an asymmetrical capacitor could be used for vehicle propulsion. His drawings in this patent are strikingly similar to some of the capacitors designs on the Internet today. In this 1960 patent, entitled "Electrokinetic Apparatus," Brown gives the clearest explanation of the physics of the Biefeld-Brown effect. Brown makes several important statements, including:
"*the greatest force on the capacitor is created when the small electrode is positive,
"•the effect occurs in a dielectric medium (air),
"*the effect can be used for vehicle propulsion or as a pump of dielectric fluid,
"•Brown's understanding of the effect, in terms of ionic motion, and
"*the detailed physics of the effect is not understood.
In the following, we reproduce Brown's first two figures and partial text explaining the effect (Figures 3 and 4).
Soon after Brown's 1957 filing for the patent previously mentioned, on May 12, 1958, A.H. Bahnson Jr. filed for an improved patent entitled "Electrical Thrust Producing Device," which was granted a U.S. Patent No. 2,9587,90 on November 1, 1960.
3
2,949,650
34
1 have discovered that when apparatus of the character electrodes to be operated at potentials above 125 kv. nay
just described is Immersed in a dielectric medium, as be hollow pipes or rods having a diameter of V4 to for example, the ordinary air of the atmosphere, there is inch.
produced a force tending to move the entire assembly In Figure 3, I have illustrated the manner in which
thiough the medium, and this force is applied in such 5 a plurality of assemblies, such as ore shown in Figure 1,
direction as to tend to move the body 20 toward the may be interconnected for joint operation. As may be leading clectrode 21. This force produces relative mo- seen from Figure 3, a plurality of such assemblies are
lion between the apparatus and the surrounding fluid di- placed in spaced side-by-side relation. They may be electric. Thus, if the apparatus Is held in a fixed post- held fixed in such spaced relation through the use of lion, the dielectric medium is caused to move past the 10 a plurality of tie rods 12 and interposed upacets (nsot
apparatus and to this extent the apparatus may be con- shown) placed between adjacent plates 20. The assemsidered as analogous to a pump or fan. Conversely, bly of plates 20 may be electrically interconnected by a
if the apparatus is free to move, the relative motion be- bus bar or similar conductor 29 to which the negative tween the medium and the apparatus results in a forward lead 25 is connected. In a similar way, the plurality of
motion of the apparatus, and it is thus seen that the 15 positive leading electrodes 21 may be held in appropri. apparatus is a self-propulsive device. ately spaced relation to each other by fastening their ends
While the phenomenon just described has been ob- to pairs of bus bars 30 and 31, to the latter of which
served and its existence confirmed -by repeated experi- the positive lead 26 is connected. The assembly of lead.
ment, the principles involved ATe not completely under- log electrodes 21 may he held in spaced relation to the stood. It has been determined that the greatest forces 20 assembly of body members 20 by an appropriate arrange.
are developed when the leading electrode is made ment of the supports 22. positive with respect to the body 20, and it is accord- In Figure 4, I have illustrated diagrammatically an ingly thought that In the immediate vicinity of the arrangement of parts for producing a reversible action;
electrode 21 where the potential gradient is very high, that is, permitting the direction of the propulsive force free electrons are stripped off of the atoms and molecules 25 to he reversed. The apparatus Is similar to that shown of the surrounding medium. These electrons migrate in Figure 1. differing therefrom in utiizing a pair of
to the positive electrode 21 where they are collected, leading electrodes 21t and Z1r spaced by means of
This removal of free electrons leaves the respective atoms spacers 12 from the front and rear edges 231 and 23r
and molecules positively charged and such charged atoms of the body member 20 in a manner similar to that de
and molecules are accordingly repelled from the pose- 20 scribed with reference to the supports 22 in Figure 1.
rive electrode 21 and attracted toward the negative The source 24 of high voltage electrical potential has
electrode 20. The paths of movement of these positively its negative terminal connected to the body 20 as by
charged particles appear to be of the nature represented means of the aforementioned conductor 25. The positive
by the lines 27 in Figure 2- terminal is connected as by means of the conductor 26 It appears that upon reaching or closely approaching 30 to the blade 27 of a single-pole, double-throw switch,
the surface of the body 20, the positively charged atoms serving in one position to connect the conductor 26 to a
and molecules have their positive charges neutralized Conductor 26f which is in turn connected to the forward
by the capture of electrons from the body 20 and in electrode 21f and arranged in Its opposite position to many cases, it may be that excess electrons are captured connect the conductor 26 to a conductor 26r which is in whereby to give such atoms and molecules a negative 40 turn connected to the reverse electrode 21r. charge so that they are actually repelled from the It will be seen that with the switch 27 in the post
body 20. tion shown in Figure 4, the apparatus will operate In the It will be appreciated that the mass of each of the manner described in connection with Figure 1, causing individual electrons is approximately one two-thousandtbs the assembly to move to the left as viewed in Figure 4.
the mass of the hydrogen atom and is accordingly negligi- 45 By throwing the switch 27 to the opposite position, the bie as compared with the mass of the atoms and molecules direction of the forces produced are reversed and the
of the medium from which they are taken. The principal device isoves to the right as viewed In Figure 4. forces Involved therefore are the forces involved in mov- In Figure 5, 1 have illustrated the principles of the in
ing the charged atoms and molecules from the region vention as embodied in a simple form of mobile vehicle. of the positive electrode 21 to and beyond the negatively aD This device includes a body member 50 which is prefer
charged body 20. The force so exerted by the system ably of the form of a circular disc somewhat thicker
on those atoms and molecules not only produces a flow in its center than at its edges. The disc 50 constitutes of the medium relative to the apparatus, but, of course, one of the electrodes and is the equivalent of the body
results in a like force on the system tending to move the member 20 referred to in connection with Figure 1. A entire system in the opposite direction; thAt is, to the left 55 leading electrode 51 in the form, of a wire or similar
as viewed in Figure I of the drawing, tmall diameter conductor is supported from the body
The above suggested explanation of the mode of opera- 50 by a plurality of insulating supports 52 in uniform lion of the device is supported by observation of the spaced parallel relation to a leading edge portion S of
fact that the dimensions and potentials utilized must be the body 50. A skirt or simtilar fairing 54 -may be car
adjusted to produce the required electric field and the 60 ricd by the body 50 to round out the entire structura so resulting propulsive force- Actually I have found that as to provide a device which is substantially circular in
the potential gradient must be below that value required plan. A source of high voltage electrical potential 55 is
to produce a visible corona since corona is objection- provided with its negative terminal connected as indicated able inasmuch as It represents losscs through the radia- at 56 to the body 50 and its positive terminal connected
lion of heat, light and molecular charges in the medium* 65 as indicated at 57 to the leading electrode 51.
My experiments have indicated that the electrode 21 Tlhe device operates in the same manner as the ap
may be of small diameter for the lower voltage ranges, paratus shown in Figure 1 to produce a force tending to
i.e. below 125 kv. while above this voltage, rod or hollow move the entire assembly through the surrounding me
pipe electrodes are preferred. These large electrodes dium to the left as viewed in Figure 5 of the drawing, are preferred for the higher voltages since sharp points 70 Referring now to Figure 6, there is depicted an illus
or edges are eliminated which at these elevated potentials trative embodiment of this invention in which, a pair of would produce losses thus diminishing the thrust. For mobile vehicles, such as depicted in Figure 5, are shown
example, electrodes to be operated at potentials below suspended from the terminals of arm 40, which arm 125 kv. may be made from small gauge wire only large is supported at its midpoint 'by a vertical column 41. enough to provide the required mechanical rigidity while 76 High voltage source 55 is shown connected through wires
Figure 3. Excerpt from Thomas Townsend Brown U.S. Patent No. 2,949,550 entitled "Electrokinetic Apparatus," issued on August 16, 1960.
4 Best Available Copy
Aug. 16, 1960 T,T. BROWN 2,949,550
riles July 3, 19,47 2 Shoot.-Sheet I
FIG. I FIG,
255
Figure 4. Figure excerpt from Thomas Townsend Brown U.S. Patent No. 2,949,550 entitled "Electrokinetic Apparatus," issued on
August 16, 1960.
On July 3, 1957, Brown filed another patent (granted on January 23, 1962, as U.S. Patent No. 3,018,394) for an "Electrokinetic Transducer." This patent deals with the inverse effect, i.e., when a dielectric medium is made to move between high voltage electrodes, there is a change in the voltage on the electrodes. (This is reminiscent of Faraday's law of induction.) Quoting from the 1962 patent by Thomas Townsend Brown (Figure 5):
Until this time, the net force on an asymmetric capacitor was reported as occurring when the capacitor was in a dielectric medium. On May 9, 1958, Brown filed for another patent (improving upon his previous work) entitled "Electrokinetic Apparatus." The patent was issued on June 1, 1965 as Patent No. 3,187,206. The significance of this new patent is that it describes the existence of a net force on the asymmetric capacitor as occurring even in vacuum. Brown states that, "The propelling force however is not reduced to zero when all environmental bodies are removed beyond the apparent effective range of the electric field." Here is a quote from the patent (Figure 6).
st Available Copy
5
Best Available Copy
'his invention utilizes heretofore unknown electrokinetic phenomenon which I have discovered, namely that when pairs of electrodes of appropriate form are held in a certain fixed spacial relationship to each other and im
mersed in a dielectric medium and then oppositely charged to an appropriate degree, a force is produced tending to move the surrounding dielectric with respect to the pair of electrodes. I have also discovered that if the dielectric
Jmuedium is moved relative to the pahib uf elelti odes by an external mechanical force, a variation in the potential of the electrodes results which variation corresponds to the
variations in the applied mechanical force. Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide
a method and apparatus for converting the energy of an
electrical potential directly into a mechanical force suitable for causing relative motion between a structure and the surrounding medium.
Figure 5. Excerpt from Thomas Townsend Brown U.S. Patent No. 3,018,394 entitled "Electrokinetic Transducer," issued on January 23, 1962.
3,187,206
ELECTROIKtNETIC APPARATUS
Thomas Townsend Brown, Walkerlown, N.C., assignor,
by mesne assignments, to Electroldnetics, Inc., a cor
poration of Pennsylvania
Filed May 9, 1958, S&r. No. 734,342
23 Claims. (Cl. 310-5)
This invention relates to an electrical device for produc
ing thrust by the direct operation of electrical fields. I have discovcied that a Shaped electrical field may be
employed to propel a device relative to its surroundings In
a manner which is both novel and useful. Mechanical
forces are created which move the device continuously in
ore direction while the nimasses making up the cnvironment
move in the opposite direction. When the device is operated in a dielectric fluid me
dium, such as air, the forces of reaction appear to be
present in that medium as well as on all solid material
bodies making up the physical environment.
In a vacuum, the reaction forces appear on the solid
environmental bodies, such as the walls of the vacuum chamber. The propelling force however is not reduced
to zero when all environmental bodies arc removed beyond the apparent effective range of the electrical field.
By attaching a pair of electrodes to opposite ends of a dielectric member and connecting a source of high elec
trostatic potential to these electrodes, a force is produced
in the direction of one electrode provided thnt electrode is of such configuration to cause the lines-of-force to con
verge steeply upon the other electrode. The force, there
fore, is in a direction from the region of high flux density toward the region of low flux density, generally in the di
rection thrmogh the axis of the electrodcs. The thrust
produced by such a device is present if the electrostatic 3,
field gradient between the two electrodes is non-linear.
This non-linearity of gradient may result from a differ
ence in the configuration of the electrodes, from the elec
trical potential andlor polarity of adjacent bodies, from
the shape of the dielectric member, from a gradient in the 40
density, electric conductivity, electric perm'ittivity and
inanetic permeability of the dielectric member or a com
bination of these factors.
Figure 6. Excerpt from Thomas Townsend Brown Patent No. 3,187,206, entitled, "Electrokinetic Apparatus," issued on June 1, 1965.
6
In this patent, Brown reports that the asymmetric capacitor does show a net force, even in vacuum. However, at present, there is little experimental evidence, except for two reports (2), which do not explain the origin of the observed force and two theoretical papers (3, 4). If the Biefeld-Brown effect is to be understood on a firm basis, it is imperative to determine whether the effect occurs in vacuum. Enclosed in Appendix B, is Bahder's email correspondence with J. Naudin, where Naudin quotes from a letter by Thomas Townsend Brown, who discusses the
effect in vacuum.
The main question to be answered is as follows: what is the physical mechanism that is responsible for the net force on an asymmetric capacitor? The answer to this question may depend on whether the asymmetric capacitor is in a polarizable medium (such as air), or in vacuum. However, to date, the physical mechanism is unknown, and until it is understood, it will be impossible to determine its potential for practical applications.
3. Preliminary Experiments at ARL
The Biefeld-Brown effect is reported in many places on the Internet; however, as previously mentioned, only two papers exist (3, 4). Therefore, we decided to verify that the effect was real. The authors have fabricated three simple asymmetric capacitors, using the designs reported on the Internet (1). In all three cases, we have verified that a net force is exerted on the capacitors when a high DC voltage is applied to the electrodes. The three asymmetric capacitors that we tested had different geometries, but they all had the common feature that one electrode was thin and the other very wide (asymmetric dimensions). Also, a suspended wire, representing a capacitor with the second electrode at infinity, showed lift.
Our first model was made by Tom Bahder, and was triangular in shape, which is a typical construction reported on the Internet (Figure 7). One electrode is made from thin 38-gauge (0.005-mil) wire, and the other electrode is made from ordinary aluminum foil. The capacitor is -20 cm on a side, the foil sides are 20 x 4 cm, and the distance ofthe top of the foil to the thin wire electrode is 3 cm. The foil and wire are supported by a balsa wood frame, so that the whole capacitor is very light, -5 g. Initially, we made the balsa wood frame too heavy (capacitor weight -7 g), and later we cut away much of the frame to lighten the construction to -5 g. We found that in order to demonstrate the lifting effect, the capacitor must be made of minimum weight. (Typical weights reported on the Internet for the design in Figure 7 are 2.3 - 4 g.)
7
Figure 7. Our first attempt at making an asymmetric capacitor (a "lifter"), according to the specifications given by J. Naudin (1) on Internet Web site <http://jnaudin.free.fr/>.
When -37 kV was applied to the capacitor in Figure 7, the current was -1.5 mA. The capacitor lifted off its resting surface. However, this capacitor was not a vigorous flier, as reported by
others on the Internet. One problem that occurred was arcing from the thin wire electrode to the foil. The thin wire electrode was too close to the foil. We have found that arcing reduces the force developed on the capacitor. Also, compared to other constructions, ours was too heavy, 5 g. We found that a ground plane beneath the capacitor is not essential for the lifting force to exceed the capacitor's weight.
Consequently, we decided to make a second version of an asymmetric capacitor, using a Styrofoam lunch box and plastic drinking straws from the ARL cafeteria (Figure 8). The capacitor had a square geometry, 18 x 20 cm. The distance of the thin wire (38 gauge) to the foil was adjustable, and we found that making a 6-cm gap resulted in little arcing. When 30 kV was applied, the capacitor drew -1.5 mA, and hovered vigorously above the floor.
Figure 8. The second attempt at making a lighter asymmetric capacitor.
A question occurred: Is the toroidal (closed circular) geometry of the capacitor electrodes essential to the lifting effect that we have observed? Consequently, Bahder made a flat-shaped, or wing-shaped, capacitor as shown in Figure 9. This capacitor was made from two (red) plastic coffee stirrers and a (clear) plastic drinking straw to support the aluminum foil. The significance
8
Figure 9. Flat-shaped (or wing-shaped) asymmetric capacitor used to test whether closed electrode geometry is needed.
of the clear plastic straw was that the foil could be wrapped over it, thereby avoiding sharp foil edges that would lead to corona discharge or arcing. The dimensions of the foil on this capacitor were 20 x 4 cm, as shown in Figure 9. The distance between the thin wire electrode (38-gauge wire) and edge of the foil was 6.3 cm. This capacitor showed a net force on it when -30 kV was applied, drawing -500 ptA. The force on this capacitor greatly exceeded its weight, so much so that it would vigorously fly into the air when the voltage was increased from zero. Therefore, we have concluded that the closed geometry ofthe electrodes is not a factor in the net force on an asymmetric capacitor. Furthermore, the force on the capacitor always appeared in the direction toward the small electrode-independent of the orientation of the capacitor with respect to the plane of the Earth's surface. The significance ofthis observation is that the force has nothing to do with the gravitational field of the Earth and nothing to do with the electric potential of the Earth's atmosphere. (There are numerous claims on the Internet that asymmetric capacitors are antigravity devices, or devices that demonstrate that there is an interaction of gravity with electric phenomena.)
The thin wire electrode must be at a sufficient distance away from the foil so that arcing does not occur from the thin wire electrode to the foil at the operating voltage. In fact, in our first model, shown in Figure 7, the 3-cm gap from the top of the foil to the thin wire electrode was not sufficiently large, and significant arcing occurred. We have found that when arcing occurs, there is little net force on the capacitor. An essential part of the design of the capacitor is that the edges of the foil, nearest to the thin wire, must be rounded (over the supporting balsa wood, or plastic straw, frame) to prevent arcing or corona discharge at sharp foil edges (which are closest to the thin wire). The capacitor in Figure 7 showed improved lift when rounded foil was put over the foil electrode closest to the thin wire, thereby smoothing-over the sharp foil edges. Physically, this means that the radius of curvature of the foil nearest to the small wire electrode was made larger, creating a greater asymmetry in radii of curvature of the two electrodes.
9
When operated in air, the asymmetric capacitors exhibit a net force toward the smaller conductor, and in all three capacitors, we found that this force is independent ofthe direct current (DC) voltage polarity.
The detailed shape ofthe capacitor seems immaterial, as long as there is a large asymmetry between the characteristic size of the two electrodes.
The simplest capacitor configuration consists of a suspended thin wire from the hot electrode of the high-voltage power supply, as shown in Figure 10. To observe the wire movement, a small piece of transparent tape was attached at the lower end ofthe thin wire. A suspended thin wire (-12 in length) also showed force with -35 kV and 1-mA current (Figure 9). From a vertical position, the wire lifted, as shown in Figure 11 by as much as 300, once the high voltage approached 35 kV. The usual air breakdown hissing sound ofthe other capacitors was heard when current reached -1 mA. Actually, the wire did not remain suspended, but oscillated back and forth -60' from vertical, and the hissing pitch followed the oscillation period with amplitude and frequency changes. Without the piece oftape at the end, the wire did not lift as much and the sound was considerably weaker. The piece oftape seems to increase the capacitance and or the air ionization. This suspended wire configuration can be viewed also as a capacitor surrounded by the ground system located several feet away (metallic benches, floor and ceiling). As in the other capacitor experiments, it also did not exhibit a polarity dependence.
Figure 10. The capacitor consisting of a single wire. No bias applied.
10
Figure 11. The wire capacitor showing displacement from the vertical (35 kV applied).
When the asymmetric capacitors have an applied DC voltage, and they are producing a net force in air, they all emit a peculiar hissing sound with pitch varying with the applied voltage. This sound is similar to static on a television or radioset when it is not tuned to a good channel. We believe that this sound may be a clue to the mechanism responsible for the net force.
4. Previously Proposed Explanations for the Biefeld-Brown Force
There are two proposed explanations for the Biefeld-Brown force. Both of these have been discussed on the Internet in various places. The first proposed scheme is that there exists an ionic wind in the high field region between the capacitor electrodes, and that this ionic wind causes the electrodes to move as a result of the momentum recoil. This scheme, described in section 4.1, leads to a force that is incorrect by at least 3 orders of magnitude compared to what is observed. (This scheme also assumes ballistic transport of charges in the atmosphere between electrodes of the capacitor, and it is known that instead drift current exists.)
In section 4.2, we present the second scheme, which assumes that a drift current exists between the capacitor plates. This scheme is basically a scaling argument, and not a detailed treatment of the force. In this scheme, the order of magnitude of the force on an asymmetric capacitor is correct, however, this scheme is only a scaling theory. Finally, in section 5, we present our thermodynamic treatment of the force on an asymmetric capacitor.
11
4.1 Ionic Wind: Force Too Small
The most common explanation for the net force on an asymmetric capacitor invokes ionic wind. Under a high-voltage DC bias, ions are thought to be accelerated by the high potential difference between electrodes, and the recoil force is observed on an asymmetric capacitor. A simple upper limit on the ion wind force shows that the ion wind effect is at least three orders of magnitude too small. Consider a capacitor that operates at voltage V. Charged particles of mass m, having charge q, such as electrons or (heavy) ions, are accelerated to a velocity v, having a kinetic energy
- m2 = qV. (1)
2
The force exerted on an asymmetric capacitor is given by the rate of change of momentum
I
F =my -, (2)
q
where I is the current flowing through the capacitor gap, and we assume that all the ionic momentum, my, is transferred to the capacitor when the charged particles leave an electrode. Also, we assume that none of this momentum is captured at the other electrode. This is a gross over-estimation of the force due to ionic effects, so equation 2 is an upper limit to the ionic force.
Solving equation 1for the velocity, and using it in equation 2 gives the upper limit on the force due to ionic wind
F = (2.V I. (3)
When the force F is equal to the weight of an object, Mg, where g is the acceleration due to gravity, the force will lift a mass
M=(2m 2 1 (4)
Ifwe assume that electrons are the charged particles responsible for force of the ionic wind, then we must use mass m =9.1 x 10- 31 kg. Substituting typical experimental numbers into equation 4, we find that the ionic wind can lift a mass
M =((2)(9.1 xIO -1kg)(4Ox103 Volt))2 1.OxO1-3 A =6.8x10-' gram. (5)
1.6x1O"19 C lOm
2
12
The typical weight of an asymmetric capacitor is on the order of 5 g, so this force is too small by 5 orders of magnitude.
Another possibility is that heavy ions (from the air or stripped off the wire) are responsible for the ionic wind. As the heaviest ions around, assume that Cu is being stripped from the wire. Using Cu for the ions, the mass of the ions is 63.55 mp, where 63.55 is the atomic mass of Cu and mp is the mass of a proton. The weight that could be lifted with Cu ionic wind is then (upper limit):
M = (2)(63.55) (1.67x1027kg)(40 x 103 Volts))' 10-3 A 0.002 gram. (6)
1.6 x 10-19 C n102
S2
Again, this value is 3 orders of magnitude too small to account for lifting a capacitor with a mass of 3-5 g. Therefore, the ionic wind contribution is too small, by at least 3 orders of magnitude, to account for the observed force on an asymmetric capacitor.
While the force of the ionic wind computed above is too small to explain the experiments in air, it should be noted that this effect will operate in vacuum, and may contribute to the overall force on a capacitor.
4.2 The Ion Drift Picture: Scaling Theory of Force
In the previous section, we computed an upper limit to the force on a capacitor due to ionic wind effects. Ionic wind is a ballistic flow of charges from one electrode to the other. Clearly the force due to ionic wind is at least three orders of magnitude too small to account for the observed force on an asymmetric capacitor (in air). There is another type of classical transport: drift of charge carriers in an electric field. In the case of drift, the carriers do not have ballistic trajectories, instead they experience collisions on their paths between electrodes. However, due to the presence of an electric field, the carriers have a net motion toward the opposite electrode. This type of transport picture is more accurate (than ballistic ionic wind) for a capacitor whose gap contains air. Drift transport is used by E. Barsoukov (5) to explain the net force on an asymmetric capacitor.
The general picture of the physics is that the positive and negative electrodes of the capacitor are charged and that these charges experience different forces because the electric field surrounding the capacitor is nonuniform (Figure 12). The electric field surrounding the capacitor is created by the potential applied to the capacitor electrodes and partial ionization of air into positive ions and electrons. These charge carriers experience drift and diffusion in the resulting electric field.
13
FOIL
Figure 12. Schematic diagram of the side view of electric field for the asymmetric capacitor in Figure 9.
The battery supplies the energy that is dissipated by transport of carriers in the electric field. The electric field is particularly complicated because it is the result of a steady state: the interplay between the dynamics of ionization of the air in the high-field region surrounding the electrodes and charge transport (drift and diffusion of positive and negative carriers) in the resulting electric field.
If the capacitor is surrounded by vacuum (rather than a dielectric, such as ions on air), the net force F on the asymmetric capacitor can be computed by the sum of two surface integrals, one over the surface of the positive electrode and one over the surface of the negative electrode (6):
F=-I-e0 E2'ndS+ E2'ndS (7)
where c0 is the permittivity of vacuum, E is the electric field normal to the conducting electrodes, S+and S_ are the positive and negative electrode surfaces of the capacitor and n is the outward normal to S+and S_. The integrals in equation 7 are done over closed surfaces S+and S_. As stated, the complexity of the calculation is contained in computing the electric field E. In section 5, we give an expression for the net force on the capacitor assuming that it is surrounded by a dielectric, such as air.
14
The electric field around the small wire electrode is much stronger than the field around the foil (see Figures 9 and 12). In our experiments, there is a big difference in the radii of curvature of the two capacitor electrodes: the thin wire electrode has a radius r, = 0.0025 in, and the edge of the foil has a radius of curvature of r2 = 0.125 in. This difference in curvature leads to an electric field with a strong gradient. The ratios of electric fields at the thin wire electrode to that at the rounded edge of the foil is inversely proportional to the square ofthe radii of curvatures: EI/E 2 = (rllr2)2 - 2500. However, the applied voltage is on the order of 30 kV, over a gap of 6 cm, so an
electric field of magnitude 2500 x 30 kV/6 cm - 1 x 107 V would not be supported in air. It is
cm clear that screening of the electric field is occurring due to the dielectric effects of charged air ions and electrons, as well as polarized air atoms. When a positive high voltage is applied to the thin wire electrode of the asymmetric capacitor, ionization of air atoms, such as nitrogen, probably occurs first near the thin wire electrode. The ionization of nitrogen atoms leads to free electrons and ions near the small electrode. The electron mobility is significantly larger for electrons than for nitrogen ions. This can be expected because the current density J= orE = n e v where o= n e2 z/m is the electrical conductivity, n is charge density, l is the scattering time, and the mean drift velocity v = p E. So the mobility behaves as p = e 7/m. Because electrons are 3 orders of magnitude more massive than ions, it is expected that they are correspondingly more mobile. Experimentally, it is found that the electron mobility in air at atmospheric pressure and electric field E = 104 Volt/cm is approximately (7) c2 cm
= 620 (8)
V olt •s
The mobility of N2 ions in air is (8)
c2
= 2.5 Vc lm,2 (9)
Volt -s
Therefore, the physical picture is that in the high field region, the electrons, with their high mobility, are swept out by the electric field, toward the thin wire electrode leading to screening of the field. The massive (probably positive) ions are less mobile and are left behind in a plasma surrounding the thin wire electrode.
A scaling argument can be made as follows: The lower foil conductor feels a force F of magnitude
V
F = , (10)
where Q is the charge on the foil electrode, Vis the voltage between the capacitor conductors, and t is the length of the gap between thin wire electrode and foil. The charge Q and voltage V are quantities that are actually present when screening is taking place. The negative charge on
15
the foil, -Q, can be approximated in terms of the measured current, I - 1mA, by saying that all the carriers are swept out in a time t :
I Q=Q
t - -Q (11)
where t is the time for carriers to move across the capacitor gap, f, if they are travelling at an average drift velocity, v. Eliminating the charge Q from equations 10 and 11, leads to an expression for the net force on the capacitor
V
F=I--. (12)
In equation 12, the current I is a measured quantity, the voltage V is on the order of 30 kV, and the drift velocity for electrons is (7)
ve = 6.2 x 106 cm (13)
S
Alternatively, the electron drift velocity, ve, can be expressed in terms of the mobility, p,,given in equation 8, and electric field, E. The net force on the asymmetric capacitor is then given by
F=IV-=1 ,l (14)
,uE pL
where we again used E = V / f. Using the value of electron mobility in equation 8, the net force becomes
F = 1 1 (_0-'A)(0.04 m) -6.4 x 10-4N. (15)
V-m620 10-2 mm
Volt .s)( cm)
The force in equation 15 could lift a mass M
F 6.4x10- 4 N
M
-- - 0.064 gram. (16)
g 10
s2
The typical asymmetric capacitor has a mass that is 3 orders or magnitude greater. Consequently, drift of electrons cannot explain the observed force on the capacitor.
An alternative to using the value of electron mobility is to use the smaller value of ionic mobility. This will lead to a larger force because the force in equation 14 is inversely proportional to the mobility.
16
F=J-'I- (10-' A)0.04m) = 0.16 N. (17)
2Volt )s cm)
The force in equation 17, due to the drift of nitrogen ions, could lift a mass M:
F 0.16N
M - - - 16 gram. (18) g 10 sm2
The force on the capacitor, given in equation 18, is within a factor of 3, assuming a capacitor of mass 5 g.
As alternative derivation of the scaling equation 14, consider the asymmetric capacitor as being essentially an electric dipole of magnitude,
p = p = Ql, (19)
where Q is the charge on one plate and / is the average effective separation between plates. When a high voltage is applied to the asymmetric capacitor (assume positive voltage on the thin wire and negative on the foil), the high electric field around the thin wire ionizes the atoms of the air. There is comparatively little ionization near the foil due to the lower magnitude electric field near the foil. The ionized atoms around the foil form a plasma, consisting of charged electrons and positively charged ions. The force on the capacitor must scale like
F = V(p.E), (20)
where E is the electric field. The gradient operates on the electric field, producing a magnitude dE / dx E / L Using this value in equation 20, together with the size of the dipole in equation 19, leads to a force on the capacitor
F :QV -if V iI(v21)
which is identical to equation 12.
From the scaling derivations that were presented, it is clear that electron drift current leads to a force on the capacitor that is too small. Using the value of mobility appropriate for (nitrogen) ions leads to a force whose order of magnitude is in agreement with experiment.
Note that the force, given by equation 14, scales inversely with the mobility u. If the ions are responsible for providing the required small mobility, then the picture is that the ions are like a low-mobility molasses, which provides a large spacecharge to attract the negatively charged foil electrode. As soon as the foil electrode moves toward the positive ion cloud, another positive ionic cloud is set up around the thin electrode, using the energy from the voltage source. In this
17
way, the dipole (asymmetric capacitor) moves in the nonuniform electric field that it has created. Physically, this is a compelling picture; however, much work must be done (experimentally and theoretically) to fill in important details to determine if this picture has any merit.
5. Thermodynamic Analysis of the Biefeld-Brown Force
In this section, we present our hypothesis that the Biefeld-Brown force, generated on an asymmetric capacitor, can be described by the thermodynamics of a fluid dielectric in an external electric field produced by charged conductors. The (partially ionized) air between capacitor electrodes is the fluid dielectric. Although the air is partially ionized, we assume that this fluid dielectric is close to neutral on the macroscopic scale. The charged conductors are the asymmetric electrodes of the capacitor. The battery provides the charge on the electrodes and the energy to sustain the electric field in the air (dielectric) surrounding the capacitor electrodes.
The total system is composed of three parts: the partially ionized air dielectric, the metal electrodes of the capacitor and the battery (voltage source) and connecting wires, and the electromagnetic field. The battery is simply a large reservoir of charge. The total momentum (including the electromagnetic field) of this system must be constant (9):
Pdielectric + Pelectrodes + Pfied = constant, (22)
where Pdielectric is the momentum of the fluid dielectric (air in the capacitor gap and surrounding region), Pelectrodes is the momentum of the metallic electrodes, wire and battery, and Pfield is the momentum ofthe electromagnetic field. Taking the time derivative of equation 22, the forces must sum to zero
Fdielectric + Felctrodes + 0. (23)
dt
As far as the electric field is concerned, its total momentum changes little during the operation of the capacitor, because the field is in a steady state; energy is supplied by the battery (charge reservoir). So we set the rate of change of field momentum to zero, giving a relation between the force on the electrodes and the dielectric:
Felectrodes = - Fdielectric. (24)
A lengthy derivation based on thermodynamic arguments leads to an expression for the stress tensor, oki,, for a dielectric medium in an electric field (6, 10, 11),
1
iPT. P
ap + EjDk, (25)
[pY )T.E ]ji
18
where the free energy F is a function of the fluid density, p, temperature, T, and electric field E. The differential of the free energy is given by
dF = - S dT + 4 dp - D dE, (26)
where S is the entropy, D is the electric induction vector, and ;is the chemical potential per unit mass (6). Equation 25 is valid for any constitutive relation between D and E. We assume that the air in between the capacitor plates is an isotropic, but nonlinear, polarizable medium, due to the high electric fields between plates. Therefore, we take the relation between D and E to be
D = c(E)E, (27)
where E(E) is a scalar dielectric function that depends on the magnitude of the electric field, E = IE I, the temperature, T, and the density of the fluid, p. We have suppressed the dependence
of 6 on T and p for brevity. The dielectric function e(E) depends on position through the
variables T and p and because the medium (air) between capacitor plates is assumed to be nonuniform. Inserting equation 27 into equation 26, we integrate the free energy along a path from E = 0 to some finite value of E obtaining
1 Eff (28)
where 6eff is an effective (averaged) dielectric constant, given by
I E2
6,eff, =2 fJ8Q/)dý, (29)
0
where ý is a dummy integration variable. The dielectric constant ceff depends on spatial position (because of e), on T, p, and on electric field magnitude E.
The body force per unit volume of the dielectric,f, is given by the divergence of the stress tensor,
f c- (30)
axk
where there is an implied sum over the repeated index k. Performing the indicated differentiations in equation 30, we obtain an expression for the body force (6, 10, 11)
f=-V Po(p,rT)[+-I V E2p7- E2VgE. +1(8 - + pE (31)
2 ap ThE 2 22 eff
where the external charge density is given by div D = pext. This charge density is the overall external charge density in the dielectric, which may have been supplied by the battery, electrodes, and the surrounding air. In equation 31, the pressure Po(p, T) is that which would be
19
present in the absence of the electric field. In the case of a linear medium, the dielectric function c'is independent of field E, and eff = E, which reduces to the result derived by Landau and Lifshitz (6) (see equation 15.12).
The total force on the fluid dielectric, Fdielectric, is given by the volume integral of f over the volume ofthe dielectric, Q:
Fdielecac = ff dV (32)
The volume Q is the whole volume outside the metal electrodes ofthe capacitor. According to equation 24, the net force on the capacitor, Felectrodes, is the negative of the total force on the dielectric:
F-ecoodes 2 2 J PXtE dV, (33)
where we have dropped the term containing the gradient in the pressure, assuming that it is negligible. Equation 33 gives the net force on capacitor plates for the case where the fluid dielectric is nonlinear, having the response given in equation 27. In equation 33, both 6 and 6' ff are functions of the electric field. Note that the first three terms of the integrand depend on the square of the electric field, which is in agreement with the fact that the observed force direction is independent of the polarity of the applied bias.
There are four terms in the force. The first term is proportional to the gradient of the dielectric constant, Ve. We expect that the dielectric constant has a large variation in between regions of low and high electric field, such as near the smaller electrode. We expect that there is a strong nonlinear dielectric response due to ionization of the air. The resulting free charges can move large distances, leading to a highly nonlinear response at high electric fields. Therefore, it is possible that this first term in the integrand in equation 33 has the dominate contribution. We expect this term to contribute to a force that points toward the smaller electrode (as observed experimentally), and we expect that this contribution is nearly independent of polarity of applied bias.
The second term in the force equation 33 is proportional to the gradient of the product ofthe square of the electric field and the difference in dielectric constants. The difference in the dielectric constants, eff - s, can be expanded in a Taylor series in E
1ecf'-(O)E - 1 6.(O)E' (34)
34
20
where
ac ,and
a T,p.,E=0
al0e)(2c (35)
aE ) E=
The gradient of the square of the electric field always points toward the smaller electrode, independent of the polarity of bias applied to the capacitor. We do not know the sign of the dielectric constants e'(0) and c'"(0). If the air has dielectric properties described by e'(0) < 0 and e"(0) < 0, then this term would contribute to a force toward the smaller electrode (which
would be in agreement with experiment). Alternatively, the term 1 V[(8ef - e)E2] may have the
2
wrong sign but may be small. This must be determined experimentally by studying the dielectric properties of air or other gas.
The third term in the force equation 33 is difficult to evaluate. It may well be negligible, especially compared to the first term (assuming highly nonlinear dielectric response at high fields). Alternatively, if the air behaves as a nearly linear dielectric medium, then Ceff- g, and the dielectric constant of a gas is typically proportional to its density, 6 = a 6o p, where 6o is the permittivity of free space, and a is a constant. Using these expressions in equation 33 for C yields the force on the capacitor electrodes for the case of a linear dielectric fluid:
(Felectrodes)LinearMedium f {- VE2 - PextE} dV. (36)
For a linear medium, the first term in equation 35 contributes to a force pointing in a direction that is opposite to the gradient of the square of the electric field, i.e., it points toward the larger electrode (opposite to the experimentally observed force). In order to obtain a net force from equation 36 that is oriented toward the smaller electrode, the second term in equation 36 would have to dominate, i.e., the net force on the capacitor would be due to external charge effects. The magnitude of the external charges (from battery and surrounding air) on the dielectric fluid must be determined experimentally.
If the space between the capacitor plates is filled with a vacuum instead of dielectric, equation 33 reduces to a force given by
(Felectrodes )Vacuum = - JPe~tE dV, (37)
where pext = 0 for vacuum, leading to zero force on the capacitor.
21
The thermodynamic theory presented here provides a general expression in equation 33 for the net force on a capacitor in terms of the macroscopic electric field E. This electric field in equation 33 must be determined by a microscopic calculation, taking into account the ionization of gas between capacitor plates, and details of charge transport.
In summary, at the present time, the relative magnitudes of the fours terms in the force expression given in equation 33 are unknown. The magnitudes of these terms must be determined by constructing a set of experiments designed to determine the field-dependent dielectric properties of the fluid (given by e) surrounding the asymmetric capacitor electrodes. These experiments will permit us to verify if the thermodynamic theory presented here can explain the magnitude and sign of the observed force.
6. Summary and Suggested Future Work
We have presented a brief history of the Biefeld-Brown effect: a net force is observed on an asymmetric capacitor when a high voltage bias is applied. The physical mechanism responsible for this effect is unknown. In section 4, we have presented estimates of the force on the capacitor due to the effect of an ionic wind and due to charge drift between capacitor electrodes. The force due to ionic wind is at least 3 orders of magnitude too small. The force due to charge drift is plausible, however, the estimates are only scaling estimates, not a microscopic model.
In section 5, we have presented a detailed thermodynamic theory of the net force on a capacitor that is immersed in a nonlinear dielectric fluid, such as air in a high electric field. The main result for the net force on the capacitor is given in equation 33. The thermodynamic theory requires knowledge of the dielectric properties of the fluid surrounding the capacitor plates. It is not possible to estimate the various contributions to the force until we have detailed knowledge about the high-field dielectric properties of the fluid.
More experimental and theoretical work is needed to gain an understanding of the BiefeldBrown effect. As discussed, the most pressing question is whether the Biefeld-Brown effect occurs in vacuum. It seems that Brown may have tested the effect in vacuum, but not reported it (Appendix B). More recently, there is some preliminary work that tested the effect in vacuum, and claimed that there is some small effect-smaller than the force observed in air; see the second report cited in reference (2). Further work must be done to understand the effect in
detail. A set of experiments must be performed in vacuum, and at various gas pressures, to determine the force vs. voltage and current. A careful study must be made of the force as a function of gas species and gas pressure. In order to test the thermodynamic theory presented here, the dielectric properties of the gas must be carefully measured. Obtaining such data will be a big step toward developing a theoretical explanation ofthe effect. On the theoretical side, a microscopic model of the capacitor (for a given geometry) must be constructed, taking into
22
account the complex physics of ionization of air (or other gas) in the presence of high electric fields. Only by understanding the Biefeld-Brown effect in detail can its potential for applications be evaluated.
23
7. References
1. There are numerous references to asymmetric capacitors, called "lifters" on the internet, see Web sites:
Naudin, J. http://jnaudin.free.fr/ (accessed September 2002).
Naudin, J. http://www.jlnlabs.org (accessed September 2002).
Optical Multimedia. http://www.soteria.com/brown (accessed September 2002).
Transdimensional Technologies. http://www.tdimension.com/ (accessed September
2002)
American Antigravity. http://tventura.hypermart.net/index.html (accessed September
2002).
2. Stein, W. B. ElectrokineticPropulsion.: The Ionic Wind Argument; Purdue University Energy Conversion Lab, Hangar #3, Purdue Airport West Lafayette, IN; http://foldedspace.com/EKP%201onic%2OWind%20Study%20-%20Purdue.doc (accessed September 2000); Talley, R. L. Twenty FirstCentury PropulsionConcept; Veritay Technology, Inc. NY; report prepared for the Phillips Laboratory, Air Force Systems Command, Propulsion Directorate, Edwards AFB CA.
3. Cheng, S.-I. Glow Discharge as an Advanced Propulsion Device. ASRS Journal1962, 12, 1910-1916.
4. Christenson, E. A.; Moller, P. S. Ion-Neutral Propulsion in Atmospheric Media. AIAA Journal1967, 5 (10), 1768-1773.
5. Barsoukov, E. http://sudy-zhenja.tripod.com/liftertheory/ (accessed September 2002).
6. Landau, L. D.; Lifshitz, E. M. ElectrodynamicsofContinuousMedia, 2nd ed.; Pergamon Press: New York, 1984; sections 2, 5, and 15.
7. Loeb, L. B. FundamentalProcessesofElectricalDischargesin Gases. John Wiley and Sons: New York, 1939; p 191.
8. Brown, S. C. Basic Data ofPlasmaPhysics; John Wiley and Sons: New York, 1959; p 62.
9. Stratton, J. A. Electromagnetic Theory, McGraw-Hill Book Company: New York, 1941; p 104.
24
10. Abraham, M.; Becker, R. The ClassicalTheory ofElectricityand Magnetism, 2nd ed.; Hafner Publishing Co. Inc: New York, 1950; p 95.
11. Stratton, J. A. ElectromagneticTheory, McGraw-Hill Book Company: New York, 1941; p. 139.
25
Appendix A. Short Patent History Dealing With Asymmetric Capacitors
Townsend Brown, T. A Method of and an Apparatus or Machine for Producing Force or Motion. GB Patent 300,311, November 15, 1928.
Townsend Brown, T. Electrokinetic Apparatus. U.S. Patent 2,949,550, August 16, 1960.
Bahnson, A. H., Jr. Electrical Thrust Producing Device. U.S. Patent 2,958,790, November 1, 1960.
Townsend Brown, T. Electrokinetic Transducer. U.S. Patent 3,018,394, January 23, 1962.
Townsend Brown, T. Electrokinetic Apparatus. U.S. Patent 3,187,206, June 1, 1965.
Bahnson, A. H., Jr. Electrical Thrust Producing Device. U.S. Patent 3,227,901, January 4, 1966.
Cambell, J. W. (NASA). Apparatus for Generating Thrust Using a Two Dimensional, Asymmetrical Capacitor Module. U.S. Patent 2,002,012,221, January 31, 2002.
Cambell, J. W. (NASA). Apparatus for Generating Thrust Using a Two Dimensional Asymmetric Capacitor Module. U.S. Patent 6,411,493, June 25, 2002.
27
Appendix B. Force on Asymmetric Capacitor in Vacuum*
Enclosed below is a copy of my email correspondence with Jean-Louis Naudin (JLN Labs) [1], who hosts a Web site on "Lifters." In this correspondence, Naudin quotes a letter, purportedly signed by T. Townsend Brown, in which Brown discusses the question of whether an asymmetric capacitor has a net force on it in vacuum under high voltage.
T. Townsend Brown's letter, as provided by J. Naudin:
Dear.....
You have asked several question which I shalltry to answer. The experiments in vacuum were conductedat "SocieteNationale de ConstructionAeronautique" in Parisin 1955-56, in the Bahnson Laboratories,Winston-Salem, North Carolinain 1957-58 andat the "GeneralElectric Space Center" at King ofPrussia,Penna,in 1959.
Laboratorynotes were made, but these notes were neverpublishedandare not availible to me now. The results were varied,dependingupon the purpose ofthe experiment. We were aware that the thruston the electrode structureswere causedlargely by ambiant ion momentum transferwhen the experiments were conducted in air. Many ofthe tests, therefore, were directed to the explorationofthis component of the total thrust.In the case of the G.E. test, cesium ions were seeded into the environment andthe additionalthrust due to seeding was observed
In the Paristest miniaturesaucer type airfoils were operatedin a vaccum exceeding 10-6mm Hg.Bursts ofthrust (towards the positive) were observedevery time there was a vaccum spark within the large belljar.- These vacuum sparks representedmomentary ionization,principallyof the metal ions in the electrode material. The DCpotentialused rangedfrom 70kV to 220kV
Condensersofvarioustypes, airdielectricandbarium titanatewere assembledon a rotary supportto eliminate the electrostaticeffect ofchamber walls andobservationswere made ofthe rate ofrotation.Intenseaccelerationwas always observedduringthe vacuum spark (which, incidentally,illuminatedthe entire interiorofthe vacuum chamber). Barium Titanate dielectriquealways exceeded airdielectricin total thrust. The results which were most significantfrom the -standpointofthe Biefeld-Brown effect was that thrust continued,even when there was no vacuum spark,causing the rotor to acceleratein the negative topositive direction
This appendix appears in original form, without editorial change.
29
to the point where voltage hadto be reducedor the experiment discontinuedbecause ofthe danger that the rotorwouldfly apart.
In short, it appearsthere is strongevidence that Biefeld-Brown effect does exist in the negative to positive directionin a vacuum ofat least 10-6 Torr. The residualthrust is several ordersof magnitude largerthan the remainingambient ionization can accountfor.Goingfurther in your letter ofJanuary28th, the condenser "Gravitor"as describedin my Britishpatent, only showed a loss ofweight when verticallyorientedso that the negative-to-postive thrustwas upward In other words, the thrusttended to "lift"the gravitor. Maximum thrust observed in 1928for one gravitorweighing approximately 10 kilograms was 100 kilodynes at 150kV DC. These gravitors were very heavy, many of them made with a molded dielectric oflead monoxide and beeswax andencasedin bakelite. None ofthese units ever 'floated"in the air.
There were two methods oftesting, either as apendulum, in which the angle ofrise against gravitywas measuredandchartedagainstthe appliedvoltage, or, as a rotor 4ft. in diameter,on whichfour "gravitors"were mounted on the periphery. This 4ft. wheel was tested in airand also under transformeroil.The totalthust or torque remainedvirtually the same in both instances,seeming to prove that aero-ionizationwas not wholly responsiblefor the thrust observed.Voltage used on the experiments underoil could be increasedto about 300kV DC and the thrust appearedto be linearwith voltage.
In subsequentyears,from 1930 to 1955, criticalexperiments were performedat the Naval ResearchLaboratory, Washington, DC.; the Randall-MorganLaboratoryofPhysics, University ofPenna., Philadelphia;at afieldstation in Zanesvill, Ohio, andtwo field stations in Southern California,ofthe torque was measuredcontinuouslyday andnightfor many years. Large magnitudevariationswere consistenly observed under carefully controlled conditions of constantvoltage, temperature,under oil, in magnetic andelectrostaticshields, not only undergroundbut at variouselevations. These variations,recordedautomaticallyon tape, were statisticallyprocessedandseveral significantfacts were revealed
There were pronouncedcorrelationswith mean solartime, sideraltime andlunarhour angle. This seemed to prove beyond a doubt that the thrust of "gravitors"variedwith time in a way that relatedto solarand lunartides andsideralcorrelationof unknown origin. These automatic records,acquiredin so many different locationsover such a longperiodoftime, appearto indicate that the electrograviticcoupling is subject to an extraterrestriaflactor,possibly related to the universalgravitationalpotentialor some other (asyet) unidentified cosmic variable.In response to additionalquestions,a reply of T.T Brown, datedApril, 1973, stated:"The apparatuswhich lifted itselfandfloated in the air,which was describedby Mr Kitselman, was not a massive dielectric as describedin the Englishpatent.Mr Kitselman witnessedan experiment utilisinga 15" circular,dome-shapedaluminum electrode,wired andenergizedas in the attachedsketch. When the high voltage was applied,this device, althroughtetheredby wires from the high voltage equipment, did rise in the air,lifting not only its own weight but also a
30
small balanceweight which was attachedto it on the uderside. It is true that this apparatus would exert aforce upwardof I 10% of its weight.
The above experiment was an improvement on the experimentperformed in Parisin 1955 and 1956 on disc airfoils. The Parisexperiments were the same as those shown to Admiral Radford
in PearlHarborin 1950.
These experiments were explained by scientific community as due entirely to "ion-momentum transfer",or "electricwind". It waspredictedcategoricallyby many "would-be" authoritiesthat such an apparatuswould not operate in vaccum. The Navy rejectedthe researchproposal(for furtherresearch)for this reason. The experimentsperformed in Parisseveralyears later, proved that ion wind was not entirely responsiblefor the observed motion andproved quite
conclusively that the apparatuswould indeed operate in high vacuum.
Later these effects were confirmed in a laboratoryat Winston-Salem, N.C., especially constructedfor this purpose. Again continuousforce was observed when the ionization in the medium surroundingthe apparatuswas virtuallynil.In reviewing my letter ofApril 5th, I notice, in the drawingwhich I attached,that I specified the power supply to be 50kV Actually, I should have indicatedthat it was 50 to 250kVDCfor the reason that the experiments were conducted
throughout thatentire range.
The higherthe voltage, the greaterwas theforce observed It appearedthat, in these rough tests, that the increaseinforce was approximatelylinearwith voltage. In vaccum the same test was carriedon with a canopy electrode approximately 6" in diameter,with substantialforce being displayedat 150 kVDC. I have a short trip of movie film showing this motion within the vacuum chamber as the potentialis applied."
Kindest personalregards,
Sincerely,
T Townsend Brown
Best Available Copy
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The Man Who Mastered Gravity Copyright ©
2023 by Paul Schatzkin Incorrigible Arts /
Embassy Books & Laundry Incorrigiblearts.com /
ttbrown.com Credits:
Author / Publisher: Paul Schatzkin Editor: Mike Williams Proofreader: David Rosignoli Cover
Design: MST Shema (fiverr.com/create_shema) Design and Formatting: Muzammil Faarooq
(fiverr.com/muzammilfaarooq
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without
permission in writing from the publisher. All trademarks mentioned in the book of the property of the
respective trademark holders. Use of any trademarked term in this book should not be regarded as
affecting the validity of the trademark.
Catalog / Publication Data Schatzkin, Paul
The Man Who Mastered Gravity : A Twisted Tale of Space, Time and the Mysteries in
Between / Paul Schatzkin Paperback: ISBN: 978-0-9762000-2-4
Hard Cover ISBN: 978-0-9762000-3-1
eBook ISBN: 978-0-9762000-4-8
Audiobook ISBN: 978-0-9762000-5-5
Contents
Introduction to the 2023 Edition
Preface
1. White
Prologue
1. The Boy With The Chestnut Hair
2. No Moving Parts
3. A Bitter Pill
4. The Second Edison
5. A Different Well
6. On The Shoulders of Giants
7. A Brute and Awkward Force
8. Impossible, And Not To Be Considered
9. A “Push,” Not A “Pull”
10. The Biefeld-Brown Effect
11. “He Made Things Up”
12. Can We Talk?
13. A Rare Force of Nature
14. We Will Just Sail Away
15. A Pineapple and A Pea
16. A Great Disappointment
17. Wagner In The Trees
18. Anniversaries
19. Tapping Cosmic Energy
20. Gravity & Electricity, Space & Time
21. How I Control Gravitation
22. Closing Ashlawn
23. A Vague and Unscientific Report
24. Opportunities for Technicians and Scientists
25. A Seagoing Sailor At Last
26. A Complete System
27. A Deeper Draft Vessel
28. A Gentle Breeze, A Mattress – and Mr. X
29. The Caroline
30. Intrepid
31. Reflections on Biscayne Bay
32. Dredging The Depths
33. A Deeper Draft (Redux)
34. A Time of Peace, A Tug of War
35. Never Heard of the Guy
36. Back to Ohio
37. Too Big A Word
38. Parallel Lives
39. Remember, Dear...
40. Golden Galleon
41. Shadow Trails
42. Your First Lesson
43. For The Good Of The Service
44. We’ve Lost Morgan
2. Black
Introduction to Part 2: Black
45. The Ghost At The Corral
46. Hey Woodward
47. A Universe Away
48. Man On The Floor!
49. Structure of Space
50. Quantum Germans
51. Foo Fighters
52. Bombers And Parachutes
53. Good For One Fare
54. Werewolves And Mud
55. Pear Shaped
56. Eerily Quiet
57. We Have Much To Decide
58. Mileage, Folks!
59. You Have The Green Light
60. No Need For Formalities
61. Will You Please Come With Us?
62. The Browns of Ka Lae Hau
63. Missing Files and Moles
64. Pearl Harbor
65. Mortally Wounded
66. Flying Saucers
67. Hot Air
68. Good Morning, Sweetie Peach
69. Summer In The City
70. Flying Saucers In the Bible
71. Mostly Absent
72. Winterhaven:A New Age of Speed and Power
73. Like Fish In Water
74. Not A Dream
75. Paris
76. Notes & Ideas
77. Berlin
78. London
79. NICAP
80. Tunnel Diode
81. First, We Build a Fire
82. Something Happened
83. Strange Things
84. Strike Another Match
85. Operation Peacock
86. Into The Sunset
87. I Want A Home
88. Burning Daylight
89. Get A Life
90. Avalon
Epilogue:
Acknowledgements
Endnotes
Index
Introduction to the 2023 Edition
The mystery of Life isn’t a problem to be solved.
It is a reality to experienced.
- Frank Herbert, Dune
From 2003 to 2008, I researched and wrote a biography of a man named Thomas Townsend Brown. Or just Townsend Brown. Or ‘Dr. Brown’ to those who knew him.
This was going to be the follow-up to my first published book, a biography of Philo T. Farnsworth. When The Boy Who Invented Television was published in 2002, I felt like I had found my new calling as a ‘biographer of obscure 20th century scientists.’ The Townsend Brown bio was going to be the first sequel.
Until I was visited by the dreaded ‘sophomore curse.’
In 2009, I abandoned the Townsend Brown project – because after 6 years of research and writing, I still had no idea what I was writing about.
Countless times over the ensuing years, I have had conversations that go like this:
Listener: “You were writing a book. What happened to that? What was it about?”
Me: “Have you ever heard of the Ionic Breeze Air Purifier?”
Listener: “You mean the thing that was advertised in the Sharper Image catalogs?”
Me: “Yes. The one that circulates air without any moving parts....
The listener nods in recognition. And then I start:
“The Ionic Breeze is based on an anomalous electrical effect that was discovered by Thomas Townsend Brown when he was a teenager in the 1920s...”
In my research I encountered what I can only describe as loosely knit network of people who believe that Townsend Brown’s discovery, when applied in a slightly different manner and with different materials, produces what might be described as an ‘anti-gravity’ effect (though Brown himself decried the term).
Let’s just say for argument’s sake that he did just that.
*
In his career-crowning work, The General Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein postulated that gravity is induced by a curvature in the space-time continuum – meaning that massive objects like planets and stars physically warp the space around them.
In the last years of his life, Einstein tried to formulate a ‘Unified Field Theory’ – ‘The Theory of Everything’ – which could make the mathematical connection between electricity, magnetism, and gravity.
Some who are familiar with his work believe that Townsend Brown discovered the physical manifestation of what Einstein could only calculate mathematically: a way of creating synthetic gravitational fields with electricity. If – as Einstein asserts – gravity is a warp in the fabric of the spacetime continuum, then by manipulating gravity, Brown unlocked the door to intergalactic communication, interstellar navigation – and, yes... time travel.
I wanted to believe that, too.
Over the course of six years, I dug into the life of Townsend Brown, drawing on the small archive of papers he left with his family, extensive contact with his daughter Linda, some Freedom of Information inquiries, and an extensive correspondence with at least two individuals who professed to have intimate, first-hand knowledge of Brown’s activities. These sources alluded to deep connections to America’s military intelligence and national security apparatus – and made frequent allusions to unseen forces beyond that.
Eventually I succeed in amassing a manuscript of more than fivehundred-and-seventy pages.
I was operating on the Michelangelo Principal: when asked how he made his masterpiece sculpture of David, Michelangelo replied, “I just got a block of marble and removed all the parts that were not David.” As I saw it, my first draft was my block of marble, and as I got into a second draft, all I had to do was remove the bits that did not drive the narrative. About halfway into a rewrite, I hit a wall: I had no idea what my ‘David’ looked like.
All I could safely say about Townsend Brown was that “he spent half of his life engaged in some kind of classified military research, and the other half of his life engaged in covert intelligence operations – much of it intended to cover up the classified military research.”
In other words, I had written ‘the biography of a man whose story cannot be told.’
*
At this point in my conversations, I typically turn to my listener and say,
“OK, now it’s your turn. I want you to ask me: ‘So, Paul, what’s that book about?’”
With some prodding, I can finally get them to ask me, “OK, Paul. So... what’s that book about?”
“It’s about five-hundred-and-seventy fucking pages.”
*
I started the Townsend Brown project in the spring of 2003.
The first draft manuscript was written over three years from 2005 to 2008. As they were written, the chapters were posted on a website and open to discussion.
I reached my wits end and closed the book in the first weeks of 20091
There was a fair amount of fallout from that abrupt abandonment, and while I didn’t reconsider my decision at the time, I was reluctant to bury the material entirely. Then it dawned on me that given the new media at my disposal – which I had already been using to build a nascent audience for the story – there was no reason I couldn’t ‘publish’ the material myself.
You never really know what the future might hold – so I released the raw manuscript under the masthead of ‘Embassy Books and Laundry’ – a deliberate nod to a period in the 1950s when Townsend Brown said that he was “done with science.2” I suspected I might return to the story at some point, just as Brown never really turned his back on science.
I didn’t think it would be thirteen years. Maybe that’s how long it takes to dry off when you’ve been drenched by a cosmic firehose.
*
One copy of the manuscript fell into the hands of one of my oldest friends, Mike Williams, who I have known since I moved to Nashville in 1994. Mike and his wife Kathy hosted the weekly ‘6-Chair Pickin’ Parties’ that supplied some of the inspiration for the Internet music business3 I started in 1995. When I was fishing for a title for my first book, which I said was about “the boy who invented television,” it was Mike who said, “That’s your title!”
So, it seems fitting Mike would a have role in this undertaking, as well.
Mike had told me many times that he was intrigued by the story, that he was drawn to the mystery and the challenges of the telling. He asked for a digital copy of the manuscript and in 2018 presented me with an extensively edited revision. Mike even went so far as to paginate his edit and present it to me bound as an actual book – the first time I had ever seen my own work in such a physical form.
What Mike’s edit showed me was how horribly over-written my first draft was. Like I was trying to conceal the fact that I didn’t really know what story I was telling by just piling an overabundance of words on it.
But even though it appeared I had abandoned the project, certain essential themes kept nagging at me until they could no longer be ignored.
In 2022 a change in personal circumstances – a clearing of the decks, if you will – propelled this project to the front burner again.
*
This story lives at the center or the Venn diagram where science, science fiction and pseudo-science, conspiracy and reality all intersect. It is often hard to tell one from the other.
An expression I heard often during the course of this endeavor inferred that the life of T. Townsend Brown represented one phase of a ‘multigenerational project’ unfolding alongside the thread of mankind’s evolution.
Twenty years after I first started, it seems my contribution to that story has now entered its second generation.
Paul Schatzkin
February 5, 2023
Regarding Endnotes, Bibliography And Appendices:
Readers can find links to online resources cited in the endnotes at
https:ttbrown.com/footnotes
The bibliography is found only online at
https://ttbrown.com/biblio
Appendices will be accessible from
https://ttbrown.com/apxs
Preface
Down the Rabbit Hole
In another moment, down went Alice after the rabbit – never once considering how in the world she would get out again.
– Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
This is not a fairy tale, but perhaps it should begin:
Once upon a time, there really was a T. Townsend Brown.
Somehow, all the Big Mysteries of the century past – nuclear physics, relativity, quantum mechanics, UFOs and alien contact cover-up conspiracies, the clandestine operations of the military industrial complex all converge in the life of this one mercurial man.
We know where he was born and where he was raised. We know who his parents were, his wife, his children and even his grandchildren. We know most of the dozens of places where he lived. We know where he died, and where he is buried.
Beyond that, Townsend Brown is a ghost. A zephyr. A myth.
*
In the summer of 2002, I was putting the finishing touches on The Boy Who Invented Television – a biography of Philo T. Farnsworth, who, truly, invented television. Every one of the billions of video screens on the planet – including the tiny displays we carry in our pockets today – can trace its origins to a sketch that Farnsworth drew for his high-school science teacher in 1922, when he was just 14 years old. That his name is not more familiar is one of the confounding curiosities of our time4.
I first heard of Philo Farnsworth in the summer of 1973, as I was graduating from Antioch College in Maryland and heading to the west coast to seek my fortune in the TeeVee business. A profile in a publication called Radical Software5 piqued my curiosity, but the harpoon didn’t sink in until I started hearing about his unfinished work in fusion energy – the still unanswered riddle of ‘how do you bottle a star?’
That riddle was first posed to me later that same summer, on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Santa Cruz, California, when an
acquaintance introduced me to the concept6 of nuclear fusion and the promising work toward clean, safe, cheap and abundant energy that Farnsworth allegedly scuttled in the 1960s. Thirty years later that conversation led me to Townsend Brown.
As I wrapped up my Farnsworth biography, I felt like I’d found a new calling: researching and writing ‘biographies of obscure 20th century scientists.’ I wondered what I could do for an encore.
The universe must have been reading my mind when an email showed up in my inbox on July 9, 2002:
T. Townsend Brown was another inventor who is forgotten and swept under the rug. He died on Catalina Island in 1985.
Science in the late 50s said what he did was against physical law, yet the government classified his work. A bunch of government contractors both American and foreign have been working on it ever since.
So where did all the R&D go? If you go out in the desert about 125 miles southwest of Las Vegas at night you will see an object flying around in the distance with a bluish haze around it. That’s where it went. Also Sharper Image is selling an air purifier on cable TV for $60. He never collected the royalties for that either.
That message was signed simply ‘Janoshek’ and the ‘from’ address was untraceable.
I Googled up a website7 dedicated to the life and work of this T. Townsend Brown. From the opening paragraphs I learned that:
Thomas Townsend Brown, an American physicist, was a leader in developing theories concerning the link between electromagnetic and gravitational fields theorized by Dr. Albert Einstein. He advanced from theory to application with the development of solid and disc-shaped apparatuses, which are believed to have created and utilized temporary, localized gravitational fields.
Brown’s work became very controversial due to the similarity between his work and what is believed to be the propulsion method of some observed UFO’s. His name is also often mentioned in the same breath as the so-called “Philadelphia Experiment,” as a
possible candidate along with Nikola Tesla, A.L. Kitselman and Dr. Einstein.
Gravitational fields? Einstein’s Unified Field Theory? That all sounded reasonable. But “disc-shaped apparatus and UFOs”? Hey, I write serious science biographies, not pseudo-science. And I am not easily drawn into conspiracy theories – UFO or otherwise.
I found the email address of the website’s creator and sent him a message. Not wanting to sound too eager, I asked benign questions about how he started the website, and how and why he cared about Townsend Brown.
Then I pretty much forgot all about it.
A month later, somebody named Andrew Bolland replied. He had developed a relationship with the Brown family during the mid 1980s. What he told me got my attention. It sounded similar in some respects to the justpublished Farnsworth story, and also entirely different. I proposed writing a biography of T. Townsend Brown.
Another month went by with no answer. Then Andrew wrote:
I spoke with Brown’s daughter, and she thinks it would be fun to get involved. She was his primary research assistant – building prototypes and whatnot. Let me know if you want to pursue it.
And that, Alice, is how rabbit holes are opened.
Part 1:
White
Prologue
Every Cabbie In Catalina
(1985)
Linda and Townsend on Catalina Island in the 1980s.
“Daddy, you can’t do this! You’ll kill yourself! Mother and I will have to go to San Antonio to bring back your body!”
Townsend Brown packed his overnight bag, a travel-worn satchel, the kind that doctors once took on house calls. He shuffled papers into an equally battered attaché.
“I have to do this,” Townsend said. “I have to take these papers to San Antonio.”
“Daddy, who the hell is in San Antonio? Why can’t they come here? Why can’t you just mail these papers?”
Linda Brown was nearly forty years old. Her father was eighty and in failing health. His left lung had been removed a decade earlier – damaged, physicians suspected, by the ozone and radiation his body absorbed during
decades of experimenting with high voltages and intense electrical fields. Now his right lung was showing similar symptoms.
Townsend and Josephine – his wife of more than 50 years – lived with Linda, her husband George, and their daughter, the five of them sharing a weather-beaten, World War II-vintage Quonset hut on the island of Santa Catalina, off the southern California coast. Father and daughter argued in a tiny bedroom cluttered with electronic instruments and sensors, the last vestiges of his life’s work, investigating the mysterious, cosmic force he called ‘sidereal radiation.’
“You can’t come with me,” Townsend said.
The words stung. For nearly two decades, Linda had been at her father’s side in his lab, moving equipment, twisting the wires in his inventions whatever he needed, whatever he asked of her. Now she was afraid she’d never see him alive again.
Townsend had arranged for a helicopter to fly him to Long Beach, where he would board a private jet. He needed a cab to take him to the chopper. He reached for the phone.
“Go ahead Daddy,” Linda cried. “But remember, I know every cabbie on this island and not one of them is going to take you anywhere if I tell them not to.”
When the cab arrived, Townsend folded his fragile frame into the rear seat. He leaned out the window and took his daughter’s hand. “Don’t worry, Sweetie,” he said with the calming tone that had reassured her before so many similar departures. “Everything is going to be all right.”
Linda let go of her father’s hand and watched the cab disappear.
The helicopter touched down in Long Beach, where a limousine waited to ferry Townsend to the charter. Peering through the windshield, he was pleased to see a muscular man of military bearing behind the wheel – the protégé he had recruited twenty years earlier: Morgan.
1
The Boy With The Chestnut Hair
(1963)
Ashlawn, on the Philadelphia ‘Main Line’ – The Brown family home from 1963-64.
Great Valley High School in the ‘Main Line’ Philadelphia suburb of Malvern opened in the fall of 1963. Its soaring glass-and-steel architecture, long wide corridors, bright fluorescent lighting, and shiny vinyl floors were a space-age departure from its Georgian and Colonial pre-war predecessors. The new school drew on the heritage of the area. Its varsity teams were called ‘The Patriots’ – their mascot a jut-jawed, musket-toting Minute Man, replete with bayonet and tri-corn cap.
Tall and powerfully built, Morgan had transferred into Great Valley for the school’s foreign language program, which offered classes in Russian. Morgan wanted to learn Russian so that he could serve his country in the Cold War. He read a lot of espionage thrillers and amused himself with romantic notions of becoming a spy.
Great Valley High School greeted its first students with the smell of fresh paint and empty spaces along the hallways where the lockers had yet to be bolted in. “We had to carry all our books,” Morgan recalled, “so nobody ever went to the library to get more.” Except for Morgan, who encountered among the stacks a classmate with wavy, chin length brown hair and inquisitive eyes. Morgan watched as Linda Brown ran her fingertips along
the spine of the books like they were old friends. Linda thumbed the pages of a James Joyce novel; The incomprehensible Irish master was one of Morgan’s favorites.
Their eyes met, Linda nodded toward Morgan with a wistful half-smile and returned to the book.
“Hmmm,” Morgan thought, “this one is different.”
Checking into a political science class an hour later, Morgan found himself a seat beside this girl. “Good thing the chair was empty,” he recalls, “because I would have made it so if it had been occupied.”
“He was a good-looking guy, with chestnut hair that he wore in a ‘Princeton cut,’ Linda recalled. “He was very ‘Main Line’ but he was also very different. He was a member of the Chess club but was also a champion wrestler. I found him fascinating.” In the weeks that followed, Linda watched how the other girls at Great Valley nearly fell all over themselves to get his attention.
“I was a bit of a jerk,” Morgan recalled, “but I had an interesting thing going. There was a whole assortment of girls who wanted to sleep with me, and I was carried away with the idea of how much fun sex was. I had no scruples, and that oddly seemed to make me more of an attraction.”
Linda had a steady boyfriend named Howie, but that didn’t stop her from engaging in intellectual food fights with her new classmate. In poly-sci, they debated national security, with Linda asserting privacy rights while Morgan defended the security needs of the state.
“She fought me when no one else would,” Morgan recalled, “and ignored me when I needed to be ignored. I teased her like a brother teases a sister, but neither of us was very good at that kind of thing. I really didn’t know how to do it, and she didn’t really know how to respond, so we just sort of squared off. It took a while before we realized there was chemistry brewing.”
Linda sensed the chemistry too but had a different reaction: “I would kick myself for being so outspoken. I was absolutely positive that I had broken all the rules on how to attract a man!”
Morgan wondered about Linda’s family. “The buzz at school was that her dad, a gentle scientist, was actually a member of the mob. The kids at Great
Valley would say, ‘He seems a gentleman, but his sidekick has got to be a hired killer.’”
The sidekick was a lean, dour, chap named Charles Miller, who drove the limousine in which Linda, Howie and their friends often went on dates. Linda’s girlfriends thought having a limo at their disposal was “just the coolest thing ever,” but Charles was a mystery. One night after a movie, Charles picked the kids up at the theater and dropped them all off – without ever asking any of them where they lived.
When the limo pulled up to his house at the end of a remote country road, Howie wondered aloud, “How did he know where I live? I certainly didn’t tell him how to get out here. In fact, none of us told him where we live, he just drove right up to everybody’s house!”
Linda looked up and caught Charles looking back in the rear-view mirror, with his cap pulled down tightly over his eyes as if to say, “Oh crap, I screwed up.” She covered for him, explaining that Charles had gotten directions when they first started dating. “After all,” Linda said, “that’s his job.” Howie was satisfied and never mentioned it again, but after that Linda realized that Charles knew more about whoever she dated than she did.
Such intrigue only piqued Morgan’s interest in his confrontational classmate. He started shadowing Linda’s movements. When she went on a date with Howie, Morgan would bump into them; when she went walking with her girlfriends, their paths would cross, a tactic that often backfired. When the other girls started flirting with Morgan, Linda just lowered her eyes and slipped away.
The Brown family lived in a stately fieldstone Colonial called Ashlawn, just a cornfield away from Great Valley High. As fall frosted into winter, Linda hosted skating parties on the pond behind the house. One cold afternoon she saw two girlfriends coming through the field; between them was the tall boy with the chestnut hair.
Morgan wasn’t all that interested in ice-skating. When the rest of the party headed outside to the pond, Morgan wandered through the big house. He looked through the door of one wood-paneled room and found Linda’s father tinkering with something on his desk. Morgan watched from the doorway.
Townsend looked up, and in a tone that suggested that he had been expecting this particular visitor, said simply, “Hello there.”
2
No Moving Parts
(1963)
As he entered the study, Morgan found Townsend Brown working on an invention that could move air without any moving parts. Looking much like an oversized window fan, the three-foot-square wooden frame stood perched on a triangular base. Dozens of parallel metal strips and wires stretched like Venetian blinds across the front of the box. There were no whirling blades and no electric motor, yet air poured silently and steadily through the baffles.
Morgan peered through the front panel. He felt the air on his face. He walked around the back, looking for the magician’s secret. How could air be moving through if there was no fan?
Townsend explained that an electrically induced force field squeezed the air, “the way your fingers would squirt a watermelon seed.”
“How cool,” Morgan thought, trying to reckon with something totally foreign to his experience.
Townsend flipped a switch, and suddenly the fan became a loudspeaker. Clear, bright sound poured out, without any cone or magnetic coil to produce the vibrations. “He turned up the volume,” Morgan recalled, “and some kind of bomb went off inside my head.”
Townsend explained that since the machine had no moving parts, there was no distortion, so the frequency could go well beyond the range of any kind of conventional loudspeaker. And if you had a matching pair, one could transmit and the other could receive.
“So, if there’s no limit to the frequency, you could use this as a communications device. You could send a signal with this, and nobody else would be able to hear it, huh?”
Townsend smiled, “Nope.” He put his glasses on and went back to work.
Linda appeared at the door. “Unlike my other friends who had seen the fan in operation, Morgan was asking insightful, intelligent questions,” she recalled. “I could tell that Daddy was pleased. Nobody else I knew had ever come even close to understanding the possibilities.”
“Are you coming skating with us?” Linda asked.
Instead, Morgan “made up some excuse and beat it out of there after a hurried goodbye and a sincere ‘thank you’ to Linda’s father. I just needed to be out in the cold air, to hide in the dark a bit. I was a half-mile down the road when I realized I’d just passed a turning point in my life.”
*
Morgan was accustomed to sizing people up, ferreting out their strengths and weaknesses before he made any moves. But none of his usual seduction techniques worked with Linda Brown.
“I found myself doing strange and stupid things. I’d drive by her house in my brother’s old car, and just sit in the dark, listening to the classical music that poured forth from her father’s study and smelling the wood smoke rising out of the chimney. One time, I even stomped my initials in the snow that covered their lawn.”
Linda didn’t notice.
“I had my classes in order,” Morgan recalled. I was making solid A’s, ruled the roost in most of my classes. I worked hard. I was prepared and in control. I did my homework. But Linda fought with me in class and won. That’s when I decided I was determined to seduce her. I devised a plan that started with calling, just to ask for a date. But rather than Linda, I found myself talking with a stiff, curt man named Charles, who assured me that ‘Miss Brown will be unavailable that evening.’ I was not easily intimidated, but this Charles character scared the crap out of me.”
When Morgan finally managed to talk to Linda long enough to ask her for a date, she declined his invitation, informing him she was going steady with Howie.
Morgan had heard scuttlebutt around school that Howie would be leaving in the spring for basic training with the National Guard.
“Yes, Linda said, “he’ll be leaving in May.”
“I’ll be around,” Morgan offered, certain that he caught an expression of relief in Linda’s slight smile.
Winter melted into spring. Howie shipped out in early May, and word got back to Morgan that Linda had given Howie back his ring. Morgan made every possible effort to make his path cross Linda’s. But as much as he was
thinking about Linda, he found himself thinking as well about the curious device he had seen in her father’s study.
3
A Bitter Pill
(Notes from The Rabbit Hole #1)
“Have you guessed the riddle yet? The Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
“No, I give up,” Alice replied. “What’s the answer?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said the Hatter.
“Nor I,” said the March Hare.
Alice sighed wearily. “I think you might do something better with the time,” she said,” than wasting it asking riddles that have no answers.”
– Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
My correspondence with Townsend Brown’s only surviving child started in the late fall of 2002, five months after I’d first contacted Andrew Bolland through his Townsend Brown website.
Andrew explained Linda’s reluctance to tear the lid off difficult memories:
Being part of the Townsend Brown family has made Linda pretty much a recluse. The public believes that she was killed some years ago, and she prefers that actually. Her father began NICAP8 and became associated with UFOs through his research into gravitational fields. I’m sure you can get an idea of what type of people might want to look her up.
Through Andrew, I sent Linda a copy of my now-published Farnsworth biography, The Boy Who Invented Television. A few weeks later, our correspondence began with a warning that I might have been well to heed:
My inclination is to keep things as they are. Pulling myself into the past I know will be difficult and sometimes painful for me. I hope you understand I have reservations about how much help I will be to you. I was only involved in Dad’s development of what he called the “electrohydrodynamic fan/speaker.” Our family was glued to our involvement in development of ‘The Fan’ throughout
my teenage years and into my early twenties. The fact that we suffered so much for what seemed later to be nothing has been a bitter pill.
A variation of the device that blew Morgan’s mind earned some notoriety in the 1990s as an informercial staple, The Sharper Image Ionic Breeze air purifier. Linda’s remarks seemed to affirm what that first anonymous email had said, that her father’s work had become profitable, but not to the family’s benefit.
My memories are from a twenty-year-old’s perspective. The fact that none of our expectations were realized formed that great bitter pill. How that dead end developed, has always raised more questions than answers.
I wrote back,
I’m attracted to the mysteries buried in the life of T. Townsend Brown in the same way that I have been compelled to explore the mysteries in the life of Philo T. Farnsworth. Somewhere at the heart of those mysteries are important insights into what sort of Universe we really live in.
Therein lie the first steps on a quest I was cautioned early on is part of ‘a multi-generational’ project.
4
The Second Edison
(1915)
The future boy electrician with his parents Mary Townsend and L.K. Brown ca. 1915 (age 10).
In the spring of 1915, a visitor to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Lewis K. Brown in the posh Terrace section of Zanesville, Ohio, observed a lad of about ten years walking along the wrought-iron fence that ringed the estate, casually picking earthworms off the surface of the manicured lawn and dropping them into a bucket.
“What are you doing?” the visitor asked.
“I’m collecting worms,” the boy replied.
“But you’re not digging for them. They’re just wiggling along on the surface!”
“That’s because I’ve electrified the fence,” the boy said, pointing to a battery he had connected to the metalwork. “The electricity in the soil excites the worms and brings them to the surface.”
“So what will you do with all these worms?”
“I’m going fishing.”
*
Thomas Townsend Brown was born to one of Zanesville’s most prominent families on March 18, 1905 – the same year an obscure Swiss patent clerk named Albert Einstein published a scientific paper on the subject of ‘Special Relativity.’
As the only male of his generation, Thomas was expected to take the reins of a family fortune that began with the boy’s maternal grandfather. Thomas Burgess ‘T.B.’ Townsend was a second generation American. His own parents William Townsend and Harriet Burgess, met somewhere on the North Atlantic, aboard the ship that brought them both to the New World from their native Gloucestershire in England in 1834 or 1835. The couple was married in Pittsburgh, and T.B. was the first of their thirteen children. A hagiographic family history says T.B. Townsend “did not have a dollar when he started out in life.” His formal schooling ended when he was nine years old, “his total attendance at school covering just six months.”
As a teenager, T.B. apprenticed to his father’s brick and stone mason’s trade in Beverly, Ohio. At the age of nineteen he “started out for the distant west.” Traveling by steamboat up the Mississippi River to Burlington, Iowa, he found work cutting and laying stone for the state’s new Governor’s Mansion.
Some years later, T.B. returned to Beverly and took over his father’s contracting business, “...carrying on the business with constantly growing success...his patronage constantly increasing in volume and importance.” He expanded his interests to include marble and granite quarries, and when those business flourished, he moved his operations to Zanesville, which was at the time “the center of operations of wholesale dealers in marble and granite.”
In the final decades of the 19th century, T.B. Townsend supplied the building stone for much of Zanesville and surrounding Muskingum County, including the classically ornate Tuscarawas County courthouse, which stands today as a testament to the extravagance of the Gilded Age.
With the arrival of the new century, T.B. created much of the infrastructure of the area, starting with Zanesville’s first streetcar system. After selling his interest in that enterprise, he began to pave “the greater part of the streets of Zanesville and built most of the sewers.” Furnishing
stone from his own quarries, he constructed foundations for more than a dozen bridges across the Muskingum River.
Among his “other important investments,” Mr. Townsend was most proud of his “extensive and valuable ranch of thirty-six hundred acres in Marion County, Kansas” which raised, among other things “cattle, hogs, horses, corn, alfalfa and sorghum hay.” With a perimeter fence stretching more than 50 miles, Mr. Townsend could count among his assets some 16,500 fence posts strung with more than 200 miles of barbed wire.
T.B. Townsend’s wife, Sybil Nulton Townsend, bore five children, three of whom survived into adulthood: eldest son Orville served as vicepresident and general manager of the Townsend Brick and Contracting Company; daughter Hattie married Rufus Burton, who served as the secretary and treasurer; daughter Mary and her husband L.K. Brown bore the next generation’s sole male heir, Thomas Townsend Brown.
In the expressive language of the day, T.B. Townsend’s 1905 biography extols “...the extent and importance of the business interests which have claimed his attention and the success which has attended his efforts makes his history a notable one... he is a man of distinct and forceful personality, broad mentality and mature judgment and in his ready recognition and utilization of opportunity is found the secret of his prosperity.”
Such were the shoes that the boy who electrified earthworms was expected to fill.
*
In deference to his mother, Thomas chose to be called by his middle name. His experiments with electricity led him to build his first wireless set in 1917, when radio was still only useful for transmitting Morse code. His efforts drew the attention of one of the local papers with the headline, “Townsend Brown Has A Complete Wireless Set.”
Calling him “Zanesville’s second Edison,” the story noted that that he could barely understand the coded messages he was receiving: “Master Brown has paid most of his attention to the mechanical side of wireless telegraphy and is not yet able to read messages with proficiency. He is practicing hard, however.” Another of his gadgets was described as “...a wireless telephone. When he is at play away from home, he wears a
wireless telephone over his ear. Members of the family are able to call him wherever they want to, merely speaking into the wireless transmitter in the house, and he can hear them perfectly.”
The young prodigy’s experiments also caught the attention of the federal government. With The Great War unfolding in Europe, an officer from the Post Office showed up at the Brown’s home to request that he dismantle the antenna he had mounted on the roof. A rumor was circulating that the boy could pick up radio signals from Germany; the authorities were afraid that somebody could also use the apparatus to send messages to the enemy.
That was Townsend Brown’s first brush with national security.
*
Few records survive of the boy’s schooling, with scant evidence of any merit or distinction.
In 1922 and 1923 Townsend attended Doane Academy in Granville, midway between Columbus and Zanesville in central Ohio, a tree-lined village with a church at each corner of the main intersection. Looming from a hill above the town is the campus of Denison University, founded in 1831 by the Ohio Baptist Education Society and named for William S. Denison also of Zanesville – in gratitude for his generous contribution to the school’s endowment.
At the edge of the campus stood Denison University’s most distinctive structure, the Swasey Observatory – a rectangular concrete building with a white, rotating, dome-topped turret. Considered one of the finest academic observatories in the country, from 1911 until 1934 the observatory was administered by school’s Professor of Astronomy, Dr. Paul Alfred Biefeld.
Townsend spent two years at Doane, preparing to enroll at Denison after graduation in 1923, earning mostly B’s and C’s in courses like Latin, Algebra, and English. His only A’s were in Physics and History.
He was more proud of the school’s first radio station, which he built around a DeForest Audion tube that had been personally supplied by Lee DeForest after Brown tracked the inventor down during a trip to New York with his mother. With a mere ten-watt signal, Denison Station 8YM could be heard as far away as California. On Saturday nights the station broadcast a performance by a local band, The Green Imps. When the school tried to
shut off power to the radio station in order to impose a 10:00 PM curfew, Townsend built his own Delco generating station and kept the music going well into the night
In a personal memoir composed years later, Brown sums up his academic career by recalling, “I slept in the Physics room.”
5
A Different Well
(Notes from the Rabbit Hole #2)
“How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: *was* I the same when I got up this morning?”
– Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
The history of science and invention is replete with stories of study and forethought rushing headlong into accidents and inspiration.
My personal interest in such things traces back to a warm day in the spring of 1960 in Rumson, New Jersey. I was only in the third grade, but my mother was concerned that I wasn’t reading enough, so she hauled me off to the Oceanic Public Library on the Avenue of Two Rivers and told me to pick a book. I pulled a ‘Signature Series’ biography of Thomas Edison,9 and devoured it as quickly as a nine-year-old could. The following year, I portrayed Edison in the fourth-grade class play and delighted my classmates by inventing the lightbulb from the auditorium stage at Forrestdale School.
A dozen-some years later – at another library, in Santa Monica, California – I stumbled on to the story of Philo T. Farnsworth10 – the fourteen-year-old Idaho farm boy who drew a sketch for his high school science teacher in 1922, telling him, “This is my idea for electronic television.” The technology has evolved in the decades since, but every video screen on the planet today can trace its origins to that sketch (which the teacher saved and introduced into patent litigation a decade later). I was fascinated to see photos from television’s pre-history in the 1920’s and 30’s and learn of the inspiration that replaced spinning wheels and mirrors with electrons bouncing around in a vacuum tube.
By then I was already a devotee to the writings of Marshall McLuhan, who wrote that “the medium is the message” – meaning that “Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication.”
This was during the late 1960’s, a time of great turmoil, much of it generated by new technologies like television and satellite communications.
In McLuhan’s parlance, we were living in a ‘global village.’ McLuhan seemed to be saying that the path to mankind’s destiny would be paved with new gadgets and gizmos. By that reckoning, I figured that the people who came up with those new technologies were the ones who really changed things.
That was the beginning of my pursuit of ‘biographies of obscure 20th century scientists,’ which came to its first fruition when I wrote and published a biography of Philo Farnsworth11 in 2002.
Embodied in the Farnsworth story and others like it is the notion that inventors and scientists – as well as artists, musicians, and writers – arrive on Earth with certain ideas and information uniquely pre-coded into their brains. It seems these seminal geniuses are visited by a singular ability to draw from a different well of knowledge than the rest of us. At some point in their lives, typically while they are still teenagers, these uniquely inspired minds tap into this well, and then draw forth the inventions and technologies that alter life on our planet forever.
They have special access to the ‘Universe of Magical Things’ and arrive pre-programmed to deliver what the modern vernacular often refers to as a ‘technology transfer.’
We know where the technology is being transferred to. Of greater interest, perhaps, is where that knowledge is being transferred from.
6
On The Shoulders of Giants
(1687-1923)
A pantheon of giant shoulders. (l-r) Benjamin Franklin, Heinrich Hertz, Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Albert Einstein, Hans Christian Oersted, Michael Faraday, Max Planck.
Modern science finds its origins in the 17th century – the Age of Enlightenment.
In 1687 Sir Isaac Newton published the Principia Mathematica12, his epic articulation of a fixed and stable universe where time was absolute and unbending, ticking away at the same rate for everyone, everywhere.
Principia provided the foundation for an explosion of scientific knowledge in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Every discovery rests on those that preceded it. As Newton himself said, “If I have seen farther than others it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.”
By the dawn of the 20th century, the firm foundations of Newton’s universe began to tremble with the investigation of a phenomenon unknown to Newton: electricity. Electricity was not really new; it has always been present in one form or another, in the static discharge from a cold piece of metal, or the violent, radiant outburst of a lightning strike. But it was not until the 18th century that science began to master this mysterious force. Given the extent to which electricity propels the modern world, it’s curious to think this now-indispensable force has only been at our command for roughly 200 years - not even the blink of an eye in human history.
In the 18th century, new giants climbed on to Newton’s shoulders.
In 1752, Benjamin Franklin flew a kite into an electrical storm to capture the discharge from a bolt of lightning. In 1820, the Danish scientist Hans Christian Oersted noticed that an electrified wire could deflect a compass needle – the first recorded observation of the linkage between electricity and magnetism. Another decade passed before the English scientist Michael Faraday inverted Oersted’s discovery, demonstrating that a magnet could induce an electrical current in a metal wire.
In the 1860s, Faraday’s protege, the Scotsman James Clerk Maxwell, compiled the equations that proved that electricity and magnetism are a single fundamental force, electromagnetism.
Maxwell further observed that waves of electromagnetic energy could travel through space at the speed of light – a concept later verified by his own protégé, Heinrich Hertz, for whom radio frequencies are named. Maxwell also proposed that light itself was a form of this electromagnetic radiation – an idea that would ultimately challenge the very principals that had led him there in the first place.
At the dawn of the 20th Century, the German physicist Max Planck postulated that matter absorbs heat energy and emits light energy discontinuously in ‘lumps.’ Planck’s lumps, which he called “quanta,” sparked the new scientific field of quantum mechanics.
The breakthrough that separated the 20th Century from all those that preceded it arrived with the ‘Annus Mirabilis’ – the year of wonders, 1905 when Albert Einstein published not one, not two, but four papers that changed the world.
Einstein’s first 1905 paper analyzed the photo-electric effect, by which certain metals emit electrons when their surface is struck by light13. For defining the relationship between light and electrical energy, Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921. Einstein’s second paper discussed the behavior of atoms in circumstances called ‘Brownian movements,’ proving the existence of atoms – a concept that was still hotly contested at the time.
It was Einstein’s third paper, On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, that rearranged the paradigms of physics into an entirely new cosmology. Here was the Special Theory of Relativity that knocked Newton’s immutable universe off its foundations.
Einstein’ fourth paper, Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content? defined the relationship between mass and energy in history’s most famous equation: E=mc2.
Newton’s enduring calculations on gravity got humans to the moon and back in the 1960s. But the ‘why’ of gravity – where it comes from and how it works – remained unexplained for another decade, when Einstein published his grandest theory of all.
In 1916’s General Theory of Relativity, Einstein defined gravity as a curvature in space, a distortion caused by the presence of a massive object like a planet or a star. Standing on the shoulders of all who had gone before him, Einstein synthesized everything from Newton to Planck, casting mankind adrift in a universe where space could be bent and time was elastic.
Einstein’s explanation of gravity is often illustrated as a massive object like the Earth stretching the fabric of space – like a ball suspended on a membrane, the moon orbiting in the resulting curvature.
*
In the fall of 1923, eighteen-year-old Townsend Brown enrolled at the California Institute of Technology and began setting up a private laboratory at the family’s California residence in Pasadena.
Meanwhile, Albert Einstein was not done twisting the fabric of the universe. Earlier that year, he produced the first of several dissertations that dominated the remainder of his life’s work – his quest for the Unified Field Theory. Having redefined gravity, Einstein peered over the edge of the space-time continuum in search of an equation that would connect gravity with the other fundamental force of nature known at the time electromagnetism.
Einstein had no way of knowing that on the other side or the world, a Cal Tech freshman had found the physical proof of what Einstein could only
express as a theory.
7
A Brute and Awkward Force
(1923)
There is no record of a precise moment of inspiration – no apple falling on Townsend Brown’s head, no lightning striking a sky-bound key, no parallel furrows in a sugar beet field – only Brown’s insistence that whatever he knew, “he knew it all at once.” Something of the experience was described in a short memoir that Brown dictated to his wife decades later:
During the summer or fall of 1923, I not only made considerable progress in chemistry, but in physics. I devised an X-Ray spectrometer for astronomical measurements – specifically the sun – and began to cultivate the thesis that a radiation other than light prevailed in the Universe, independent of our Solar system. I felt that this radiation could be gravitation. That it exerted a pressure (however small) on all forms of matter. This gave rise, in my view, to what could be considered as a new theory of gravitation. Such a theory called for gravitation being a “push” and not a “pull.” This seemed logical in that Nature abhors a vacuum. A mechanism for the transmission of gravitation theoretically was needed.
The thesis that shines through this statement – indeed, the central concept that engaged Brown’s imagination for the rest of his life – is “a radiation other than light prevails in the Universe...”
*
Another biographical sketch of Townsend Brown comes to us from the pen of A. L. Kitselman, known as ‘Beau’ to his friends and a colleague of Brown’s on classified defense projects during the 1940s and 50s. Beau and his wife Betsy were as close friends as the constantly relocating Browns ever had. Kitselman published a scathing critique of the credentialed scientists who had dismissed Townsend Brown, in a pamphlet he called Hello, Stupid14. Variations of the stories contained in that pamphlet have supplied the foundation of subsequent accounts of Brown’s early years.
According to Kitselman, young Thomas Brown looked to the heavens, dreamed of traveling among the stars – and pondered the means of
propulsion by which that might be accomplished. He dismissed rocket power as “a brute and awkward force,” and wondered if electricity could shrink the distance between the stars more efficiently than the controlled explosion of combustible gasses.
Such thoughts simmered as his Cal Tech physics class conducted experiments with an X-Ray tube. While the rest of the class was focused on the tube itself, “Tom” observed that when a high-voltage current was applied, the cables connecting the tube to the power supply appeared to jump with snake-like convulsions. And here, Kitselman says, is where the hopeful space traveler believed he’d found his means of transport through the cosmos.
Unfortunately, Cal Tech was the kind of institution that encouraged its freshman to conform rather than experiment. It wasn’t long before the enthusiastic student with the big ideas was failing in both chemistry and physics. “As soon as I’d get an experiment set up,” he recalled, “the bell would ring and I would have to dis-assemble everything. I could never finish an experiment!”
To compensate for that institutional limitation, the young man’s father installed a private laboratory on the second floor in the family home that was the equal of Cal Tech’s, so that his son could experiment freely.
8
Impossible, And Not To Be Considered
(1923)
During Townsend Brown’s freshman year at Cal Tech in 1923, his physics professor, Dr. Robert Andrews Millikan, was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics – making him the first member of Cal Tech’s faculty to be so honored, and an accolade that linked Millikan to the most renowned scientist of the 20th century. Millikan was recognized for measuring the negative charge of a single electron, and for confirming the calculations on the photoelectric effect for which Albert Einstein had been awarded his own Nobel two years earlier.
Millikan came reluctantly to physics. As an undergraduate at Oberlin College, Millikan favored mathematics and classic languages. Not until his professor of Greek asked him to teach an elementary physics class – telling him that “Anyone who can do well in Greek can teach physics” – did his interests begin to shift. With his 1891 Bachelor’s degree in Classical Studies behind him, Millikan pursued physics at Columbia University, where he earned that institution’s first Ph.D in the field in 1895. Doctorate in hand, he followed a professor’s advice and spent a year at the heart of the world of theoretical physics in Germany.
After his year abroad, Millikan accepted an invitation to join the faculty at the University of Chicago as an assistant to Albert A. Michelson – the coauthor of the most famous failed experiment in the history of science15.
In 1887, Michelson and his colleague Edward Morley conducted a series of experiments intended to measure the medium through which light and radio waves travel. Borrowing from an idea as old as Aristotle, James Clerk Maxwell had proposed that electromagnetic waves are conveyed through the ‘luminiferous ether’ in the same way that sound waves travel through the air; the Michelson-Morley Experiment attempted to measure the Earth’s movement through that cosmic firmament. Instead, their elaborate and expensive apparatus failed to detect even a whiff of ether, raising still more questions about the nature of light and energy but assuring both Michelson and Morley an asterisk in the annals of theoretical physics.
Robert Millikan joined Michelson in Chicago despite the modest salary offered, on the promise that Millikan would have ample time to spend on his own research. Instead of blazing his own trail, Millikan found himself preoccupied with academics, authoring several textbooks while Max Planck, Albert Einstein and others transformed the world with their revolutionary ideas about particles and waves. At the age of thirty-eight, Millikan was still an associate professor among a faculty where thirty-two was the average age to become a full professor.
Einstein’s Annus Mirabilis refocused Millikan, who wrote in his autobiography16, “...by 1906 I knew that I had not yet published results of outstanding importance, and certainly had not attained a position of much distinction as a research physicist.” Motivated less by divine inspiration than ego, Millikan set about to make a name for himself. He decided it would be useful to determine the precise electrical charge of an electron, the sub-atomic particle that the English scientist J.J. Thompson had discovered in 1887. Millikan correctly surmised that finding that value would offer valuable insights into the nature of both matter and electricity.
For four years Millikan sprayed droplets of oil out of a perfume atomizer. By finding the precise charge that could suspend the oil particles against gravity, he could calculate the charge in the droplets17. He published the results of these experiments in 1910, calculating the charge of a single electron down to a constant value (about 1.602x10-19 Coulomb if you’re counting...). That same year, he was finally awarded a full professorship at the University of Chicago.
*
In 1917 Millikan left the University of Chicago for a position at Cal Tech, where he played a key roll in making that institution one of the preeminent schools of science in the world. In 1921, Millikan was named the director of Cal Tech’s Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics.
Two years later, in the fall of 1923, young Townsend Brown showed up at that very same laboratory – expressing frustration with the lab’s protocols and procedures. By the following spring, Townsend had endured as much he could of the laboratory’s restrictions. What he needed now was a mentor who would listen to his ideas without passing judgment. He hoped to find
such a willing ear in Robert Millikan – Cal Tech’s recently anointed Nobel Laureate.
Townsend set up his experiments in his home laboratory and invited the students and faculty to see a demonstration. When the appointed hour arrived, there were no knocks on the door at the big Pasadena house. Nobody came to see Townsend Brown’s inventions. Back at school, his classmates derided him and made jokes behind his back.
Among those who ignored his invitation was Dr. Millikan. Townsend set aside his wounded pride and tracked Millikan down in his office on the Cal Tech campus. Button-holed, Millikan reluctantly listened as his student explained the link he had found between electricity and gravity. When Townsend was done, Millikan dismissed him brusquely, saying that what he’d just heard was “utterly impossible and not to be considered.”
“He admonished me to continue my education before I gave any thought to such things,” Townsend wrote later in his brief autobiography.
He did not have long to dwell on his disappointment. Despite the rejection of Cal Tech faculty and classmates, Townsend Brown’s discoveries were about to be revealed to the world.
9
A “Push,” Not A “Pull”
(1924)
Photo from the Los Angeles Evening Express May 26, 1924
One invitee who did show up at Townsend Brown’s show-and-tell was a reporter for the Los Angeles Evening Express. Readers opening their paper on Monday, May 26, 1924, found a headline that read “Claims Gravity Is A Push, Not A Pull:”
Experiments now going on in a private laboratory at Pasadena by a youth of 18 may revolutionize the whole theory of gravitation as first deduced by Sir Isaac Newton.
Townsend Brown, a student of 706 Arden Road, has conducted experiments since last September which have convinced him that while there is a law of gravitation, the force is caused by a ‘push’
and not by a ‘pull,’ and development of this theory by practical inventions will revolutionize industry.
Young Brown has his laboratory at home filled with expensive equipment to pursue his investigations. He is a normal, seriousminded young man with no false illusions about his mission in life, but with a desire to become a pioneer along the line of scientific research that will open the way for startling discoveries and inventions.
STATEMENT OF THEORY
In plain words, his theory is this: That ether waves from outside space push from all directions against the earth, and against other objects and planets in space, forcing objects the way the wave extends, instead of drawing them, according to the old Newton theory of gravitation.
By means of his equipment he conducts experiments with the Xray, which is of the same family as light and the ether wave, and by means of which it is possible to test the theory. By means of this machine, he says, that since the X-ray is deflected, the gravity wave, being of the same family, also can be deflected.
REVOLUTIONARY
If this theory is proved so thoroughly that it displaces the Newton theory, inventions of the future will revolutionize human industry, according to the young scientist. By deflecting ether waves that are pushing against objects, man can control weight to such an extent that his deflecting machinery would enable him to lift a battleship out of the sea and set it on dry land.
After hitting the wire services, the story ran in the Zanesville, Ohio, Times Recorder, reminding local readers that...
Friends of the Brown family will remember that almost from infancy, Townsend has been interested in science and that he was the first person in Zanesville to have a radio, which he installed himself.
The story even made it into the pages of the New York Times, with a photograph of the “Pasadena student experimenting with equipment with
which he deflects the X-ray” and showing Brown holding a Coolidge tube, at the time the most advanced – and expensive – device of its kind, which Townsend’s father purchased for his son. But it was not the ‘X-ray beams’ that Brown was curious about detecting. It was the tube itself – and how it behaved under high voltages.
The Coolidge tube was asymmetrical, built with a big difference in the size of the positive and negative electrodes. As Beau Kitselman wrote later,18 this difference inspired Brown’s experiments:
Brown mounted the Coolidge tube in a careful balance, as if it were an astronomical telescope. His idea was to point the tube in different directions and somehow find a variation in the power used by the tube, the strength of the X-Rays generated, or something. He didn’t find what he was looking for, no matter where he aimed his apparatus, no tell-tale differences appeared. But he did find something he wasn’t looking for; he found that the Xray tube generated a thrust, as if it wanted to move.
He soon learned that the new force was not produced by the XRays, but by the high voltages which they required. Many experiments were necessary to make certain that the force was not one of the known effects of high voltage, and that it is a mass force, like gravity, rather than an area force, like most known electrical forces.
Kitselman said that these experiments with the Coolidge tube were the first indication that Townsend Brown had found a physical link between two elemental forces, electromagnetism and gravity – just as Einstein had predicted in theory.
The story in the Evening Express went so far as to speculate that “...control of gravitation might pave the way for a visit to Mars in a few years.” Though his ideas were being picked up on the wire services and printed as far away as New York, Brown still felt the sting of rejection from classmates and faculty at Cal Tech. At the end of his freshman year, he packed up all his gear and returned to Ohio. The following fall, he resumed his studies at Denison University in Granville, where he sought the counsel of the Professor of Astronomy, Dr. Paul Alfred Biefeld.
10
The Biefeld-Brown Effect
(1924)
Swasey Chapel and Observatory – Denison University, Granville Ohio, ca. 1924
When Denison University opened its new Swasey Observatory in 1911, Professor of Astronomy Dr. Paul Alfred Biefeld was named its Director.
Biefeld earned his B.S. in electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsin in 1894, after which – like Robert Millikan – he pursued graduate studies in Europe. He earned his Ph.D. from the Zurich Polytechnic Institute in 1900. When Biefeld’s name finds its way into publication, he is often dubiously described as a colleague or classmate of Albert Einstein, though it is unlikely that the two had anything more than the passing acquaintance of students attending a large university at roughly the same time. The only thing that Einstein and Biefeld really had in common was music. They both played the violin.
Einstein failed his first entrance examination for the Zurich Polytechnic Institute in 1894, was finally admitted in 1896, and graduated as a secondary school teacher of mathematics and physics in 1900 – the year that Biefeld earned his doctorate. Biefeld remained at Zurich Polytechnic for six years, while Einstein left academia and found work as a clerk at the patent office in Berne, Switzerland. Despite scant evidence that the two
actually knew each other, 74-year-old Dr. Biefeld told a newspaper in 1941 that “When Einstein would forget to go to a class, he would come and borrow my notes to get caught up on what he had missed. He was rather careless in his appearance and made no show of himself. Yet he had strong ideas and wasn’t afraid to speak them out.”
In 1924, Cal Tech dropout Townsend Brown showed up at Denison University chastened by his experience in Pasadena and determined to devise the sort of practical invention that would demonstrate a link between electricity and gravity. He found a sympathetic ear in Dr. Paul Biefeld:
Dr. Biefeld had been interested in the subject of gravitation for many years. This interest probably coincided with Einstein’s interest in the Unified Field Theory and in the new concept of Relativity which was gaining recognition at that time. Biefeld believed in the possibility of some connection with gravitation. As he expressed it, “I am constantly on the look-out for something that might represent an ‘electrodynamic-gravitational’ coupling.”
A pivotal exchange took place when Brown asked Biefeld, “If a coupling did exist, what instrument might it resemble?” Biefeld thought for a few minutes and then answered without equivocation, “The capacitor.”
A capacitor stores and discharges electrical energy. It typically consists of two charged metal plates – the electrodes – that are separated by an insulating substance called a dielectric, which cause the electrodes to absorb their charge without conducting it between them. A typical electrical circuit has anywhere from one to hundreds of capacitors, each capable of storing a different level of charge and discharging that charge according to the requirements of the circuit.
In this telling of the tale, Brown suggests that it was Biefeld who first suggested that the mechanism for the transmission of gravitation might resemble the common capacitor. But Brown had already observed the effect in his Coolidge X-Ray tube, which, with its asymmetrical electrodes, acted as precisely the kind of capacitor Biefeld was supposedly proposing.
In 1977 Townsend Brown wrote in his brief memoir,
The basic Biefeld-Brown effect is quite simple. It is manifested as a departure from the Coulomb Law of electrostatic attraction, in that the opposite forces are not equal. The negative electrode
appears to chase the positive electrode so that there is a net force of the system... in the negative-to-positive direction. 19
By “departure from Coulomb Law,” Brown is referring to the electrical theory that opposite charges attract and like charges repel, as first articulated in 1785 by the French physicist Charles Augustin de Coulomb.20 Under normal circumstances, oppositely charged particles or surfaces of equal mass would attract each other equally. But the behavior Brown observed in his Coolidge tube – where the negative charge is slightly greater than the positive charge – the negatively charged surface is drawn toward the positive. Or as Brown put it, “the negative electrode appears to chase the positive electrode.”
There is not much more in the record about the relationship between Paul Biefeld and Townsend Brown, or how the Biefeld-Brown effect came to be so named. What seems likely is that after his unpleasant experience at Cal Tech, Townsend Brown sought cover for his ideas – by attaching a credentialed elder’s name to a discovery that could just as easily have been named wholly for himself. Calling his own discovery ‘Biefeld-Brown’ may be the first example of a practice that would recur throughout his life: hiding in plain sight.
11
“He Made Things Up”
(Notes from the Rabbit Hole #3)
“Imagination is the only weapon in the war with reality.”
– Lewis Carroll - Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
When I called the campus of Denison University in the fall of 2004 and spoke to archivist Heather Lyle, I was hardly the first to inquire about Townsend Brown. Ms. Lyle did not hesitate to cast aspersions into the vacuum where the details of his life should be found.
“He made things up,” Ms. Lyle told me.
“How’s that?”
“We have files on him. These queries come up frequently, because apparently he was not very truthful in things that he said about himself, and gave the impression of a lot contact here at Denison. He even claimed to have been faculty or staff here when he really wasn’t even a student, and claimed to have worked with Professor Paul Biefeld, who hardly even knew him. I mean, he just made a lot of claims that were false. People are constantly contacting us, so we have a whole file ready to refute these claims.”
I asked if she would make me a copy of that file.
“Oh no,” Heather said. “It’s pretty extensive, so I’m not willing to do that” – at which point I started making plans to visit Granville to inspect the file myself. Before hanging up I pressed a little further.
“The effect that Brown discovered, he named it the Biefeld-Brown Effect. But you’re telling me he had little contact with Biefeld?”
“He made up a lot of things,” Heather giggled as though she was revealing a secret. “That’s the impression that we all have. There is a kind of a detailed history of the various scams that he pulled based on various letters and people that were ripped off by him and that sort of thing.”
“If that’s all in your file, I can hardly wait to see it....”
In the final week of October – as the Boston Red Sox were winning their first World Series in 86 years – I descended on Denison University with Townsend Brown’s daughter Linda, who maintained her anonymity by
masquerading as my research assistant ‘Elizabeth Helen Drake.’ In a conference room at the university library, Heather Lyle let us examine her file on Thomas Townsend Brown.
The file opens with a print-out of an email from former archivist Cara Gilgenback that circulated around the campus in 1999:
Those of you who have been here for some time may have already run into reference questions involving:
-T. Townsend Brown (purportedly a student at DU in the 1920s).
- Dr. Paul A. Biefeld (physics faculty member at DU, 1911-1934, resident astronomer during that period).
- “The Biefeld-Brown effect” (supposedly a joint research project between the two men conducted at DU, which resulted in a significant discovery about anti-gravity).
This year I’ve received three requests for information on this topic, two of them in the past week. I asked the Physics Dept. for help since the archives yield little on Biefeld, nothing at all on T. Townsend Brown, and nothing at all on this so-called BiefeldBrown effect.
I want to let you all know that the Physics Dept. feels that Brown’s credentials as a physicist are suspect. They cannot find any documentation linking Biefeld and Brown either at Denison or outside of Denison. There are no known published papers or monographs within the scholarly arena on the Biefeld-Brown effect. I am compiling the few popular/alternate press accounts I can locate.
Also, I was unable to find any evidence that Brown ever attended Denison. I found lots of information on him on the Internet (mostly on UFO sites), including a biography I believe to be bogus.
The reason I’m telling you all this is so that you can deal with researchers who come asking about the topic. According to Mike Mickelson, the Physics Dept. has received hundreds of requests for info on this over the years, and interest does not appear to be flagging. You could spend a lot of time searching indices and other reference tools on this topic and would find next to nothing useful.
I would suggest that you refer interested persons to me. I’m compiling a file of relevant info that might be useful to these people. I’m also planning to write to the Naval Research Lab (where Brown reportedly worked) to see if they have any records.
Another email in the file from a “former DU faculty member” from August 2001 attests to the scams Heather Lyle alluded to:
[Townsend Brown arrived in Meadville, PA] in 1962 or 1963 to start a company making ozone generators and an electronic levitation system. Supposedly for use by satellites (and purported to be one of the possible systems used by UFOs). He arrived in a shiny black Cadillac equipped with a radio telephone system (very uncommon in those days). He visited a number of Meadville’s wealthy citizens, concentrating on the elderly, especially widows. A number of these individuals invested in his “new venture.” He established charge accounts all over town.
This email describes two devices Townsend demonstrated in his sales pitch, an “ozone generator” and a “levitation device” (“. . . like a large pizza dish . . .”). The email concludes:
A short time after this presentation, Brown vanished, leaving bills at all the places he had established charge accounts, including over $500 at a small grocery store. I don’t know how hard the stockholders tried to find him, but they were unsuccessful.
Also in the file are two letters from another, still earlier Denison University archivist Florence Hoffman, who says Townsend Brown was...
...a student at Doane Academy in 1922 and 1923. Brown is listed as a graduate of Doane Academy in June 1923. The Denison University Catalog lists him as a member of the Freshman Class in 1924/25. He did not return the following year and I do not know where he may have completed his education.
We have never been able to find any evidence of a collaboration by Biefeld and Brown on any project, and Biefeld’s son (now deceased) told us that his father knew Brown only slightly during the latter’s student days but never worked with him at any time.
Other correspondence in the Denison file suggests that Biefeld’s family in the 1940s knew nothing about Townsend Brown or the effect that bore the
two men’s names. In November 1956, UFO investigator Leon Davidson apparently interested in NICAP (about which more later21), wrote to Biefeld’s son Dr. L. P. Biefeld asking about his father’s relationship to Townsend Brown. L. P. Biefeld replied:
My father never did collaborate with Mr. Brown in a scientific sense. Since Mr. Brown was extremely interested in experimentation in the field of physics and astronomy, he hung around the Physics Department and the Observatory quite a bit and talked to father often. My father was not too impressed with his ideas.
L.P. Biefeld also corresponded with science journalist Gaston Burridge22, who speculated in the 1950s about anti-gravity propulsion systems, telling Burridge:
Your mention of the ‘Biefeld-Brown effect’ is news to me. I never heard my father speak of this effect. I am very surprised to hear of this and would be very interested to know where you obtained information regarding this so-called effect.
*
During the time in 2004 when I was digging into Denison University’s unflattering file on Townsend Brown, Linda Brown and I had been trying unsuccessfully to obtain military records for her father’s Navy service that began with his voluntary enlistment in 193023. That quest delivered its first results just after our visit to Granville, when a thick manilla envelope arrived in my mail. Inside were Townsend Brown’s naval records – or, at least those records that were not entirely classified, nor referenced anything that was classified24.
Among the Naval records was an affidavit from someone who had visited Townsend’s home laboratory in Zanesville in August 1930. The visitor had traveled “at the request of Mr. Thomas Townsend Brown... to personally conduct tests and examine certain apparatus and setups thereof and act as witness therefore with respect to the operativeness of said apparatus.”
The visitor then describes equipment that consisted of “two principal or essential parts, a stator and a rotor – a generator-and-motor system based on what is now known as “The Biefeld-Brown effect.” The visitor testifies:
It is apparent that systematic variations occur in the output of the apparatus which are not to be accounted for and not localized within the system itself. Though the phenomenon is not understood at the present time, it is quite certain that the above-named variations are caused by forces external to the system.
The visitor is describing the effect Brown had first noticed in his X-ray spectrometer, the effect which led him to conclude that “a radiation (other than light) prevailed in the Universe, independent of our Solar system” the observation triggered his conclusion that “gravity is a push, not a pull.”
The visitor concludes that what he has observed in the young man’s laboratory...
...is novel and valuable; leading to probable identification and measurement of forces hitherto not recognized in physical science or astronomy.
The visitor signed the affidavit: Paul Alfred Biefeld.
12
Can We Talk?
(1964)
Linda returned Howie’s ring when he joined the National Guard in May. “He is such a good guy,” she wrote in her journal, “and I love his family, but if I stay with him, how long will it be before I get bored? He will want to get married, I know.” The girl who had lived in forty-some different places before graduating high school added, “I just can’t imagine staying in the same town for the rest of my life.”
True to his word, Morgan was “around.” He’d drop by for a visit at Ashlawn, occasionally taking Linda for a ride on his motorcycle. Most of what Linda knew about him, she learned from gossipy girlfriends.
Like the last Friday in August, when Morgan attended the Philadelphia Folk Festival and invited some friends to spend the night on his family’s farm. Next morning, Morgan’s father found several couples in various stages of undress nestled in the hayloft. “I won’t have this sort of activity here,” he bellowed. “You have a reputation to think about and this is never going to happen again!”
Later that same Saturday, the phone at Ashlawn rang. Linda was surprised to hear Morgan’s voice on the other end.
“Can I come over?” he asked – “so sweetly,” she wrote in her journal, “I am sure that I am just an afterthought to him, but he has made me very happy.” Half an hour later, Morgan’s father’s car pulled into the driveway at Ashlawn. Morgan emerged with a guitar, a towel, a toothbrush, and a comb.
“I’m moving in for the day,” he announced to a bemused Linda.
Later that afternoon, Morgan told her about the party in the barn. “I guess my Dad figures that you are a better influence on me!”
Linda studied Morgan as he turned and walked toward the pool, noticing how much fun he was to watch, how tall and handsome he was. “Not if I can help it,” she thought to herself.
As they lounged around the pool, Morgan struggled with the guitar he’d bought the night before – a Gibson J200 jumbo flattop, just like the one Elvis played. They raided a nearby strawberry patch and in her journal,
Linda confessed, “I flirted outrageously with him, but I was so shy I don’t think he even noticed.”
Back at the pool, Morgan swept Linda into his arms. “He was going to throw me into the pool,” she wrote in her journal, “But I hung on so hard he couldn’t pull himself away from me, and I pulled him into the water with me.”
Morgan sputtered to the surface. “Damn,” he laughed, “you are one strong girl!”
Before the sun set, Morgan was gone.
“Damn Amazon!” Linda moped, “that’s what he’s probably thinking! That was the only move he made on me the entire day! Here he is a champion wrestler, and he can’t even rip me loose long enough to keep me from pulling him in the pool with me. He loves to dance, and I can barely do a waltz. His favorite song is Dancing in the Streets and I just can’t seem to keep up with him. He loves that big guitar and I can’t begin to strum it. He can sing, and I am just too shy to even try. I just know that I am so drawn to him that I can barely breathe when he stands next to me. And he hasn’t even kissed me!”
Linda’s journals from the summer of ’64 also reflect on the socio-political climate of the time. Race riots in Philadelphia that summer prompted a curious observation from her father: “Daddy commented that he felt it was humankind’s response to an outside force that is affecting all of us. He says it’s the same type of force that has probably encouraged revolutions and wars... It makes us all feel like fighting. I dunno.... Those are not exactly the kinds of emotions that I have been entertaining lately.”
Sunday morning Linda wrote, “I guess that Morgan has made things even worse. Word from the grapevine is that last evening he took a girl skinny dipping in the farm pond, and then made the mistake of using his Dad’s car to drive back to the main house to get some towels. His Father stormed out of the house to ‘pull the keys,’ only to discover a naked girl dripping wet in the front seat.” All Linda could think of was how jealous she was. “I wondered if I had to stand in line – or didn’t he think of me at all in a sexual way? Morgan and I,” she wrote with sad resignation “live in an entirely different reality.”
Linda expected the last Sunday in August was going to be “a quiet day.” Hattie, the Ashlawn housekeeper and her husband Taft, the butler, had the house “looking wonderful” prior to their departure for a vacation. Taft and Charles – taking a break from his driving duties – were working in the garden; Mother was reading and “Daddy was working at his desk in the study.”
And as for herself, Linda wrote, “I was purely agitated.”
As Sunday evening settled in, the big house was quiet. Linda, still feeling restless, had retired to the rec room to watch an old movie on the TV when she heard an unexpected knock at the door. When she opened it, there was Morgan, whispering, “I know it’s late, but can we talk for a while?”
“A while” drifted on until four the following morning. Lying at the edge of the pool, their legs dangling in the cool water under the hazy summer’s night sky, they stared up at the moon and stars, they spun into an expansive dialog about the planets, the stars, the vastness of space and even the possibility of time travel.
Morgan talked about his family. His parents had drifted apart when his younger sister drowned in a swimming pool accident. His mother never recovered from her grief and blamed his father; Now his older brother was also trapped in an unhappy marriage.
“I just don’t think marriage is in the cards for me,” Morgan said. “I’m never going to take my father’s place in society. I just don’t want the big house and mortgage. I don’t want to have to stay in one place except for two weeks every year.”
Linda could tell that the very thought made him restless and uncomfortable. She smiled at Morgan and looked away.
“What do you want, Morgan,” Linda asked quietly, looking skyward.
Startled at the question, Morgan’s answer came out in a rush. “I’ll go to college,” Morgan said, “and then I want travel and adventure. It’s weird, but I have this very clear vision of myself, I don’t know where, or when, but I’m in someplace that’s mountainous, and really rocky. No trees anywhere. I can see small pebbles on the trail tumble away from my boots. It’s strange because I don’t know of any place like that around here. I don’t even think it’s in this country, and the vision gives me this overwhelming sense of danger and excitement. I don’t know where that picture comes from, but
somehow, that’s the answer to your question. That’s what I imagine for myself, sometime in the near future.”
Absorbing the curious majesty of Morgan’s vision, Linda warmed herself with the thought that these were not the sort of things that he shared with those other girls. She offered a vision of her own.
“You just have to listen to your own soul about these things,” she said, “and somehow, you’ll just know what to do. I have my own peculiar premonitions. Sometimes I can just clearly see myself riding horse-back over golden hills, past strange, gnarled trees. I’ve even drawn the trees in art class, but the teacher says I should stick to reality, that trees like that don’t exist anywhere in nature. I don’t know where that picture comes from any better than you know where yours comes from. But I know my trees are real, and I’m sure your pebbles are real, too.”
“Amazing...” was all Morgan could manage to say.
The spell was broken by the sudden ringing of a telephone. Linda sprang to answer it before the entire household was awakened. On the other end of the line, Linda’s older brother Joseph was calling from Oregon, and he wanted to speak with his mother. Linda set the phone down and whispered to Morgan, “wait, please wait...” Morgan just wiggled his fingers at her, gesturing a silent “goodbye...”
Linda tip-toed into the house to awaken her mother, who took the call on the phone by her bed. By the time she got back to the pool, Morgan had slipped away. In the distance, she heard the trailing rumble of his motorcycle.
Returning to the house, Linda noticed Morgan’s big Gibson, still leaning near the door where he’d left it earlier.
13
A Rare Force of Nature
(1964)
When Linda answered the phone in the greenhouse at 4 AM, there was no friendly “hello” or a polite “sorry to bother you...” The voice on the other end just asked, “Hi, can I speak to Mom?” which left Linda wondering, “who is this??” It had been so long since she’d even heard from Joseph Brown, much less actually talked to him, that she’d almost forgotten that she had an older brother.
Joseph Townsend Brown was twelve years older than Linda, who was a toddler when the family lived in the tropical wilderness of the Hawaiian island of Kauai in the late 1940s. When the family returned to the mainland in the early 1950s, Joseph went off to college and served a stint in the Air Force. Simmering tension between Joseph and his father left Joseph out of touch with the family. As she returned to the main house, Linda figured it had been at least two years since she had heard the sound of Joseph’s voice.
Linda found Josephine hanging up the phone, sitting up among the overstuffed pillows and covers of a four-poster bed that practically filled the room. Josephine patted her hand on the mattress beside her, and Linda climbed onto the big bed and snuggled in with her mother.
“What did Joseph want,” Linda asked her mother. “And why was it so important that he was calling in the middle of the night?”
“He says he’s found the girl he wants to marry”, Josephine said. “He wants to give her the diamond ring I promised him years ago.” Realizing how long it had been since she, too, had spoken to her son, Josephine laughed self-consciously, “It took a diamond to get him to call.” Linda detected the sadness beneath her mother’s good nature. She also knew that even if Joseph’s call had bothered her, she would never have mentioned it.
The ring that Joseph was asking about was a family heirloom that Josephine had hung onto even through the most threadbare of times. It broke Linda’s heart knowing that her mother was being asked to part with a treasure that Joseph would slip on the finger of a woman Josephine had never even met.
“What’s the girl’s name,” Linda asked.
“I don’t know, Sweetie. He didn’t tell me that. He just asked me to send him the ring.”
Linda’s thoughts drifted through the hours she’d just spent by the pool with Morgan.
“Momma,” Linda blurted, “How did you know that Daddy was going to be the one true love in your life?”
As the pale predawn light filtered into the bedroom, Linda’s mother put her arm around her daughter and told her of the day in 1926 when young Thomas Townsend Brown took young Josephine Beale sailing on Ohio’s Buckeye Lake.
“I thought that he would be talkative and egotistical, but he was quiet and very shy – completely different from what I expected him to be! And he had those crystal blue eyes that were just wonderful! All of my friends had painted this picture of a womanizing playboy, but all those preconceptions just dissolved that afternoon.”
Linda giggled at the thought of anyone calling her father a playboy. Mother and daughter hushed themselves like a couple of teenagers at a slumber party. “Mom fluffed up her big pillow and I snuggled in beside her,” Linda recalled. “We continued in a whisper, and I remember the sun was just beginning to break.”
“Was that glimpse of Daddy really all you needed?”
“Sweetie, I guess that it’s different with every person. I pushed away from that dock believing that I was in the company of a spoiled cad. By the time we sailed back to the dock I was thoroughly convinced that he was a rare force of nature and already the love of my life.
14
We Will Just Sail Away
(1927)
Josephine Beale ca. 1928
Josephine Beale was a pretty, slender girl with soft, dark blonde hair, an enthusiastic smile and blue-grey eyes, a junior at Lash High School in Zanesville. She had seen Townsend Brown around town, heard people refer to him as “the second coming of Einstein,” and knew that he was the heir to one of the town’s more prominent families.
Josephine caught Townsend’s eye while performing in a school play. She didn’t know what to make of it when her gossipy girlfriends mentioned that Townsend Brown had been asking about her.
Josephine heard all kinds of stories: That he owned his own cruiser out on Buckeye Lake – a refitted pilot boat called the Viking. His devilishly
handsome friend Paul Grey had a reputation with the girls. Josephine’s girlfriends giggled whenever they mentioned Paul Grey and Townsend Brown. Now the gossip mill was starting to grind on Josephine Beale, who did all she could to feign disinterest.
As the Beale family gathered for dinner one night, Josephine’s father Clifford Beale – a prosperous businessman with an avocation in woodcraft – mentioned an inquiry he’d had that day about a carpentry project.
“I had an interesting visitor today,” Dr. Beale started. “That young man Townsend Brown came to ask what I would charge to build a curio cabinet for his mother’s birthday.”
Dr. Beale watched his daughter hold her breath.
“He asked about you,” Dr. Beale said. “Well, more precisely, he asked my permission to call on you.”
“Poppa, are you serious? He came here? Oh Poppa! You don’t know what everyone is saying about him! I can’t believe that he would have the nerve to come straight to you like this!”
Dr. Beale delighted in his daughter’s reaction. “Don’t be so quick to believe what others say,” he said. “This fellow made quite an effort to ask my permission in the most proper way. He stressed that you could select a chaperone if you wanted to. But I don’t think that will be necessary.”
Townsend’s gaff-rigged sailboat, the TomCat, on Buckeye Lake in Ohio.
Josephine and Townsend’s first date was a picnic on the shore of Buckeye Lake in the spring of 1927. In a fitting prelude to their future together, Townsend showed up late, having found it difficult to pull himself away from his laboratory. Josephine acted indifferent when he finally arrived in the Brown family’s chauffeur-driven Packard.
Their second date was more memorable. It began with Townsend showing Josephine around his private laboratory, which she found impressive even if she understood little of what he was showing her. After another chauffeured drive out to Buckeye Lake, he took her sailing in his gaff-rigged catboat, the aptly named TomCat. Josephine tried to tease him about the name, but Townsend just laughed and swore that was the name of the boat when he’d bought it.
It was a perfect day for sailing, warm and clear with a light zephyr chasing over the surface of the lake. She was new to sailing but took
naturally to the trim wooden boat; Townsend showed her the ropes, and even gave her a turn at the tiller.
“See that area over there, the ripples on the water?” Townsend said. “There’s more wind over there, try to steer toward it.” And when she did, the little boat picked up the fresh breeze and accelerated over the surface.
The visit to the lab and the adventure on the lake gave Josephine a better sense of her suitor. “We talked about everything that day,” Josephine later told Linda. “I kept watching him and noticing how wonderful and blue his eyes were. He was very handsome and so tanned and when he smiled at me I just lit up inside. My previous impressions of him just melted away that day.”
Tacking toward the far shore of the lake, Townsend told Josephine about dreams he’d been having and the ideas that came to him in his sleep that inspired him to experiment in his laboratory.
“He didn’t have anyone who would just listen to him, so that was my role from the first,” Josephine told Linda. “I didn’t understand half of what he was trying to explain to me. It took a couple of weeks before it began to sink in. I just knew that it was the most important information that I probably would ever hear, and here was a man who was going to need me.”
As the little sailboat skimmed across the lake, Josephine tried to lighten the mood.
“OK, Mr. Smarty, if you could travel through time, what do you think you will find in the future? Will there be more wars? What will become of Mankind in the future?”
The young dreamer with the tiller in one hand and the mainsheet in the other knew it was time to share the vision he had seen in his dreams.
“We will just sail away,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Someday, men will travel in space, just as easily as we are sailing now. Great ships will silently push away from the Earth just as easily as this sailboat pushed away from the dock.”
Josephine lingered in silence, listening to the water lapping against the hull. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine their little boat sailing across
the void of space. In her heart she knew she was hearing something not only strange and fantastic, but also true.
She opened her eyes and smiled. “Mr. Brown, you are different, aren’t you?”
Townsend smiled back.
“That was pretty much it for me,” Josephine recalled. “I was a gone goose!”
When they got back to the yacht club, Townsend took Josephine home, and left her on the doorstep without so much as a kiss on her cheek.
“That night, I couldn’t sleep,” Josephine recounted. “So I knew what I was going through!”
“Yes,” Linda thought to herself, as she listened to her mother that morning as the sun rose over Ashlawn. In her tangled feelings for Morgan, Linda knew exactly what her mother was talking about.
15
A Pineapple and A Pea
(Notes from the Rabbit Hole #4)
“Only a few find the way, some don’t recognize it when they do – some... don’t ever want to.”
– Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
More than a decade after I first heard and wrote the words, “We will just sail away...” I still don’t know if the vision Townsend Brown shared with Josephine as they sailed across Buckeye Lake is scientifically viable, but the vision is hard to ignore.
Rereading Townsend’s prediction reminded me of a passage from The Boy Who Invented Television, my biography of Philo T. Farnsworth.
In the final years of his life, long after he was done with television, Philo Farnsworth turned his attention to the riddle of controlled nuclear fusion: How do you bottle a star?
My journey to that riddle started when I first heard of Philo Farnsworth in the summer of 1973. As I was getting ready to relocate to Los Angeles to seek my fortune in the TeeVee business, I picked up a magazine25 with a story about Farnsworth. I was surprised I’d never heard the name, nor had any idea that the industry I wanted to work in could trace its origins to a sketch he drew for his high school science teacher in 1922 – when he was just 14 years old. The imagery in the article – photographs of televisions and cameras from the 1920s and 1930s – was all new to me. I wondered why I’d never seen any of it before, as I had seen photos of Edison with his first phonograph or the Wright Brothers hovering above Kitty Hawk in the original ‘Flyer.’
Later that summer I took a trip up the Pacific Coast Highway and stopped to visit a public access TV advocate in Santa Cruz who called himself ‘Johnny Videotape.’ Johnny was friends with Phil Gietzen, who edited the magazine where I’d found the article about Farnsworth. Gietzen knew Philo T. Farnsworth III, eldest son of the TV inventor, who told Gietzen stories about his father’s pursuit of controlled nuclear fusion in the 1950s and 60s.
Nuclear fusion is the same process that powers our sun and all the stars. If fusion could be harnessed on Earth in the same manner as its evil twin nuclear fission – it could offer a clean, safe, and virtually unlimited source of electrical power. But there’s a catch: Just like a star, a fusion reaction is so hot – millions of degrees Centigrade – that it cannot be allowed to touch the walls of its container. That would either destroy the reactor vessel or cool and extinguish the reaction.
This is the celestial magic that Philo T. Farnsworth – who “breathed life into all our living-room dreams26” – tried to perform in the 1960’s.
In 2022, when I returned to the Townsend Brown story after my long hiatus, I recalled a passage from the Farnsworth bio that describes his vision of how fusion energy would change the world:
He believed that fusion would alter the basic relationship that hinders current space travel – the weight ratio between launch vehicle and payload. He used the analogy of a pineapple and a pea: Today, what little space travel we do is conducted with payloads the size of a pea that are lifted into Earth orbit by launch vehicles the size of a pineapple. The reason for this inefficiency is because so much fuel has to be consumed in the initial thrust just to get the rest of the fuel off the launchpad. Farnsworth predicted the reversal of these ratios, with small fusion-engines gently lifting enormous payloads into orbit. He predicted that once in orbit, fusion-powered spacecraft could make it to Mars on as much nuclear fuel as could be stored in a tank the size of a fountain pen.
In the realm of interstellar travel, Farnsworth hinted at the truly daring cosmology behind his fusion work. He dared to question our whole concept of distance as it relates to travel through outer space, asking aloud on many occasions, “Why do we assume that we have to exert so much energy to cross something which is actually nothing?”
Farnsworth proved his unorthodox theories with the Fusor – a device not much larger than a soccer ball. But he stopped short of his goal of producing useful energy. He became suspicious of his corporate benefactors and withheld certain information. The funding ran out and the research ended in 1967.
And then he took the secret to his early grave27.
I was first drawn to Philo Farnsworth because he invented electronic video. The harpoon didn’t sink in until I started hearing about his unfinished work in fusion energy.
Thirty years later, that chance encounter in Santa Cruz led me to Townsend Brown.
Now here I am – another twenty years farther on – seeing the similarity between Philo Farnsworth’s ‘pineapple and pea’ scenario and what Townsend told Josephine: that voyagers of the future will just “push away from the Earth as easily as we pushed away from the dock.”
And wondering if the combination of fusion energy and gravity control offers a glimpse into the Universe of Magical Things.
Philo T. Farnsworth and an early ‘bell jar’ iteration of his Fusor, ca. 1959
16
A Great Disappointment
(1926)
The staff of L.K. Brown’s offices in Zanesville ca. 1930. Townsend on the far left, his father third from right, Grace Redmond to his right.
Townsend and Josephine kept their romance to themselves for more than a year, not only to keep Josephine’s girlfriends’ tongues from wagging, but also to avoid any interference from Townsend and Brown families.
Townsend’s mother Mary – ‘Mame’ to friends and family – had already selected a bride for her only son, a young woman from her own patrician circles, Miss Cornelia Smith. Mame and Cornelia’s mother were already making plans for a big church wedding that would surely be the highlight of the Zanesville social season. Recalling her own wedding – attended by more than 600 guests when she married Lewis Brown in 1898 – Mame expected nothing less for their son and heir.
Townsend, happily exploring the mysteries of the universe in his laboratory, hadn’t really given Miss Cornelia much thought. He was quite certain that Josephine was the woman he could confide in and trust to protect his innermost secrets.
Townsend’s laboratory was funded entirely by his father’s largesse and operated in a corner of the elder Brown’s offices in downtown Zanesville. Townsend would have been left entirely to his own devices were it not for the meddling of one Grace Redmond, his father’s secretary and the unofficial holder of the purse-strings for the various family enterprises. Miss Redman did not share her boss’s deference to his son’s scientific inquiries. She considered the younger Brown’s experiments to be “utter nonsense,” and never missed an opportunity to make Townsend beg her for the funds he needed to purchase equipment and supplies.
In her churlish way, Grace Redmond embodied the expectations descending onto the shoulders of T. B. Townsend’s only grandson. On his twenty-first birthday, Townsend received a letter from his Uncle Orville, Mame’s brother:
Dear Nephew,
You are now twenty-one years old and don’t want to be a chauffeur or a loafer all your life. You will never be happy unless you get into active business so you will be independent. Your parents are not well, you will not always have them with you, so you should start now to earn something, while you have the benefit of their advice, instead of everlastingly spending and looking for ways to spend money.
We want you to distinctly understand that all of the families have nothing but the kindest wishes for your success. You must realize that you are the only man out of the three families to hold together the business and financial interests that your uncles and your father will leave. Naturally, all of us wish that you will be a successful businessman. You are now of the age and you should appreciate what your father and mother have done for you in the way of education. Now it is up to you to repay them and the families that are interested in you, to show them whether or not you are capable. Unless you tie down to business at once, you will be a great disappointment to us all.
Kindly keep this letter for future reference. You may thank me in later years for writing you as I have, as it is all intended for your personal good.
Your affectionate uncle,
Orville N. Townsend
Rather than tying himself down to the family business, Townsend was pondering his escape from the midwestern confines of Zanesville.
First, there was the matter of a wedding to attend to.
17
Wagner In The Trees
(1928)
Josephine and Townsend on their honeymoon at Green Cove Springs, Florida.
On September 8, 1928, more than one-hundred guests gathered for what they thought was just another late-summer picnic and swimming party at Hawthorne Farm – the Brown family’s estate on the outskirts of Zanesville. Some were still dripping wet, fresh out of the pool, when the sound of Wagner’s wedding march suddenly began to radiate from loudspeakers that Townsend had hidden among the pine trees.
The ensuing nuptials were described in the society column of the next day’s Zanesville Times Recorder:
Surrounded by members of their own families and intimate friends and in the midst of tall trees through which the setting sun shone in benediction, Miss Josephine Beale, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. C.A. Beale of Merrick Avenue and Townsend Brown, only son of Mr. and Mrs. Lewis K. Brown of Adair Avenue, were united in marriage, Thursday afternoon at the Brown farm on the Newark Road.
The marriage was to have been a surprise, but some of the many birds who live in the trees on the Brown farm must have heard the young couple whispering their secret and made haste to tell it to their friends for everyone was expecting “something to happen.”
After a delightful picnic supper had been served to the guests who numbered over five score the music of the Lohengrin wedding march was heard faintly at first, as though from a great distance, then as the voices of the guests were hushed, more clearly. The music seemed to be wafted from the tops of the trees by angel voices in the most entrancing fashion and had been so arranged by the young bride and groom and as the guests all arose and moved up to meet them, the young couple appeared walking together over the brink of the wooded hill and proceeded to the place where Dr. Austin M. Courtenay of Delaware, a personal friend of the Brown family and a former pastor of Grace church awaited them.
Dr. Courtenay read the beautiful ring service of the Methodist Episcopal Church without a book and made it seem by so doing a peculiarly intimate and personal service performed for those whom he loved.
It was a picture seen by those present which will never be forgotten. The youth of the principals, the beauty of the woods and sunset sky and the solemn hush which stole over the scene as they made the responses uniting them for life, all created an atmosphere of dignity mingled with simplicity which was most appealing.
The bride was attired in a simple grey traveling frock with little grey hat and shoes and hose to match and carried a huge shower bouquet of pink and lavender flowers with a long pink and lavender shower. She was graduated last year from Senior High School and is a member of the Putnam Presbyterian church. She is unusually popular with her classmates and members of the younger social set.
Townsend Brown is one of the most interesting young men in Zanesville and has been widely known as an inventor and experimenter and has made some unusual discoveries which will work changes in theories of gravitation and electrical mechanism.
He is engaged with his father in the sand business, but his chief interest is in his laboratory where his research and experiments are conducted.
After two weeks in the East the young bride and groom will live at the Brown home on Adair avenue, although they plan during fine weather to spend a great deal of their time at the Brown farm, where Mr. Brown has built himself a little house right by the edge of the large swimming pool. Both Mr. and Mrs. Brown are greatly interested in swimming and water sports and out-of-doors life of all kinds, and the farm offers an alluring spot on which to spend an early fall honeymoon.
The newlyweds spent their wedding night at Hawthorne, in the little poolside cottage that would serve as their first home together, which they dubbed ‘El Nido’ – ‘The Nest.’
Before departing for their honeymoon in New York and Florida, Townsend presented Josephine with a gift: A mint-green ceramic teapot, hand-painted with delicate, cursive gold lettering that read simply ‘El Nido.’ As Josephine placed the little green teapot on a shelf, she had no way of knowing how many different shelves she would place it on in the years ahead.
18
Anniversaries
(1964)
Linda Brown had her own reasons for remembering the date of her parents’ wedding. On September 8, 1964, her parents went into the city to celebrate their 36th anniversary. Linda stayed home in the solitude of Ashlawn, preparing for her departure the next day for a college in Western Virginia called Southern Seminary.
When it was founded in 1867 as the Bowling Green Female Seminary, the word ‘seminary’ just meant a school for girls or women. Now it was a finishing school – a place for young women to find a suitable husband and take their place in proper society. Linda chose Southern Sem only for its outstanding equitation program, having loved all things hoof-and-bridle since she was nine years old. She wasn’t interested in the school’s social pretensions. She just wanted to spend as much of the next two years as she could in the company of horses.
Linda expected her parents would be leaving Ashlawn soon, too. Her father had honored the bargain he made with Josephine when they moved in: that they would stay put long enough for Linda to finish her last two years of high school in a single location.
“Hattie and Taft were still on vacation,” Linda recalled, “and I knew that Dad had arranged for them to take another position when they got back.” Indeed, after Josephine found a situation for them with the neighboring Asquith family, Townsend informed Mr. Asquith that he had been paying “his couple” a sum that was double their actual salary at the time – and had promised them a substantial raise as well. When Mr. Asquith accepted the terms, “Hattie and Taft were beside themselves” at the prospect of their new positions.
“I was alone in that big house,” Linda recalled of her last night at Ashlawn. “Charles had driven them into town, left the car with Dad and took a train to Washington. I’d already said my goodbyes to him, and he slipped a hundred-dollar bill into my hand, saying ‘This is for anything extra you might need.’ I didn’t actually stop to think that it might be years before I would see him again.”
Linda wandered around the house, “just sort of saying goodbye to everything. That’s a trick I’d learned long before, with all the moving we did, to take a very hard and long last look, so that I would not be homesick later for things left behind.”
Linda was still confused with the way things stood with Morgan. After the night of their long talk, he came by and “grabbed his guitar out of my hands, mumbling something about being late for work and took off. I was still grieving over what I figured was a lost cause.”
And then the phone rang.
Linda started a fire in the downstairs rec room and put some music on. “I hadn’t really intended to make it such a romantic setting,” Linda remembered, “but... well, maybe...”
Morgan had his guitar with him when he entered the room.
“You better be careful you don’t leave that thing here again,” Linda teased.
“Oh? And why is that?” Morgan asked.
“Because we’re all leaving in the morning and there won’t be anybody here for you to retrieve it from.”
They small-talked for a while, sitting next to each other on the sofa and staring a bit uncomfortably into the flames. The situation felt awkward and cold despite the warmth of the fire.
“What’s wrong?” Morgan finally asked.
“Look,” Linda said after a long silence, “I thought that maybe there was something going on between us. I guess I just thought, maybe, that you and I had something a bit more important than whatever you’ve got with all those other girls you spend time with. But now I don’t know. Now it all just feels....”
Linda stopped herself. In the silence, she first felt vulnerable, and then, suddenly... safe.
“It just seems very one sided,” she confided. “Like I’m the only one that feels this way. I guess I’m just sad because it really meant something to me. And now it’s coming to an end.”
Morgan jumped to his feet and put out his hand. “Let’s dance.”

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Forward astronaut Capt. Edgar D. Mitchell, Ph. D.
ETHER
TECHNOLOGY
A Rational Approach to Gravity Control
by Rho Sigma
THE UNDERGROUND CLASSIC IS BACK IN PRINT!
THE NEW SCIENCE SERIES:
•MAN-MADE UFOS: 1944—1994, 50 Years of Suppression •UNDERGROUNDBASES&TUNNELS •THE FREE ENERGY DEVICE HANDBOOK •THE FANTASTIC INVENTIONS OF NIKOLA TESLA •THE ANTI-GRAVITY HANDBOOK •ANTI-GRAVITY & THE WORLD GRID •ANTI-GRAVITY & THE UNIFIED FIELD •VIMANA AIRCRAFT OF ANCIENT INDIA & ATLANTIS
THE LOST CITIES SERIES:
•LOST CITIES OF ATLANTIS, ANCIENT EUROPE & THE MEDITERRANEAN •LOST CITIES OF NORTH & CENTRAL AMERICA •LOST CITIES & ANCIENT MYSTERIES OF SOUTH AMERICA •LOST CITIES OF ANCIENT LEMURIA & THE PACIFIC •LOST CITIES & ANCIENT MYSTERIES OF AFRICA & ARABIA •LOST CITIES OF CHINA, CENTRAL ASIA & INDIA
THE MYSTIC TRAVELLER SERIES:
•IN SECRET TIBET by Theodore Illion (1937) •DARKNESS OVER TIBET by Theodore Illion (1938) •IN SECRET MONGOLIA by Henning Haslund (1934) •MEN AND GODS IN MONGOLIA by Henning Haslund (1935) •DANGER MY ALLY by Michell-Hedges
ETHER-TECHNOLOGY A rational approach to gravity-control
by Rho Sigma
Published by Rho Sigma
ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
A Rational Approach to Gravity Control
©Copyright 1977
Rho Sigma
All rights reserved
This printing March 1996
ISBN 0-932813-34-8
Published by
Adventures Unlimited Press
One Adventure Place
Kempton, Illinois 60946 USA
Printed in the United States of America
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to make grateful acknowledgments for the individual research contributions of the following persons and friends in the USA and abroad:
Capt. Edgar D. Mitchell, Ph.D. Mr. Thomas Townsend Brown, P.E. Dr. Erwin Saxl Dr. h.c. Galen T. Hieronymus Dr. Daniel Fry Mr. James B. Beal, P.E. Mr. James M. McCampbell Mr. Bruce De Palma Mr. George W. Meek Mr. Jan P. Roos
USA USA USA
USA
USA USA
USA
USA
USA
USA
Dr. Henry F. Pulitzer Mr. John R.R. Searl Mr. William Whamond, P.E. Mr. C. B. Wynniatt, P.E.
England England Canada New Zealand
Dr. Georg Unger Monsieur Henry Durrant Prof. Dr. Marco Todeschini Sig. Hellmuth Hoffmann Herr Gotthard Barth, physicist Dr. Wolfgang Fragner Dr. Burkhard Heim Prof. Hermann Oberth, Dr. h. c. Herr Hubert Malthaner, Oberstudienrat a. D. Herr Wilhelm Laun, Dipl.Ing.
Switzerland France Italy Italy Austria Germany, BRD Germany, BRD Germany, BRD Germany, BRD Germany, BRD
My heartfelt thanks for editing of the material to Mrs. Violet M. Shelley, and to Mr. Roland Klemm for re-editing some new chapters. To the A.R.E. and Edgar Cayce Foundation, for permission to quote from the "Edgar Cay ce Readings"; To the F.I.L., (Fellowship of the Inner Light), Virginia Beach, Va., for permission to quote from the "Paul Solomon Readings"; And to all those in other spheres of consciousness whose inspirations rnarl· this publication possible. Last, but not least, to my very brave and precious dear wife, whose neverending support made it a reality.
CONTENTS
Preface : Knowledge as a Resource 9 Foreword : Capt. Edgar D. Mitchell, Ph.D.,
"A Change of Consciousness" 13
THE AMERICAN SCENE
Genesis of a New Technology 19
Taking Inventory:
How Much is ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN in Science? 21 A Dramatic Report (T.T.Brown) 25 Commentary on Brown's Work 38 "ELECTRIC WIND" in a Hard Vacuum? 44 The Gravitational CONSTANT is Not Constant At All! 50 "An Entirely New Discovery in Fund. Physics ..." 54 Honestly Now: What IS Gravitation? 56
MEANWHILE-BACK IN EUROPE 59
The Case for the ETHER 62 "Ether-Vortex-Turbine" in England 73 Feedback Concerning the Barret Report 81 What Some Scientists Think About It 87 Prof. Burkhard Heim and the Germans 89 France: "The Gravitational Force Can be Neutralized. . ." 93
INPUTS FROM OTHER SPHERES OF CONSCIOUSNESS 97
CONCLUSIONS . .105
PREFACE
Knowledge as a resource
"Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment or men of dogma. The men of experiment are like the ant; they collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course; it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own."
(Sir Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, 1620)
The two crucial faults Sir Francis Bacon observed in most of his contemporaries are still with us. On one side are rationalizing philosophers (the spiders), whose theories have little relation to observed phenomena. On the other side are "men of experiment" (the ants), who are more or less content to collect facts in various categories, with little interest in integrated theory. It was Bacon's genius to clarify the complex relationships between theory and experiment (the way of the bee). This cornerstone of scientific inquiry forms the most important step in transforming knowledge into a true resource for the improvement of human society. The major portion of this book contains reports of officially little known experiments, observations, and other work carried on privately in small laboratories and by individuals throughout the world for some decadesapparently with little intercorrelation or communication as to how their work relates to other efforts being generated simultaneously elsewhere. Progress in borderland areas is generally painfully slow, and some conjecture is offered as to how these experiments and observations may be related in a meaningful, useful manner to the innovative and inspirational theories of brilliant "loners."
9
10 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
Since an understanding of related UFO observations seems essential in any investigation of new energies and gravity-technologies, one chapter in the forthcoming second book of this study series will present an overview of the observed propulsion aspects of UFO's and the macabre history of the official handling of the problem which will give the reader an appreciation of the calibre of the people involved and the thoughts which have gone into the investigation of the UFO enigma and related energy problems generally. The intelligent reader may thereby learn more in an area of human experience in which the "modus operandi" has for years been one of controversy, ridicule, suppression of data, and personal embarrassment. We trust that, with the publication of this work, this period of awkwardness and disbelief will finally be laid to rest and the genesis of a new consciousness may—hopefully —pave the way to a new science and technology worthy of the coming New Age.
12 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
"Apollo 14" Astronaut Mitchell in spacesuit before starting on his Moon voyage
FOREWORD-CAPT. EDGAR D. MITCHELL, Ph.D.
"A CHANGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS"
"The view from space which I was privileged to have of our planet is an event that has profoundly affected my life. The pictures you have seen in books, magazines and on television help give some sense of that awesome but magnificent sight. But photography has its limits and a photograph cannot tell you of the way my philosophy and my committment to philosophy has been changing since that voyage to the moon." Thus began an address written by the former U.S. astronaut, Capt. Edgar D. Mitchell, and presented August 25, 1972, to the 21st International Conference on Parapsychology and the Sciences in Amsterdam by my colleague, NASA Engineer James B. Beal. "To see a small, majestic planet Earth floating in a black sky—in its blue and white splendor is something you cannot forget. It stays with you profoundly, long after the splashdown, the hero's welcome and the parades have been forgotten. Because the view from space has shown me—as no other event in my life has—how limited a view man has of his own life and that of the planet. "Man fancies himself the highest development in nature—the ruler and most intelligent of creatures on Earth. About that notion, I have strong reservations. If animals could communicate with us, and some experiments going on now indicate they might some day—I will suggest that the first thing they would say is; how glad they are not to be human. Because no other animal commits the atrocities and stupidities that men do. In our surfeit of knowledge but paucity of wisdom, we've come near the brink of global destruction. The possibility of nuclear Armageddon is very real. The possibility of our extinction due to environmental pollution is just as real and only a little bit slower than using fission or fusion. Certainly these man-made threats to life on Earth cast some doubt on the supremacy of human intelligence.
13
14 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
"So the situation is desperate, and I became acutely aware of that as I gazed at Earth from a quarter of a million miles away. It put a new perspective on things far beyond just the visual dimension. I could see the potential of the planet, if it were to function in accordance with the natural design of the Universe. I could see what Earth can be if Man could choose to make it so. Yet I knew back on Earth people were fighting, stealing, raping, deceiving—totally unaware of their individual part, or responsibility for, the possible future of the planet; just living unconsciously or distrustfully or greedily or callously or apathetically. And at the same time other people were living in poverty, ill-health, near-slavery, starvation, fear and misery from prejudice or outright persecution, because as individuals and as a planet we have not had the will to change these conditions. "As I said, those thoughts and perceptions stayed with me and worked on my mind. I could see the problem; but even more importantly, I began to see a solution. It's the only possible solution but it will be enormously difficult to achieve. The solution is: a global change of consciousness. "Man must rise from his present ego-centered consciousness to sense his intimate participation in the planet's functioning, and beyond that, in the functioning of the Universe. Otherwise we're doomed. It's as simple as that. It is not for the Universe to bow itself to man. It is for man, who inhabits an insignificant little planet, to find within himself, individually and collectively, ways to bring his consciousness into attunement with the Universe."
"Fear"; "prejudice"; "outright persecution" were some of the key terms in Mitchell's address. The reported facts in this book will bring into focus the rather startling conclusion that "human nature" really hasn't changed much since the Italian philosopher, Giordano Bruno, was burned alive at the stake in Rome, Feb. 17, 1600—almost four centuries ago. During those dark ages of the Inquisition, the concept of heresy was very much in vogue. Today we are inclined to feel secure and confident in the belief that we live in an enlightened and progressive age. Or are there still fields of endeavor in the present, considered to be scientific heresies? Perhaps the conspiracy of the Inquisition has only been replaced by a less spectacular, but by no means less effective, conspiracy of silence? At times it almost seems as though the religious dogmas of the past have been superseded by the more insidious scientific dogmas of our day. There can be little doubt that research reports and experimental results seeming to run counter to accepted viewpoints can be either actively suppressed or purposely ignored whenever they tend to challenge a tenuous, hard-won equilibrium .... Outsiders with the audacity to announce new findings—scientific pioneers daring to question the established foundations of tenets considered sacred and infallible remain highly suspect.
Foreword 15
"Prejudice! Outright persecution!" were some of the strong terms used in Mitchell's address. "Just living greedily ..." was another stern warning of that modern-day Savonarola of the space-age, Capt. Edgar D. Mitchell.
Between his warnings and the following statement made to a Congressional panel in Washington, May 1974, there could indeed be a connection pertaining to the present world energy crisis. It was made by Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate, who charged that American energy companies are actively blocking development of new forms of energy that threaten to cut into their profits:—"The energy industry is more interested in an energy source it controls." According to the AP newspiece, he also accused large oil companies of keeping devices from being developed through a 'suppression of technological efficiency':
"The fuel industry wants to sell oil, gas, coal and uranium. Yet with reasonable research and development programs this country could develop far more abundant, cleaner and safer energy sources," said Nader.*
Is it suppression or simply neglect by inertia? An American quip states that if there is anything more afraid of controversy than the average governmentfunded scientist, it is two of them. The reader will be able to decide for himself whether technological and scientific research into new energies is being suppressed or merely neglected. In the case of talent without power, versus power without talent, the documented reports, experiments and patents listed in this book will speak for themselves.
As an essential part of the introduction of this book a short review of the course of the history of inventions and discoveries is listed below. This rather shocking review, published in an Engineering Publication in 1963, caused the author to be "called on the carpet," receiving in his personnel file the admonition: "It is restated that any journalistic activity along this line should be submitted for approval through company management."
The Content of the "Objectionable" Historical Review follows:
"Late in the 16th century, Sir William Gilbert said, 'Science has done its utmost to prevent whatever science has done.' "
1. Only about 40 years ago, Professor Herman Oberth, the teacher of Dr. Wernher von Braun, offered his book, By Rocket to Interplanetary Space to about 10 different publishers. Each sent it back to him. Most had probably
*Source material: AP newspiece, May 23, 1974.
16 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
never read more than the title. A one-time expert, Geheimrat Spiess, who reviewed Oberth's book, wrote, "We believe the time has not yet come for delving into such problems as these—and indeed probably never will come."
2. In his day, professor Goddard was called "Moon-mad Goddard." But last July the House passed a bill to establish March 16 as National Goddard Day. This is the anniversary of the day in 1926 when Goddard launched the first successful liquid-fueled rocket. Yet NASA's Deputy Administrator, Dr. Hugh Dryden, reported in the May, 1962 Saturday Evening Post, "One day in April last year a distinguished group of medical men called on me to argue that men still did not have the basic research needed to risk launching astronaut Alan Shepard. Manned space flight, they claimed, was just not feasible yet. When I tried to explain that we had to learn by doing, they threatened to go over NASA's head to the President! The next day, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin went into orbit."
3. Conservatism is always the most formidable barrier to progress, and scientific truth is no respecter of recognized authorities. "It is assuredly most uncomfortable for scientists with a hard academic glaze to be confronted with an upsetting of the applecart," said Dr. George CO. Haas, himself a scientist. To refuse to see new facts, to impede progress, to curb science, is to imitate the cartographers of old Europe, who used to write on their maps at the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar): "Hie deficit orbis" (Here the World Ends).
4. The forces of Conservatism, often coupled with an astonishing and profound lack of humility, are so strong that many scientists wilh'ngly believe that facts which cannot be explained by current theories do not exist. In 1830 the Royal Medical Society claimed, "The fast movement of trains causes terrific mental disturbances to the travellers as well as to the onlookers" Contemporary scientists laughed at Luigi Galvani and his electrical principles. Galileo was considered crazy by his contemporaries when he taught that the earth moves about the sun. The church pointed him out as a heretic and promptly excommunicated him.
5. Franklin was the subject of laughter at the English Academy of Science when he reported his discovery of the lightning rod. They refused to print his report. When the first telephone was on exhibition in the Academy of Science in Paris, one of the most honorable professors declared it a fake and ventriloquism!
6. Count Zeppelin, inventor of the steerable balloon, was ridiculed in 1902 on a German Engineer Day in Kiel. Paracelsus, the great physician with revolutionary ideas, was persecuted and his books were burned. Finsen, discoverer of the curative power of ultra-violet rays, was persecuted too ... yet after his death a monument was errected in his honor.
Foreword 17
7. The possibility of "stones falling from heaven" (meteoric iron) was vehemently denied by the great Gassendy, although a big piece of still-hot
meteorite iron was brought to him. The French scientists Bertholon and Vaudin did the same, disregarding certified proof of a meteor-fall with the signatures of the mayor and 200 witnesses.
8. In the early thirties, scientists of note wrote positively that any attempt to
exploit the energy contained in the nucleus would be doomed to failure
because the energy derived from disintegration would be less than that re
quired to bring about that disintegration.
9. Admiral William D. Leahy, then Chief of Staff to the President, had this to say about the atom bomb: "That is the biggest fool thing we have ever
done. The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives."
(The Truman Memoirs) A short time later, an atomic bomb vaporized a hundred thousand people.
T.H. Huxley once said, "The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority as such; for every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority." And Charles F. Kettering, the famous inventor, commented on the same subject by stating, "In research, you need a lot of intelligent ignorance. When you begin to think you know all about any subject, it stops your progress dead in that subject. It is not the things you don't know that hurt you . . . it's the things you think you know for sure that are not so."
Napoleon is supposed to have said once:
"Impossible? Ce mot n'est pas français!"
(Impossible? This word is not French!)
Well, neither is it desirable in any other language. Especially not in the language of scientific investigation!
THE AMERICAN SCENE
Taking Inventory:
TAKING INVENTORY
HOW MUCH IS ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN IN SCIENCE?
"Don't keep forever on the public road, going only where others have gone. Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. You will be certain
to find something you have never seen before . . . ."
Alexander Graham Bell
The nuclear scientist Dr. Edward Teller has a favorite story he likes to tell: "When Columbus took off, the purpose of the exercise was to improve relations with China. Now, that problem has not been solved to this very day, but look at the by-products!" A close reexamination of the historical growth of today's scientific dogmas or commonly accepted 'fundamental concepts reveals likewise some surprising facts, surfacing as the by-products of such a historical review. Starting with the velocity of light, we will find for instance the following facts, revealing some glaring discrepancies in comparison to the claims of contemporary textbooks.
THE SPEED OF LIGHT
Claim:—Nothing can exceed the speed of light in vacuum, which is a constant 186,000 miles per second (Or 299,792 km/sec.)
Facts:—The Danish astronomer Olaf Roemer announced the calculation of the speed of light to the Academy of Sciences in Paris in 1676. He had calculated the velocity as 227,000 km/sec, or 141,000 miles per second. In 1926, Prof. A.A. Michelson flashed light between mirrors on mountain peaks 22 miles apart and clocked the speed at 182,284 miles per second. To ob
21
22 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
a more accurate figure, he directed the construction of a tube a mile long at Pasadena, California so that the speed of light could be measured in a vacuum. After his death in May 1931, the task was carried on by two other scientists. In 1932, the light measurements showed such marked discrepancies with previous results as to occasion a distress call to the U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey, whose surveyors repeatedly remeasured the length of the
tube and found no error. Variations of 12 miles per second and more were recorded. The speed seems to vary with the season and also in a shorter cycle lasting about two weeks.* Finally, the scientists ended by taking an average of all the readings, which was announced in 1934 as 186,271 miles per second.
The Special Theory of Relativity began by assuming the velocity of light in a vacuum to be a fundamental and unvarying constant. (Einstein in 1905) The same theory postulates that the velocity of light is the ultimate speed limit. At that speed, mass would become infinite. Not so, claims Dr. J.H. Sutton of NASA, who is concerned with finding clues toward a better understanding of gravity. Einstein's equations only make it impossible to find enough energy to accelerate a particle of finite mass to a speed greater than that of light. A particle "born" with a speed in excess of c (speed of light) is not prevented by relativity from continuing on its way! The discovery of new particles in nuclear physics challenges Einstein's theories. In 1967, Prof. Gerald Feinberg, a theoretical physicist at Columbia University, New York, published his new theory concerning tachyons, a word derived from the Greek "Tachyos" = fast. Feinberg supplied mathematical proof that these particles move infinitely fast, but become slower as they approach the speed of light. (Published in PHYSICAL REVIEW, 1967). On August 28, 1970, two British scientists, John Allen and Geoffrey Endean announced their discovery of an E/M field in which particles move at a speed of about twice that of light. According to these scientists, the characteristics of this particular E/M field alone "would prove erroneous Einstein's theory." In 1974, Dr. Marcel Pages, doctor of nuclear engineering and medicine in France; a founder-member of C.I.R.G., an international research center for gravitation; created in Rome, Italy, in 1961, published his important book, "Le Défi de L'anti-gravitation" (The Challenge of Antigravitation) which
states calculated fields with speeds superior to the speed of light are possible. Some of Dr. Pages' scientific articles in "Revue Française D'Astronautique" have been translated by the NASA translation service for the benefit of NASA researchers.
""Mystery of Variation in Speed of Light," in Popular Science Monthly, March 1934, p. 25 (USA)
How Much is ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN in Science? 23
The Gravitational Constant
Claim:—The acceleration of gravity, G, is constant, at any location. For instance the weight of one kg. near the surface of the earth where the acceleration of gravity is 9.8 m/sec. every second, is 9.8 Newtons.
Remark:—If the gravitational constant holds true, then the weight of an object is proportional to its mass. However, while weight and mass are proportional to one another, it should be noted that they are different entities. Weight is the vertical force of gravity, mass is an inertial property. The mass of an object referred to in the law of gravitation is called gravitational mass, in contrast to inertial mass. Einstein used the seeming equality of the inertial and gravitational mass as a basis for the general theory of relativity. Facts:— Dr. Erwin J. Saxl, a one-time student of Albert Einstein, proved in his experiments that the assumption of gravitational constant is incorrect and obsolete (See Sec. No. 5: "The Gravitational Constant is not constant at all"). Dr. Saxl was able to verify that gravity and electricity do in fact interact under dynamic conditions. In 1968, Dr. Saxl's claims were unexpectedly confirmed from another corner of the world by a dissertation from the Karl Marx University in Leipzig. Titled (translated) "About the influence of electrostatic fields on the periods of gravitational pendulae," this thesis by one Harald Fischer from Taucha DDR, (German Democratic Republic) is available at the university library in Mainz, West Germany. Like a chain reaction, the fundamental definition for inertia enters the changing picture when we hear about the late French Nobel Prize winner in physics, Gabriel Lippmann (1908) and his assertion that an ordinary atom in the normal state has inertia only because it has certain electrical properties, more precisely a net positive charge effect; small as it may be. He too demonstrated the validity of the principle when he found that bodies in the charged state offered a greater resistance to acceleration than when they were uncharged, thus altering the inertial properties of these bodies. His experiments were quickly and conveniently "forgotten" since they undermined the established scientific "laws" involving mass and inertia. Prof. Hermann Oberth, the teacher of space scientist Dr. Wernher von Braun, stated in a private letter of Nov. 5, 1970 to this author: "I am inclined to believe, more and more, that inertia, gravity and energy represent merely different sides of one and the same thing. Similar to the fact that one cannot very well dissect my person and then claim: This is the Professor, this is the Hermann, and this is the Oberth."
24 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
Returning again to Dr. Saxl's work, this short excursion into strange territory could be concluded by repeating that the gravitational constant can apparently be altered and modified by electrical forces. Or to put it more bluntly: it appears now certain that the force of gravity can be altered, influenced and even reversed by electrical forces. This bold assertion may serve as the icebreaker and introduction for the experiments reported in the following chapter.
A DRAMATIC REPORT
There is a strange report on the shelves of an American Technical library, the Pacific Aeronautical Library in Los Angeles, 7660 Beverly Boulevard. Datelined April 8, 1952, its author is listed as Mason Rose, Ph.D., formerly President of the now defunct "University for Social Research" in California. Surprisingly, it is not classified as CONFIDENTIAL or SECRET, although its implications can only be compared to those of a rough, uncut diamond in value. Illustrated with simple, freehand sketches, this so-called "nomograph for human technoloy" portrays the findings of Professor Biefeld of Denison University and T. Townsend Brown, his protege, concerning the coupling effects between electricity and gravitation. A summary of the report follows:
THE FLYING SAUCER
A Simplified Explanation of the Application of the Biefeld-Brown Effect to the Solution of the Problem of Space Navigation.*
by Mason Rose, Ph.D., President University for Social Research
The scientist and layman both encounter a primary difficulty in understanding the Biefeld-Brown effect and its relation to the solution of the flying saucer mystery.
*A copy of the original report is in the possession of the author.
25
26 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
This difficulty lies in the fact that scientist and layman alike think in electromagnetic concepts, whereas the Biefeld-Brown effect relates to electrogravitation.
Neither scientist nor layman can be expected to know the details of electrogravitation, in as much as it is a comparatively recent and unpublished development. Townsend Brown is the only known experimental scientist in this new area of scientific development. Thus anyone who wishes to understand electrogravitation and its application to astronautics must be prepared to lay aside the commonly known principles of electromagnetics in order to grasp the essentially different principles of electrogravitation. Electrogravitation must be understood as an entirely new field of scientific endeavor and technical development, which does not obey the known principles of electromagnetism. Perhaps the best way to gain an understanding of electrogravitation is to review the evolutionary development of electromagnetism. From the smallest atom to the largest galaxy, the Universe operates on three basic forces—namely, electricity, magnetism, and gravitation. These three forces can be represented as follows:
ELECTRICITY
MAGNETISM GRAVITATION
Taken separately, neither is of much practical use. Electricity by itself is static electricity, and therefore functionless. It will make your hair stand on end, but that is about all. Magnetism by itself has few practical applications aside from the magnetic compass, whereas gravity simply keeps objects and people pinned to the earth. However, when these are coupled to work in combination with each other, almost endless technical applications arise. To date, our total electrical development is based on the coupling of electricity with magnetism, which provides the basis for the countless uses we make of electricity in modern societies.
A Dramatic Report (T.T.Brown) 27
Faraday conducted the first productive empirical experiments with electromagnetism around 1830, and Maxwell did the basic theoretical work in 1865. The application of electromagnetism to microscopic and submicroscopic particles was accomplished by Max Planck's work in quantum physics about 1890; then in 1905 Einstein came forward with Relativity, which dealt with gravitation as applied to celestial bodies and universal mechanics. It is principally out of the work of these four great scientists that our electrical developments ranging from the simple light bulb to the complexities of nuclear physics have emerged. Then, in 1923, Professor Biefeld of Denison University suggested to his protege, Townsend Brown, certain experiments which led to the discovery of the Biefeld-Brown Effect, and, ultimately, to the electrogravitational energy spectrum. After twenty-eight years of investigation by Brown, it appeared that for each electromagnetic phenomenon there exists an electrogravitational analogue. From the technical and commercial viewpoint, this means that the potential for future development is as great or greater than that of the entire present electrical industry! Consider only that electromagnetism is basic to telephone, telegraph, radio, television, radar, electric generators, motors, and power production and transmission. Secondarily, it is indispensible to transportation of all kinds. One does not then have to stretch the imagination far to foresee a parallel development in the electrogravitational field!
The first empirical experiments by Townsend Brown had the characteristic simplicity which has marked most other great scientific advancements, and concerned the behavior of a condenser when charged with electricity. The startling revelation was that, if placed in free suspension with the poles horizontal, the condenser, when charged, exhibited a forward thrust toward the positive pole! A reversal of polarity caused a reversal of the direction of thrust.
Uncharged Charged Charged
28 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
Further development ot the implications of this phenomenon illustrated an "antigravity" effect. When balanced on a beam balance, and then charged, the condenser moves. If the positive pole is up, the condenser moves up (i.e., becomes "lighter"); if the positive pole is pointed down, it moves down (becomes "heavier").
These two simple experiments demonstrate what is now known as the Biefeld-Brown effect. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first method known of affecting a gravitational field by electrical means, and may contain the seeds of the control of gravity by Mankind. The intensity of the effect is determined by five factors. 1. The separation of the plates of the condenser—closer plates, greater effect. 2. The higher the "K" factor, the greater the effect. ("K" is a measure of the ability of a material to store electric energy in the form of elastic stress.) 3. The greater the area of the condenser plates, the greater the effect. 4. The greater the voltage (potential) difference between the plates, the greater the effect. 5. The greater the mass of the material between the plates (dielectric), the greater the effect.
It is this last point which is inexplicable from the electromagnetic viewpoint, and which provides the connection with gravitation.
On the basis of further experimental work, in 1926 Townsend Brown described what he called a "space car"—a method of flight presented for experiment while motor-propelled planes were yet in a very primitive stage. Further, if we consider that thrust is produced with no moving parts, we could conjecture that control of such a mechanism, or vehicle, could be possible merely by governing the direction and magnitude of the polarities surrounding the object. For example:
UNCHARGED CHARGED CHARGED
A Dramatic Report (T.T. Brown) 29
Forward-Up Forward-Down Reverse-Up Reverse-Down
Knowing that the "saucer" always moves toward its positive pole, control is accomplished simply by varying the orientation of the positive charge. That is, by switching charges, rather than by dynamic control surfaces. The direction of movement would be a vector sum (added average) of the direction and amount of negative and positive charges acting on such a body. By experiment, Brown had developed an electrostatic propulsion method which was proven on a scale model going around a stationary pole (Pat. No. 2,949,550). There seemed to be no limit to the speed possible, when run in a vacuum, and the machine had to be shut off before it developed enough inertia to fly apart under those conditions. Further, the evolutionary development dictated that the plan view most appropriate for the best results was circular—being developed along the lines shown below. (Lines left of the figure indicates the positive electrode, the "disc" itself being electrically negative.)
1. 2. 3. 4.
After working with the problem of horizontal thrust, Brown developed a profile shape which would be most efficient to shape the resulting electrogravitational field for maximum lift. The final profile was approximately the shape shown here.
30 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
There are two other problems inherent in the attempt to produce a viable flying machine by these basic principles; one is the problem of directional control—the other, the question of stability, of which more will be said in a later chapter. Directional control (as well as forward speed) could be achieved, in part, through the use of segmented structure, whereby a turning effect, or rotational effect, could be imparted to the mechanism by switching in different segments.
Top View
Side View
Charged Rim Segments
Charge is shifted to change direction
Note that the upper plate is charged positive, the lower, negative, for lift: Resultant direction between thrust and lift is indicated by arrows.
With these basic operations in mind, let us recall that the first recorded report of a disc-shaped object in the sky dates back to the Sixteenth Century (excluding Biblical references in the Book of Ezekiel, and folklore.) At long intervals in the interim, other reports enter the stream; most of them probably distorted by telling and retelling. In the older reports, as well as in the numerous series which has accumulated since 1947, there is a tantalizing common thread concerning appearance and behavior which makes any certainty about the "unreality" of flying saucers most debatable. 1. There is, in most cases, no method of propulsion which can readily be understood. No propellors. On occasion, a long flame jet trailing behind a cigar-shaped object, which is usually orange-red in color (indicating an inefficient combustion), which in turn would make it ineffective as a reaction jet such as we know in rockets and jet planes. 2. Descriptions show a range of speeds from stationary hovering to speeds greater than present-day rockets can deliver. Changes in rate of motion, direction, and the resultant stresses seem beyond the capabilities of any vehicles we know of today, operating within our currentlyaccepted framework of Newtonian physics. The accelerations, within this system of thought, would impose impossible stresses on any occupants. 3. Reports of night sightings describe a glow, usually blue or violet color, around the periphery of the object. Physicists have noted that
A Dramatic Report (T.T.Brown) 31
such a glow is one characteristic of a very high voltage electrical discharge. 4. Description of shapes and performance seems to indicate a complete disregard of currently understood aerodynamic principles. The objects seem to be independent of the fluid (air—in some cases, water) thru
which they move. They seem to need no specially formed surfaces to interact dynamically with the fluid to generate pressure differences, and thus, "lift."
Let us now review these observations in the light of what we know of the Biefeld-Brown Effect.
1. No understood method of propulsion. —The "Saucers"made by Brown have no moving parts at all. They create a modification of the gravitational-electrical field about themselves, which is somewhat analogous to putting them on the incline of a hill. They act as a surfboard on a wave; the electrostatic activity apparently creating a local distortion of the gravitational field, down which the vehicle "slides." 2. Tremendous accelerations and changes of direction. —According to current thinking and technology, both machine and occupants would endure unbearable stresses. "Not so," says Brown. No stresses would be felt, since craft, occupants, and load respond equally to the wave-like distortion of the local gravitational field as a unit. In a plane, the propellor pumps air backward, and by reaction moves itself forward. The reaction against the propellor is transferred to the frame of the aircraft, which then shoves occupants and load forward, contrary to their natural tendency to move at a constant rate in a constant direction. In the saucer, the entire assembly moves in unison in response to the locally modified gravitational field. (Our nearest analogy would be in going down in an elevator. When the elevator starts down, both elevator and its occupants share a gravitational tendency to move down, and they do so without any shoving or stresses between elevator and passengers. If acceleration is controlled smoothly enough, there is barely any perceptible sensation of movement.) 3. Brown's discs require a highly-charged leading edge, the positive pole. Such a charged edge produces a visible corona. On the largest models made, this develops a decided bluish-violet glow, easily visible in darkness or dim light. A full-scale ship would be expected to produce a spectacular corona effect, visible for miles. 4. Independence of aerodynamic effects. —The ionized air generated by the positive pole ahead of the disc
32 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
Thomas Townsend Brown
A Dramatic Report (T.T.Brown) 33
would tend to create a partial vacuum—sort of a "buffer zone" permitting movement of the air out of the way of the moving object (which we conjecture is being; driven by an altered electrostatic field interacting with earth's gravitational field in some way.) It needs no air for lift. 5. Finally, when Brown turned his attention to improved ways of gencrating high voltages, the most promising new method was the use of a flame jet to convey negative charges astern! This flame was relatively inefficient as a generator when it was adjusted for the best combustion of the fuel; but if it. was adjusted to orange-red, indicating incomplete combustion of the fuel, it conveyed the charges very efficiently, and set up the required negative space charge behind the craft!
We here refer the interested reader to Professor Dudley's experiments with rockets (Pat. No. 3,095,167) and its application to points four and five above. It should be noted that in a jet plane or guided missile the extra weight added to create the Biefeld-Brown electrogravitational effect, (or, in the methods of Dr. Dudley), would be well compensated for by the additional thrust created by the movement of the vehicle toward the positive field created in front of it. Dudley's rockets achieved heights of up to six times the normal, utilizing the same propulsive charge.
A short summary of T. Townsend Brown
While questioning the basis of the above report, the existence of Denison University can quickly be established; and it is equally possible to verify a former faculty member as a Professor Paul Biefeld. A careful survey, following Dr. Rose's report, revealed that Denison University in Granville, Ohio, was founded in 1831 as a religious institute of learning. The library of the university verified that a Prof. Paul Alfred Biefeld did serve as a member of the faculty there. The 1944 edition of American Men of Science states that (page 45) Prof. Paul A. Biefeld was born in Konigswalde, Germany, March 22, 1867; received his Ph.D. in Zurich, 1900, and became assistant to Prof. H.F. Weber in Switzerland. From 1900 to 1906 he served as professor of physics, mathematics, and electrical engineering at the Technical School in Hildburghausen, Germany, and from 1911 to 1936 as professor of Astronomy and Director of Swasey Observatory, Denison, Ohio. His specialties are listed as physics and electrical engineering. The U.S. Patent Office in Washington confirms the granting of 6 different patents to a Mr. Thomas Townsend Brown: the first, issued on September 25, 1934, for an electrostatic motor. The last, under Patent No. 3,187,206,
34 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
June 1, 1965, for an electrokinetic apparatus. The patent contents in turn confirm the basic legitimacy of the claims made in Dr. Rose's report of Section 1. It is a rather disconcerting commentary that the vast majority of aerospace engineers and scientists have never heard of Brown's work; nor, apparently, have the fortunate few who have, grasped its significance. (A 1956 article in a well-known international magazine for aviation and astronautics published in three languages a summary of Brown's finding under the title "Towards Flight Without Stress or Strain—or Weight.") We find that Thomas Townsend Brown was born in 1905, the son of a rather well-to-do family in Eastern Ohio. One of the mysterious discoveries of that period was the "X-ray"; and apparently Thomas had wondered whether this could possibly be a key to space travel. He purchased a Coolidge X-ray tube to begin his experiments, since this mysterious machine of Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen was far more fascinating •to the youth of that time than it is today. After all, didn't X-rays permit photography through walls, and even through the human body? Thomas carefully mounted his X-ray tube in a balance, like a telescope; and by pointing it in different directions, he somehow hoped to find a variation in the power of the tube or in the strength of the X-rays it generated. A wild idea, perhaps, but curiosity must be satisfied! However, no matter how he oriented his tube, there appeared to be no difference in power output—no variation in the strength of the X-rays. BUT—and here is where the genius for careful observation comes in—he did notice something rather unexpected. The Coolidge-tube generated a type of thrust, as if it wanted to move! He soon learned that this tendency to move was not produced by the X-rays as such, but was a "by-product" of the high voltage, which the tube required. He made certain that the force was not one of the already known effects of high voltage, finding instead that it acted like a mass force—like gravity! Extending his investigations, Brown designed and fabricated an apparatus called a "gravitor." This was essentially a multiple capacitor—and perhaps indeed an optimistic designation. But when the apparatus was put on a scale and connected to fifty thousand volts D.C., the scale indicated either again or a loss of one percent of weight! This gain or loss depended only on whether the "Gravitor" was oriented with the positive or the negative side upwards. Though local newspapers reported this experiment, no scientist expressed the slightest interest. Badly disappointed, Brown decided to enroll in a University as a Freshman, in order to gain the prerequisites for recognition of his discovery. His
A Dramatic Report (T.T.Brown) 35
first school year showed him to be an excellent laboratory man and mathematician. At the end of the year he set up the "Gravitor" in his quarters, inviting all faculty members who could reasonably be expected to have some interest in his discovery to witness a demonstration of the electro-gravitational force. Not a single member showed up! Brown, deeply hurt by what he felt to be high-handed treatment, quit school and joined the Navy. Completing his technical education, he wrote his first paper in August of 1929, describing his discovery in Science and Invention as "How I Control Gravitation." A subtitle explained how the article dealt with the meaning of "Field Theories" and the relationships between electro-dynamics and gravitation. Experimental confirmation and practical results were given: "Dr. Einstein's announcement of his recent work has spirited the physicists of the entire world to locate and demonstrate—if possible—any structural relationship between electro-dynamics and gravitation . . . . The writer (Brown) and his colleagues anticipated the situation as early as 1923, and began to construct the necessary theoretical bridge between the two then separate phenomena—electricity and gravitation. "Since the first tests, the apparatus and methods used have been greatly improved and simplified. Molecular gravitors made of solid blocks of massive dielectric have given greater efficiency. Rotors and pendulums operating under oil have minimized atmospheric considerations of pressure, temperature, and humidity, Disturbing effects of ionization, electron emission, and pure electro-statics have likewise been carefully analyzed and eliminated. After years of refinement in methods, we succeeded in observing the gravitational variations produced by the moon and sun, and the much smaller variations produced by the different planets. It is a curious fact that the effects are most pronounced when the affecting body is in the alignment of the differently charged elements, and least pronounced when it is at right angles I"
"Much of the credit for this research is due Dr. Paul Alfred Biefeld, Director of Swasey Observatory. The writer (Brown) is deeply indebted to him for his assistance and for many valuable and timely suggestions." Brown concluded his paper, "The Gravitor, in all reality, is a very efficient motor. Unlike other forms of motors it does not in any way involve the principles of electromagnetism, but instead it utilizes the principles of electro-gravitation. A simple gravitor has no moving parts, but is apparently capable of moving itself from within itself. It is highly efficient for the reason that it uses no gears, shafts, propellors, or wheels in creating its motive power. It has no internal mechanical resistance and no observable rise in temperature. Contrary to the common
36 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
belief that gravitational motors must necessarily be vertical acting, the gravitor, it is found, acts equally well in every conceivable direction,
"While the gravitor is at present primarily a scientific instrument—perhaps even an astronomical instrument—it also is rapidly advancing to a position of commercial value . . . multi-purpose gravitors weighing hundreds of tons may propel the ocean liners of the future. Smaller and more concentrated units may propel automobiles and even airplanes. Perhaps even the fantastic 'space cars' and the promised visit to Mars may be the final outcome. Who can tell?" The reader will bear in mind that when this paper was published in 1929, the term "UFO" and the observed E/M effects of these mechanisms were both completely unknown! By mid-WW Π, Mr. Brown's scientific ability and reputation as a brilliant engineer had catapulted him to the rank of Lieutenant Commander, and Commanding Officer of the U.S. Navy Radar School at Norfolk, Virginia. Working too many hours, he finally collapsed. Retiring from the Navy, he was able to recuperate after a period of six months, and accepted a position with Lockheed-Vega. In the ensuing years, he never again, on his own initiative, attempted to interest anyone in his discovery of electro-gravitation. When questioned by his colleagues concerning his experiments, he would refer to them only in terms of "stress in dielectrics"—a pertinent paraphrase, but one sounding much less sensational. After the war, a group of Navy students at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, repeated the experiments under the guidance of an engineer friend of Brown's. In the presence of U.S. Admiral Radford, the experiment succeeded, and Brown was congratulated for his discovery. Though his colleagues were immensely proud of him, despite the fact that the lifting force was still quite small, no one in the academic world seemed to evidence any interest. Not easily discouraged either, his friends arranged demonstrations to the business world and for governmental officials. The experiments were noted to be "interesting," but considered "of little commercial value." The support his friends had hoped for did not materialize. Even the late Dr. Robert Alillikan, invited to attend a demonstration of influencing gravitational forces, was reported to have said, "Such a thing is impossible and out of the question." Brown's friends eventually concluded that scientists in America were intellectually inert, and arranged to have Brown go to Europe in hopes of finding more perceptive interest there. In England and France, he received encouraging commentaries and was written up in Air and Space magazines; however, the expected recognition
A Dramatic Report (T.T.Brown) 37
for his breakthrough did not materialize. Meanwhile, a small corporation was organized to carry out further work without depending on federal financial support. Applications for over 75 patents in 12 major countries were initiated. Lift, or gravitational force, was slowly increased until one particular type of apparatus was capable of lifting itself directly when voltage was applied. At about this time, T.T. Brown secrns to have made "the mistake of his life." He showed an interest in the newly-reported phenomenon of "Unidentified Flying Objects," and founded the Organization NICAP in Washington, D.C., September, 1956. The doors of America's scientific press clanged shut, arid the "Conspiracy of Silence" took precedence, before all else!
COMMENTARY ON T.T. BROWN'S WORK
In the spring of 1956, the internationally known aviation magazine INTERAVIA in Genf, Switzerland, published a sensational article, "Towards Flight Without Stress or Strain . . . or Weight," which carried the editiorial remark: "The following article is by an American journalist who has long taken a keen interest in questions of theoretical physics and has been recommended to the Editors as having close connections with scientific circles in the United States. The subject is one of immediate interest and INTERAVIA would welcome further comment from initiated sources." On the first page of this particular article, a photo is displayed with the caption, "The American scientist, Townsend T. Brown has been working on the problems of electro-gravitics for more than thirty years. He is seen here demonstrating one of his laboratory instruments, a disc-shaped variant of the two-plate condenser." The article states, "Electro-gravitics research, seeking the source of gravity and its control, has reached a stage where profound implications for the entire human race begin to emerge. Perhaps the most startling and immediate implication of all involved aircraft, guided missiles, atmospheric and free space flight of all kinds . . . and towards the long-term progress of mankind and man's civilization, a whole new concept of electro-physics is being levered out into the light of human knowledge." Commenting on technical details of the work involved, it continues: "A localized gravitic field used as a ponderomotive force has been created in the laboratory. Disc airfoils two feet in diameter and incorporating a variation of the simple two-plate condenser charged to fifty kilovolts and a total continuous energy input of fifty watts have achieved a speed of seventeen feet per second in a circular course twenty feet in diameter . . . . More recently, these discs have been increased in diameter to three feet and run in a fifty-foot
38
Commentary on Brown's Work 39
diameter air course under a charge of 150 kilovolts, with results so impressive as to be highly classified. Variations of this work done under a vacuum have produced much greater efficiencies that can only be described as startling. Work is now under way developing a flame-jet generator to supply power up to fifteen million volts." "The most successful line of the electrogravitics research so far reported is that carried on by Townsend T. Brown, an American who has been researching gravity for over thirty years. He is now conducting research projects in the U.S. and on the Continent. He postulates that there is between electricity and gravity a relationship parallel and/or similar to that which exists between electricity and magnetism. And as the coil is the usable link in the case of electromagnetics, so is the condenser that link in the case of electro-gravitics. Years of successful empirical work have lent a great deal of credance to this hypothesis. The detailed implications of man's conquest of gravity are innumerable. In road cars, trains and boats, the headaches of transmission of power from the engine to the wheels or propellers would simply cease to exist. Construction of bridges and big buildings would be greatly simplified by temporarily induced weightlessness, etc." The author finally concludes with the carefully phrased remark, "Of course, there is always a possibility that the unexplained 3% of UFO's,'Unidentified Flying Objects' as the U.S. Air Force calls flying saucers,—are in fact vehicles so propelled, developed already and undergoing proving tests . . . but by whom, the U.S., Britain, or Russia? However, if this is so, it is the best-kept secret since the Manhattan Project, for this reporter has spent over two years trying to chase down work on gravitics, and has drawn from Government scientists and military experts the world over only the most blank of stares. This is always the way of exploration into the unknown."
A mere month or two later, a Frenchman named Lucien A.A. Gerardin, Head of the Nuclear Physics Section, Compagnie Française ThomsonHouston, in Le Raincy, France, published a follow-up to the Interavia article, entitled ELECTRO-GRAVITIC PROPULSION. As to the theoretical part of the problem, he says,—"For propulsion to be ideal a balance would have to be created on the atomic level. This is a new approach to the problem which has virtually no point of contact with the present solution. It would no longer be a matter of generating a force localized at one point, but a field of inertial forces roughly uniform in the whole of the region around the vehicle. With weight thus being balanced on the atom level, there would no longer be any limitation on the accelerations possible. As this field of forces is no longer strictly localized, the air adjacent to the vehicle will also be carried along. The heat barrier, ultimate limiting factor to the speed of present aircraft, will disappear. Actually, however, the field will decrea
40 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
distance from the generator increases. Thus only part of the air will be carried along; nevertheless the maximum speed obtainable will be very high." Proceeding then to considerations of nuclear physics, he continues,"Though electrically neutral in the mean, matter is built up of enormous quantities of negative electricity (electrons) and positive electricity (protons). An attempt may be made to explain gravitational attraction as due to a very small residue of interaction between electricized particles. Such an attempt at explanation must be guided by the specific characteristics of gravitation. Gravitation may then be connected with kinetic electromagnetic quantities, for example, the multi-polar moments in the nuclei. It is thus clear that knowledge of the nature of gravitational forces is closely connected with the nature of the atomic nucleus." "As Frederick J. Belinfante wrote in 1955, 'The discovery of many types of strange particles during recent years has drawn new attention to the fact that we really don't understand why those particles exist with the properties we observe'." "Why, for instance, is a proton 1,836 times heavier than an electron? Why is there no neutral mu-meson of mass 200? Why is hc/e2 equal to 137? An ultimate theory of matter should explain such things." Further considerations in the article by Monsieur Gerardin seem to be of interest principally to the scientifically trained reader. In concluding his paper, he is attempting to make a point: "In 1955 Anselm E. Talbert wrote in the New York Herald Tribune that up to now no scientist or engineer, so far as is known in scientific circles, has produced the slightest alteration in the magnitude or direction of gravitational force although many cranks and crackpots have claimed to be able to do this." But this certainly does not mean that the thing is impossible and that our century will not see vehicles with electro-gravitational propulsion. After all, it took only some ten years to reach industrial mastery of Atomic Energy. When referring to electro-gravitational propulsion (a problem which his company was the first to tackle in the United States) George S. Trimble, Vice-Président of the Glenn L. Martin Company said, "I think we could do the job in about the time that is actually required to build the first atomic bomb if enough trained scientific brain-power simultaneously began thinking about and working towards a solution. Actually the biggest déterrant to scientific progress is a refusal of some people, including scientists, to believe that things which seem amazing can really happen."
In connection with T.T. Brown's visit to Europe, the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society was daring enough to print a detailed commentary written by Mr. A.V. Cleaver, Assistant Chief Engineer of the Aero Engine Division of world-famous Rolls-Royce, Ltd. Headlined "ELECTRO
Commentary on Brown's Work 41
GRAVITICS, WHAT IT IS OR MIGHT BE." the article started as follows, "During the past two years, there can be few people in any way interested in either aeronautics or astronautics who have not encountered the unfamiliar term 'electro-gravities' and reacted to it with perplexity, amusement, skepticism, or perhaps a mixture of all three of these attitudes." "What are the facts," inquires Mr. Cleaver, "insofar as they are publicly known, or (as of this date) knowable?" "Well, they seem to amount to this; the Americans have decided to look into the old science-fictional dream of gravity control or anti-gravity—to investigate, both theoretically and (if possible) practically, the fundamental nature of gravitational fields and their relationship to electro-magnetic and other phenomena. And someone (unknown to the present writer) has apparently decided to call all this study by the high-sounding name of 'electro-gravities' . . . However, that the effort is in progress there can be little doubt. And, of course, it is entirely to be welcomed. On the other hand, our own Arthur C. Clarke tells me that he recently discussed the matter with a well-known American science journalist in New York and was assured that the whole business was a case of 'much ado about nothing' started by 'a bunch of engineers who don't know enough physics.' "It is much more probable that the work is, by modern standards, proceeding on a quite modest and exploratory scale, and that we simply have to wait and see how it will turn out. We can at least hope that, if the effort persists, the physicists in the long run may provide the essential new and basic knowledge for the 'ignorant' engineers to use. At any rate, there is one conclusion which can, even at this juncture, be stated with certainty. If any anti-gravity device is ever to be developed, the first thing needed is a new discovery in fundamental physics—a NEW PRINCIPLE—not a new invention or application of known principles, is required. New knowledge of the sort required might come from theoretical researchers in the more abstruse realms of mathematical physics, or from a more or less accidental experimental observation. Both these avenues have, in the past, led to fundamental scientific discoveries." Proceeding next to the problematical nature of gravity, Cleaver has this to say,—"Gravity is, in fact, a most mysterious and intractable phenomenon. It is perhaps doubtful whether many people, even technically-trained people, realize just how true this is or whether they notice the conspiracy of silence with which it is treated in most textbooks. One is almost reminded of a Polynesian 'taboo' or the Victorian attitude to certain things, like sex or certain parts and functions of the body, considered 'not quite nice.' The student is taught that all masses attract one another according to the law He learns that it governs the stability of the Universe and the various Newtonian equations which describe its effect, such as H=1/2 χ g x t2 .
42 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
However, unless he is a very specialized post-graduate student in pure science, he is likely not to be expected to accept the old idea of 'action at a distance'; and it is rather improbable that any of his teachers will draw his attention to our complete lack of knowledge of the physical relationship between gravitation and other phenomena, simply because we do know nothing, and the academic world apparently prefers not to advertise the fact!" "A great modern physicist, Max Born, once wrote, 'perhaps when we had a more complete knowledge of the interaction of forces in the atomic nucleus we should find that gravitation was the result of something left over, a sort of incomplete compensation.' "Having made the statement that 'in the past, a familiar pattern has been that new scientific advances have been pioneered over here, or on the Continent, and then exploited by our friends across the Atlantic. The basic science has been mainly European, even when the technology has become predominantly American, at least in its later stages'," Mr. Cleaver concluded his article with the comment, "If native Americans produce anti-gravity, by any method, then the achievement will also be notable for being one of the first major scientific discoveries or inventions to their credit. This is not meant in any derogatory sense, for the Americans might well rest content with their great reputation for the subsequent development and application on a vast scale of the ideas of others. Nevertheless, it remains a historical fact (possibly a historical accident) that more original thought has tended, in the past, to emanate from Europe, together (let us admit) with a lot of shortsightedness about its application." "Let us conclude then, by wishing our American cousins the greatest of good fortune with 'electro-gravitics.' If they succeed in producing an antigravity device, they will have revolutionized a good deal more than astronautics. Aeronautics, too, fairly obviously; but consider also the effects on the design and construction of buildings and other structures, the effect on the use of cranes, lifts, escalators, stairways; in fact, each and every kind of lifting device known to man. And the rocket, after all the work and hopes lavished upon it for a couple of generations, might go the astronautical way of the dirigible in aeronautics-a vehicle which never fulfilled its promise."
To render the foregoing more intelligible, the reader might well consider the following summary: Since all matter consist of atoms and each and every atom possesses an electro-positive nucleus (protons) surrounded by electronegative electrons, a typical atom is always in an electrically neutral field. However, if the atom is placed within the electrical field of a capacitor, its atomic field will become distorted, the nucleus being pulled in towards the negative plate, and the electron-field being pulled in the opposite direction,
Commentary on Brown's Work 43
towards the positive plate. Thus the normally symmetrical field of the atom becomes asymmetrical when placed in an electrical field and acquires the properties of a dipole with a polarity opposite that of the inducing field. It is for this reason that Townsend T. Brown preferred to call what is now known as the "Biefeld-Brown Effect" by the name "stress in dielectric material." Thus, according to Monsieur Lucien A.A. Gerardin again, gravitation might therefore possibly become a function of "kinetic electromagnetic phenomena within the atomic nuclei."
References:-1. INTERAVIA, Vol. XI, No. 12, 1956, pp. 992 (Switzerland) 2. JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH INTERPLANETARY SOCIETY, Vol. 16, 1957 pp. 84-94
ADDENDUM
Electron Cloud Displacement of Charge
Atom without
Applied Field Atom with Applied Field
ELECTROFLUIDMECHANICS: "A Study of Electrokinetic Actions in Fluids'" by Henry R. Velkoff. (Technical Report No. ASD TR 61-642)-not classified-Feb. 1962 p. 18 Propulsion Laboratory, Aeronautical Systems Division Air Force Systems Command Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio
"ELECTRIC WIND" IN A HARD VACUUM?
Some months following the German "Pilot" publication of this work, the author, Rho Sigma, succeeded in locating Brown's whereabouts. A letter from THE TOWNSEND BROWN FOUNDATION, LTD. Nassau, Bahamas, and dated February 14, 1973 arrived, carrying the following information, personally signed by T. Townsend Brown. (Only the introduction and complimentary closing passages are omitted.)
Dear (Rho Sigma), You have asked several questions which I shall try to answer. The experiments in vacuum were conducted at Soc. Nat. Construe, Aeronaut, in Paris in 1955-56, in the Bahnson Laboratories, Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 1957-58 and at the General Electric Space Center at King of Prussia, Penna. in 1959. Laboratory notes were made, but these notes were never published and are not available to me now. The results were varied, depending upon the purpose of the experiment. We were aware that the thrust on the electrode structures were caused largely by ambient ion momentum transfer when the experiments were conducted in air. Many of the tests, therefore, were directed to the exploration of this component of the total thrust. In the case of the G.E. test, cesium ions were seeded into the environment and the additional thrust due to the seeding was observed. In the Paris test miniature saucer type airfoils were operated in a vacuum exceeding 10~6 mm Hg. Bursts of thrust (towards the positive) were observed every time there was a vacuum spark within the large bell jar. These vacuum sparks represented momentary ionization, principally of the metal ions in the electrode material. The DC potential used ranged from 70 KV to 220 KV.
44
"ELECTRIC WIND" in a Hard Vacuum? 45
Condensers of various types, air dielectric and barium titanate were assembled on a rotary support to eliminate the electrostatic effect of chamber walls and observations were made of the rate of rotation. Intense acceleration was always observed during the vacuum spark (which, incidentally, illuminated the entire interior of the vacuum chamber.) Barium Titanate dielectric always exceeded air dielectric in total thrust. The results which were most significant from the standpoint of the BiefeldBrown effect was that thrust continued, even when there was no vacuum spark, causing the rotor to accelerate in the negative to positive direction to the point where voltage had to be reduced or the experiment discontinued because of the danger that the rotor would fly apart. In short, it appears there is strong evidence that the Biefeld-Brown effect does exist in the negative to positive direction in a vacuum of at least 10~6 Torr. The residual thrust is several orders of magnitude larger than the remaining ambient ionization can account for.
Going further in your letter of January 28th, the condenser "Gravitor" as described in my British patent, only showed a loss of weight when vertically oriented so that the negative-to-positive thrust was upward. In other words, the thrust tended to "lift" the gravitor. Maximum thrust observed in 1928 for one gravitor weighing approximately 10 kilograms was 100 kilodynes at 150 KV DC. These gravitors were very heavy, many of them made with a molded dielectric of lead monoxide and beeswax and encased in bakélite. None of these units ever "floated" in the air. There were two methods of testing, either as a pendulum, in which the angle of rise against gravity was measured and charted against the applied voltage, or, as a rotor 4 ft. in diameter, on which four "gravitors" were mounted on the periphery. This 4 ft. wheel was tested in air and also under transformer oil. The total thrust or torque remained virtually the same in both instances, seeming to prove that aero-ionization was not wholly responsible for the thrust observed. Voltage used on experiments under oil could be increased to about 300 KV DC and the thrust appeared to be approximately linear with voltage. In subsequent years, from 1930 to 1955, critical experiments were performed at the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C.; the RandallMorgan Laboratory of Physics, University of Penna., Philadelphia; at a field station in Zanesville, Ohio, and two field stations in Southern California, of the torque of multi-segmented rotors containing hi-K dielectrics. The torque was measured continuously day and night for many years. Large magnitude variations were consistently observed under carefully controlled conditions of constant voltage, temperature, under oil, in magnetic and electrostatic shields, not only underground but at various elevations. These variations, recorded automatically on tape, were statistically processed and several sig
46 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
nificant facts were revealed. There were pronounced correlations with mean solar time, sidereal time and lunar hour angle. This seemed to prove beyond a doubt that the thrust of "gravitors" varied with time in a way that related to solar and lunar tides and a sidereal correlation of unknown origin. These automatic records, acquired in so many different locations over such a long period of time, appear to indicate that the electrogravitic coupling is subject to an extra-terrestrial factor, possibly related to the universal gravitational potention or some other (as yet) unidentified cosmic variable.*"
In response to additional questions, a reply of T.T. Brown, dated April 5, 1973, stated: "The apparatus which lifted itself and floated in the air, which was described by Mr. Kitselman, was not a massive dielectric as described in the English patent. Mr. Kitselman witnessed an experiment utilizing a 15" circular, domeshaped aluminum electrode, wired and energized as in the attached sketch. When the high voltage was applied, this device, although tethered by wires from the high voltage equipment, did rise in the air, lifting not only its own weight but also a small balance weight which was attached to it on the underside. It is true that this apparatus would exert a force of upward of 110% of its weight.
The above experiment was an improvement on the experiment performed in Paris in 1955 and 1956 on disc airfoils. The Paris experiments were the same as those shown to Admiral Radford in Pearl Harbor in 1950. These experiments were explained by the scientific community as due entirely to "ion-momentum transfer," or "electric wind." It was predicted categorically by many "would-be" authorities that such an apparatus would not operate in vacuum. The Navy rejected the research proposal (for further research) for this reason. The experiments performed in Paris several years later, proved that ion wind was not entirely responsible for the observed motion and proved quite conclusively that the apparatus would indeed operate in high vacuum.
Later these effects were confirmed in a laboratory at Winston-Salem, N.C., especially constructed for this purpose. Again continuous force was observed when the ionization in the medium surrounding the apparatus was virtually nil. . . . In reviewing my letter of April 5th I notice, in the drawings which I attached, that I specified the power supply to be 50 KV. Actually, I should have indicated that it was 50 to 250 KV DC for the reason that the experiments were conducted throughout that entire range. The higher the voltage, the greater was the force observed. It appeared that, in these rough
*The reader is referred to the chapter "THE CASE FOR THE ETHER."
"ELECTRIC WIND" in a Hard Vacuum? 47
48 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
"ELECTRIC WIND" in a Hard Vacuum? 49
tests, that the increase in force was approximately linear with voltage. In vacuum the same test was carried on with a canopy electrode approximately 6" in diameter, with substantial force being displayed at 150 KV DC. I have a short strip of movie film showing this motion within the vacuum chamber as the potential is applied." Kindest personal regards,
Sincerely,
T. Townsend Brown.
THE GRAVITATIONAL CONSTANT IS NOT CONSTANT AT ALL! (Dr. Erwin J. Saxl)
Do we have further scientific confirmation of the validity of T. T. Brown's fundamental experiments that would indicate some form of interacting relationship between electricity and gravity? Indeed we do! A former student of Albert Einstein published the results of most convincing experiments in the reputable British Scientific Magazine NATURE,* July 11, 1964. The author, Dr. Erwin Saxl, of Harvard, Mass., and a native of Austria, felt justified in making the following statement:—"When working as a post-doctoral student with Einstein, we discussed the possibility that there were interrelations between electricity, inertial mass, and gravitation. These experimental results make me wonder whether they may properly be so interpreted." Dr. Saxl concluded his paper by expressing thanks to Professor Hans Thirring, who put on record the original disclosure of these findings before the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Dr. Saxl, a balding, heavy-set man with bushy brows, working quietly in his home laboratory for the past ten years, is well aware that he is making one of the most controversial scientific propositions of the century. If proven, it would mean a complete revision of current cosmological concepts and fundamental laws. His experiments, conducted with highly sophisticated and exquisitely sensitive electronic equipment, much of which he built himself with his own finances (in the neighborhood of $50,000), have indicated the presence of electro-gravitic forces—and he is firmly convinced that the equipment is not erroneous. However, partly because Dr. Saxl's work was privately financed, and not officially authorized or funded, the results were brushed aside—by at least some officials, according to information received by the author of this book—with the caustic remark, "Nutty!"
*An Electrically Charged Torque-pendulum, Dr. Erwin J. Saxl, NATURE, Vol. 203, July 11, 1964, p. 136-138, (England).
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The Gravitational CONSTANT is Not Constant At All! 51
For the lay reader, a short description of the research results was published by the Boston Sunday Globe, Boston, Mass., June 14, 1964, under the heading, "Gravity Not Constant, Einstein Pupil Makes Discovery." The report starts as follows:—"A one-time pupil of Albert Einstein has obtained experimental evidence that upsets one of the most firmly established concepts of modern physics, the Boston Globe and North American Newspaper Alliance have learned. He has found that the so-called 'gravitational constant'—a number heretofore believed to be unchanging—appears to vary under dynamic conditions. At the same time he has found evidence that gravity and electricity, until now believed completely unrelated, do in fact interact. If his experiments are confirmed, it will mean rewriting the books from start to finish. In sum, it will be one of the most important scientific discoveries in history, on a par with Newton's laws of gravity and Einstein's theories of relativity, adding a completely new dimension to both their concepts of the Universe." . . . "This is the first time" concluded the paper, "gravitation and electricity have been connected experimentally, and if the evidence could be confirmed its scientific import would be staggering."* " 'It would make possible, finally, a completely unified picture of the Universe,' states Dr. Saxl flatly." We may safely assume that this news reporter had never heard of T.T. Brown's experiments. Nor, apparently, did he know of Michael Faraday's statement given in a lecture to the Royal Academy on November 28, 1850—more than 125 years ago—: "Here end my trials for the present. The results are negative. They do^not shake my strong feeling of the existence of a relation between gravity and electricity, though they give no proof that such a relation exists. " (M.F., Philosophical Transactions, London, MDCCCLI, 1-6 Paragraphs 2702-2717). Over the years, certain exceptions to Newton's Laws of Gravitation have been found which were largely resolved and accounted for in Einstein's relativistic concepts. But even now, serious flaws exist in the current theoretical framework of our Universe. According to Newton, any two bodies in the Universe attract each other with a definite force that can be calculated by a constant immutable law. But now Dr. Saxl's experiments—undertaken under unique conditions—suggest something completely different. On the one hand, in the macrocosm of space, if the gravitational laws are valid, scientists are hard put to explain how the Universe could be expanding, as the so-called "red shift" makes it appear. Distances notwithstanding, the masses of entire galaxies are so enormous that they should have no choice but to contract. On the other hand, in the microcosmic world of atomic nuclei, the
*Gravity Not Constant, Einstein Pupil Makes Discovery, Boston Globe, Boston, Massachusetts, June 14, 1964 (USA).
52 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
distances between particles are so small that, in spite of the tiny masses, the nucleus should theoretically collapse. Thus, while Newton's · laws describe very nicely what goes on in the medium range, of sun and planets, missiles and space probes, at the extremes of large and small they run into trouble.
By introducing the concept of dynamic interaction between electricity and gravity, we come upon a new and breathtaking view, which could explain a great deal! In essence, what Dr. Saxl did is this: Instead of testing the gravitational constant in a motionless system, he set about to study it under dynamic conditions. He built a system which permitted a huge ceramic disc to rotate freely from a solid suspension, specifically designed and constructed to prevent vibration or any outside interference. Then he found a way of regenerating the rotation of this "pendulum" electronically under exceedingly precise control. Finally, using a light beam and a photo-electric cell, he succeeded in measuring the time it took the pendulum to swing over a certain arc with an accuracy of one part in 10 million! Putting his system to work in the middle of the night, to avoid as much disturbance as possible to his incredibly sensitive instruments, he determined whether a pendulum, given precisely the same starting impulse every time, would take exactly the same amount of time to swing over its arc. Since the mass of a pendulum does not change, the swing of the pendulum should be strictly a function of gravity, and, according to Newton's law, should not change. But—Saxl found—it does ! Groping for the answer to the variations he obtained in the gravitational force as reflected in the movement of the pendulum, he decided to see what would happen if the pendulum were charged with electricity. In his own words, "All hell broke loose!" Specifically, he found that when the pendulum is charged positively, it takes longer to swing through its arc than when it is charged negatively! Extensive additional experiments with his instruments indicated that there is a definite relationship between gravity and electricity, an association which had never before been made. This means, since the mass of the pendulum does not change, that the electricity must be interacting in some manner with the "force of gravitation" to influence the length of the swing. "In space we know there are billions of electron volts, and we're dealing with masses of fantastic magnitude," observes Dr. Saxl. "If my little pendulum, moving over such tiny distances and with such modest voltages shows a distinct electro-gravitic effect, what forces may be operating in intergalactic space where the parameters are multiplied infinitely in both electric charge and mass?" Likewise, in atomic structure, electro-gravitic forces may be playing a crucial role. Specifically, the apparently enormous concentrated mass of a
The Gravitational CONSTANT is Not Constant At All! 53
nucleus may well be much smaller than now caluclated, as a result of electro-gravitic interaction. This would be an entirely satisfactory explanation for why they do not collapse.
Dr. Saxl concludes that one possibility is that the Universe is permeated by "electro-gravitic force fields," which influence the speed of light traveling millions and millions of light years through space and produces the red shift. Thus, the Universe may only appear to be expanding—though in reality it is not. "It will be hard for many scientists to swallow this," he told the Globe, "just as it is hard for them to accept any new experimental findings of a fundamental nature. But I know Einstein, for one, would have welcomed this experimental evidence with open arms. Back in Berlin he once told me that he'd give anything to find some precise factors tying gravitation in with electricity!"
A great deal has happened since the report appeared in the Boston Globe. Major improvements were made in the system of instrumentation of the data recorded automatically and fed into an IBM 370 computer. The observations proceed without manual monitoring. The isoelastic suspension wire is kept at a constant temperature. With the long runs thus made possible, periodicities are uncovered. Variations in period which have been consistently observed for many years continue to appear. These may require an extension of present gravitational theory, claims Dr. Saxl.
He also discussed his research with the late Dr. James E. McDonald. In a private communication, he states: "I was sorry to learn about the demise of Dr. McDonald. He was in my darkroom. He saw the instruments together with some reprints and extensive data in some of my note-books. He was most encouraging." Dr. Saxl's experiments continue to shake the foundations of contemporary dogma. So his fellow-scientists look tactfully the other way, pretending they do not exist.
"AN ENTIRELY NEW DISCOVERY IN FUNDAMENTAL PHYSICS. . ."
PROJECT OUTGROWTH: Advanced Propulsion Concepts
PROJECT OUTGROWTH is the open technical report AFRPLTR-72-31, dated—June 1972, by a special group of 28 members of the U.S. Air Force Systems Command, Edwards, California, attempting to predict major propulsion developments in the near future. The report deals with advanced concepts like field propulsion" in order to define their potential. A summary closes with the significant statement that the report was "designed to encourage and motivate talented and interested scientists and engineers once again to strive for 'advanced propulsion concepts'." Among others, the following selected categories are listed on field propulsion:
Electrostatic Effects Alfven Wave Propulsion Electromagnetic Spacecraft Propulsion Superconducting Particle Accelerator Antigravity Propulsion
Field Propulsion concepts are those which use electric and/or magnetic effects. It is in the area of field propulsion that the most revolutionary concepts appear. "The ability to perform objective analyses of many of these ideas was diminished because underlying principles governing transition from the known to the unknown are obscure. The category of field propulsion probably contains more ideas than any other concept area."
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"An Entirely New Discovery in Fund. Physics ..." 55
The section titled: Antigravity Propulsion describes the control of gravitational forces of the earth and other celestial bodies as a method of propulsion and lists as its main attributes:
1. Infinite specific impulse 2. Near speed of light velocities attainable 3. Minimum damage to environment 4. Economic exploitation of space
The report notes, "Before attempting to control gravity, it will be necessary to know exactly what causes gravity. Many reputable scientists, including Michael Faraday, Max Born, and Albert Einstein, have attempted to explain this phenomenon by relating electromagnetic and gravitational forces. Other scientists are convinced that an entirely new discovery in fundamental physics is necessary for a full understanding of gravity. Physicists generally assume a relationship between electromagnetism and gravity because both obey the inverse-square law which says that the force of both fields decreases with the distance in the same mathematical relationship." "There are some intriguing differences between the two forces, however, since electromagnetism consists of two identifiable components,—an electrical field and a magnetic field—while, gravity appears to have only one component. In addition, electrical charges can repel and attract, while gravity always attracts." As the French mathematical physicist Borel wrote, "There was, however, something rather strange in this phenomenon of gravitation, something that distinguished it from other physical phenomena. This was its utter immutability and its absolute independence of all external actions. Light is arrested by opaque bodies, deviated by prisms and lenses; electrical and magnetic actions are modified by the neighborhood of certain bodies; gravitation alone remains always the same . . . "
HONESTLY NOW: WHAT 75 GRAVITATION?
"I would expect the next decade of research to be as momentous for gravitational theory as the decade 1925-1935 was for the Quantum Theory."
(Dr. J.W. Gardner, 1969)
Although taken for granted by all of us, gravity is a mysterious force if there ever was one. It is under constant scrutiny by searching scientists. Present—day concepts include gravitational waves, gravitons and comparable theories. The "Gravity Research Foundation" in the USA, a "European Center for Gravitational Research" and similar organisations and foundations are attempting to solve the riddle surrounding this force with the hope to—perhaps—eventually control it. Millions of schoolchildren all over the world have learned for generations:
"The laws of gravitation are well known and were firmly established by Sir Isaac Newton" (1642-1727).
Einstein's general theory of relativity describes gravity as a field influence in universal space but also failed to identify the cause of gravity. Interestingly enough, Isaac Newton himself tried to be most careful in denying any "cause" in these laws. His laws of gravity, by now about 300 years old, accurately describe the effects of this universal force in a broad spectrum, without mentioning anything about its causes. In his famous book "The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy," usually referred to as "The PRINCIPIA," he stated emphatically:
"For I here design only to give mathematical notion of those forces without considering their physical cause and seats."
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Honestly Now: What IS Gravitation? 57
And in another context, he stressed again:
"You sometime speak of GRAVITY as essential and inherent to matter. Pray do not ascribe that notion to me; for the cause of gravity is what I do not pretend to know. "
Despite Newton's expressed caution about the cause of gravity, it soon became the custom to call the inverse square relationship between objects the law of gravitation. And when the chips were down during the critical moments of the near—tragic, aborted Apollo 13 moon voyage when the vehicle traced a curved line trajectory prior to re-entry into the earth's atmosphere, the world held its breath as Mission Control in Houston asked, "Who is guiding the ship?" With assuring calm, astronaut James Lovel replied, "Sir Isaac Newton."* Newton did associate gravity with the mass measure of particles and the magnitude of this attraction between all bodies of matter is said to be directly proportionate to the square of the distance between them. The resulting formula in its original form is the well-known: The attraction between the earth and an object near its surface is an example of this universal force, commonly described as being the "weight" of the object. However, there is a difficulty in the mathematics of Newton's formula and the implication of that has been brought out in a challenging intellectual experiment, conducted by Dr. Daniel W. Fry in his book "Atoms, Galaxies and Understanding," which is quoted here with permission by the author of that book:** "The difficulty with the statement that the force varies inversely as the square of the distance lies in the implication that if the distance (between two objects) becomes zero, the force (of gravity) should become infinite. Thus it would at first seem that a man standing or lying upon the surface of the earth would be one of two bodies between which the distance was zero, therefore, the weight of the man should be infinitely great. The reply to this assumption is that the force acts as though it originated at the center of the mass, called the "Center of Gravity," and that the man on the surface of the earth is still some four thousand miles from its center of gravity. This explanation, however, creates a new problem in that, if we accept it literally, we must assume that if there were a well or shaft extending to the center of the earth, and if a man descended this shaft, his weight would increase as he approached the center of gravity, becoming infinite as he reached it.
*"The Little Book," by Otto Luther, Key Research Corp, Box 100, Yorba Linda, Calif. 92686.
**Atoms, Galaxies and Understanding, by Daniel W. Fry, Ph.D., 1960, Understanding Publishing Co.,
Box 181, El Monte, Calif. (USA)
58 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
Actually, of course, his weight would decrease, becoming zero when his center of gravity coincided with that of the earth. So we are forced to the further explanation that gravity is inherent, not in "bodies," but in particles of matter, and since the man at the center of the earth would have an equal number of particles attracting him from every direction, the resultant of the forces would be zero. If we assume the gravity to reside independently within each atom, our problem is solved as far as the man and the earth are concerned, but if we look within the atom itself in the attempt to find the point where the distance becomes zero, and the force infinite, we find that the same problem again confronts us. We have not solved it, we have only changed our scale of observation." It appears from the foregoing that if we really want to find the cause of gravitation, we will have to examine the inside of the atom, the atomic nucleus more closely! We have shown that Newton was unable to furnish an answer to this problem. And when Einstein attempted to develop a Unified Field Theory that would include gravitational phenomena, he failed to succeed. We know from Einstein's book, "Mein Weltbild" what he was searching for:
"It would of course be a great step forward if we succeeded in combining the
gravitational field and the electro-magnetic field into a single structure. Only
so could the era in theoretical physics inaugurated by Faraday and Clark Maxwell be brought to a satisfactory close."
Einstein died in 1955, before he was able to develop the Unified Field Theory. It took more than ten years after his death until an American and a German scientist, both working independently, came up with a satisfactory explanation for the origin of the force we are accustomed to call "gravitation." And both men were ignored by official science!
MEANWHILE - BACK IN EUROPE
The Non-Existence of the Ether
Claim : — Michelson disproved the existence of the "Ether" by the celebrated Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887. Facts:—This most famous experiment-that-failed in the history of science was based on the assumption that the ether was motionless in space. It was therefore assumed that the earth, in its motion around the sun, must be passing through the motionless ether and, as a consequence of its motion, there must be an ether wind blowing past the earth at all times. The calculations were carried out under the assumption that the velocity of light and the velocity of the ether wind could be added as vectors. Contrary to public opinion, it is to be noted that no one advanced the idea at that time that the ether perhaps did not exist at all. The experiment merely proved the non-existence of an ether-wind. In Reuterdahl's comment on Einstein, published in the Minneapolis Morning Tribune of April 14, 1923, p. 21, Michelson is quoted as saying that even if relativity is here to stay we don't have to reject the ether. Material on the Einstein controversy is contained in box No. 116 of the papers of Dr. TJ.J. See at the Library of Congress, where it was verified by Prof. Stephen G. Brush of the Institute for Fluid Dynamics and applied Mathematics of the University of Maryland, in 1976. (From a private communication of Prof. Brush to Mr. C.B. Wynniatt, Whangarei, New Zealand). When Michelson was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics, 1907, it was for his optical studies generally, and not for "disproving the ether-concept," as is sometimes claimed. He was the first American to win a Nobel Prize in science.
61
THE CASE FOR THE ETHER
"The aetherless basis of physical theory may have reached the end of its capabilities and we see in the aether A NEW HOPE FOR THE FUTURE."
Prof. P.A.M. Dirac, 1954/Nobel Prize in physics 1933.
"By his willingness to change his model or his concepts, the scientist is admit
ting that he makes no claim to possessing ultimate truth."
Dr. Wernher von Braun
Progress in science occurs when new facts have been discovered, and their contradiction with the respective contemporary theory has been recognized. Then the newly emerged facts become explainable by a new and extended theory and the old theory is discarded. One theory of fundamental importance in science is the controversial theory of the non-existence of ETHER. The term "ether" stems from Aristotle's name for the fifth element that he considered to make up the heavens, a component of all objects outside the earth's atmosphere. (The other four elements were fire, water, earth and air, and these were restricted to the earth itself.) Early wave physicists postulated an 'ether' filling space and all transparent substances. Light consisted of waves in this ether, which thus carried light even through an apparent vacuum and was therefore called a luminiferous or "light-carrying" ether.* James Clerk-Maxwell defined ether as "a material substance of a more subtle kind than visible bodies, supposed to exist in those parts of space which are apparently empty." Newton employed the term for the medium
*Asimov, Isaac, Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1964
62
The Case for the ETHER 63
which fills space, including the space which appears to be occupied by matter; for to him the ether must also penetrate between the atoms, in the pores of matter. Clerk-Maxwell summed it up with the opinion: "Whatever difficulties we may have in forming a consistent idea of the constitution of the aether, there can be no doubt that the interplanetary and intersteller spaces are not empty, but are occupied by a material substance or body, which is certainly the largest, and probably the most uniform body of which we have any knowledge."* However, the concept of ether is by no means only a hypothesis of 19th century scientists. Many modern scientists, including Tydal, Bertrand Russell, C.W. Richardson, Carl F. Krafft, and Sir Arthur Eddington, have affirmed their belief in the existence of the ether. The crucial test to prove or disprove its existence was based on an assumption, an erroneous assumption as we shall see. It was believed that the ether was motionless and that the earth traveled through it. A light beam sent in the direction of earth's motion ought therefore to travel more rapidly than light sent at right angles to it. The two beams of light ought to fall out of phase and show interference fringes. Albert A. Michelson's first experiment in 1881 showed no interference fringes; neither did the second and much more elaborate experiment in 1887. The absence of an ether wind was equated with the absence of ether. Although a scientific theory was derailed, the attempts to bury it once and for all have failed.
The Conceptual Necessity of Ether and Early Experiments
"If waves setting out from the sun exist in space eight minutes before striking our eyes, there must be in space some medium in which they exist and which conveys them. Waves we cannot have, unless they be waves in something." This view expressed by Sir Oliver Lodge was the generally held opinion of his time. "The ether is a physical thing!" claimed Lodge; he explained further, "The ether is dealt with not as a rarefied essence but as a substance with ascertainable physical properties, to which the ideas usually and properly associated with the word 'ethereal' are foreign." One basic experiment showed the elasticity of the elusive ether, a property which was interpreted by Lodge: "We have no means of getting hold of the ether mechanically; we cannot grip it or move it in the ordinary way: we can only get it electrically. We are straining the ether when we charge a body with electricity; it tries to recover, it has the power of recoil. . . . "**
*Lodge, Sir Oliver, The Ether of Space, New York: Harper & Bros. 1909
**Ibid.
64 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
"WE CAN ONLY GET IT ELECTRICALLY"
The experiment was initiated in the middle of the 19th century by the Frenchman Gassiot, who made the first unsuccessful attempts to pass electricity through rarefied gases. After him, Plücker invented the tube used later by Geissler for his experiments, from which the name "Geissler tube" is derived. Other scientists of world fame, like Crookes, carried out experiments with success, resulting in considerable progress in the field of physics. Crookes proved the mechanical action of "cathode rays" of bombarding rotary blades within the evacuated tube with these rays and setting the blades in motion. (In a Geissler tube, the atmospheric pressure is reduced to between 1 and 3 mm. of mercury. If the tube contains air and the anode and cathode ends of it are put into contact with the positive and negative poles of a highvoltage electric current, the whole tube lights up with a violet light, with the exception of a space at the cathode end where the light is blue and separated from the violet light by a dark band. When a "Geissler tube" is placed in the field of an electromagnet, the fluorescent glow shifts its position. The shift alters its direction when the poles of the magnet are reversed. This was the first tentative move in the direction of subatomic particles.) There was one great difficulty with these cathode rays; they were unable to leave the tube of rarefied air since they were incapable of passing through glass. Hertz had discovered that cathode rays could penetrate thin layers of metal, and it was then that Philipp Lenard (Nobel Prize winner in physics in 1905), continuing on Hertz's previous experiments, made an aluminum "window" on the side of the vacuum tube opposite to the cathode. Through this window the rays were projected outside the tube, where they could be studied with ease in the open air. He proved that these "Lenard rays" could be propagated in the atmosphere, causing atmospheric phenomena similar to those inside the tube. The passage of electrons through the dense air of the atmosphere appeared to open a tunnel in which considerable air turbulence and luminous effects, varying according to the voltage used, were observed. The German physicist Eugen Goldstein studied the luminescence produced at the cathode. In 1886, by using a perforated cathode, he discovered that there were also rays going through the channels in the direction opposite to that taken by the cathode rays. He called these Kanalstrahlen ("channel rays" also called "canal rays" or "positive rays"). The study of these rays led eventually to the recognition by Rutherford of the existence of the proton, while JJ. Thomson, who supplied the final proof of the existence of particles in cathode rays, is usually considered the discoverer of these particles, our electrons. Evidently, some important papers of the Germans—Geissler, Plücker,
The Case for the ETHER 65
Hertz and Lenard never found their way into the English scientific literature, and we are indebted to the late Dr. Kurt Seesemann for the following information, published in Switzerland in 1956 under the title "Aetherphysik und Radiaesthesie" ("Etherphysics and Radiesthesia"). According to Seesemann, Philipp Lenard undertook a crucial experiment to prove the existence of the ether by having a second Pluckertube with an aluminum window connected by a glassblower to the window of the first tube, and evacuating both tubes. His argument was that if ether really did not exist, both the cathode rays and the canal rays should show identical behavior in both tubes: the first one, where they originated, and the second, which allowed them access via the aluminum window. Alas, only the cathode rays entered the second tube, and Lenard concluded that the vacuum of space permitted transmission of only the negatively ionized rays, thus indirectly proving the existence of a transmitting ether between the sun and our planet. In the same paper, Dr. Seesemann shows that Einstein revoked his stand on the non-existence of ether in 1952 (shortly before his death in 1955) after the British Nobel Prize winner Dirac at the University of Cambridge "proved the actual existence of ether by mathematical means."* Quite evidently, Einstein had repeatedly changed his opinion on the subject of ether. In his book Ether and Reality (1925), Sir Oliver Lodge quotes Einstein from his paper "Sidelights on Relativity" as follows: "There is (sic) weighty arguments to be adduced in favour of the ether hypothesis. To deny the ether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever. The fundamental facts of mechanics do not harmonize with this view . . . According to the general theory of relativity, space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether. According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable . . . ."** In contrast to the claims by Sir Oliver Lodge and Dr. Seesemann, Isaac Asimov merely states, in connection with the ether question, that Einstein had "cancelled out the ether as unnecessary by assuming that light traveled in quanta and therefore had particle-like properties and was not merely a wave that required some material to do the waving . . ."*** The same reference source describes very briefly the work of Sir Oliver Lodge, neglecting to mention at all his deep involvement in ether research, and concluding with the rather nasty remark: "He (Sir Oliver Lodge) became a leader of 'psychical research' and is one of the prime examples of a serious scientist entering a field that is usually the domain of quacks." The most important contribution to the ether controversy in modern times seems to come from an Italian, Professor Marco Todeschini of the
*Congres Mondiale de Radiesthésie, Livre de Rapport, Locarno, Switzerland, 1956 **Lodge, Sir Oliver, Ether and Reality, London: Hodder & Stoughton, Ltd., 1925
***Asimov, op. cit.
66 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
Theatine Academy of Sciences, Physics Branch, a recent contender for the Nobel Prize. In a foreword to Todeschini's hook, the President of the Academy, Mr. Angelo De Luca, points out that in March 1956. at the 25th International Convention of the American Society of Physics, the scientist Oppenheimer revealed that the behavior of anti-particles and the occurrence of sub-atomic phenomena are in sharp conflict with Einstein's relativity, and in harmony with Galilei's, The return to classical physics, says the President, should therefore be needful: " . . . the conclusion that it is Galilei's relativity and not Einstein's which is found in the Universe . . . allows modern theoretical physics to eliminate all its uncertainties and antitheses, proceeding on a ground of solid reality and opening wide horizons to scientific progress and its practical application." Considering Michelson's experiment and Bradley's astronomical aberration, discovered in 1728, Professor Todeschini reaches these conclusions: "A motionless ether exists in the whole Universe. It exists, but in proximity of the Earth it moves jointly with it in its revolutionary (rotating) movement round the Sun." If this is actually the case, the negative outcome of Michelson's experiment finds an explanation. Instead of a weightless ether, as until now conceived by physics, Todeschini postulated a fluid space possessing a constant density. From this theory, he was able to demonstrate that "the Sun is located in the center of a huge spheric field of fluid rotating space, which moves subdivided like an onion in many concentric layers having constant thickness and rotation speed diminishing with the increase of the square roots of their radiuses. From my theory it also follows that the Earth is located in the center of a similar smaller rotating field, placed at the periphery of the bigger solar one." Todeschini has conducted numerous tests to back up his claim, and the science-oriented reader will have to read his books in order to comprehend his conclusions. Returning to Michelson's experiment, Todeschini notes that it was based upon the assumption that the ether is motionless throughout the universe; but, he continues, "I have demonstrated . . . that our planet in its revolution movement drags with itself its surrounding medium of ether just as it carries along its atmospheric quilt, and this makes us certain that the Earth is in the center of an ether's planetary sphere and that both turn around the Sun with the same speed revolution of 30 Km/sec."* If we return for a moment to Sir Oliver Lodge, we will find the following statement: "Mr. Michelson reckons that by his latest arrangement he could see 1 in 4,000 millions if it (the ether drift) existed; but he saw nothing.
*Todeschini, Marco, Decisive Experiments in Modern Physics, Bergamo, Italy: Theatine Academy of Sciences, 1966 (Translated from the Italian)
The Case for ihe ETHER 67
Everything behaved precisely as it the etner was (sic) stagnant; as if the earth carried with it all the ether in its immediate neighborhood." * Lodge's conceptual theory is confirmed not only by the claims of Todeschini, but also by a Brazilian scientist with the pseudonym of Dino Kraspedon, whose book was translated into English in 1959 (Neville Spearman, Ltd., London, England). This information source states that, pertaining to Michelson's experiment of ether drift:
"He found none, nor could it be found. The retardation which he thought to
find in me speed or light, owing to the resistance of the ether, could not exist of the ether moves with the same angular velocity as the Earth. When two bodies develop identical velocity in the same direction, they remain in
the same relative positions, it does not matter what the speed is to an
observer outside the system; it is a question or relative velocity between two
points in the same system . . . However, Michelson is not to be blamed. The
blame lies with those who thougnt that the ether was universal and station
ary in relation to Earth. On this false premise, anybody would have corne to
the same erroneous conclusion. If a minor premise in a syllogisrn is wrong, the conclusion is wrong, just as it is if a major premise is involved. False
theories produce wrong results. As far as that experiment was concerned, it
was a false premise on which the people of Earth have elaborated a whole
theory."
It becomes apparent that Sir Oliver Lodge (an Englishman), Marco Todeschini (an Italian) and the information source of the Brazilian Dino Kraspedon are in full agreement on the important question of the existence of the ether, which is carried around by the Earth, in just the same way as the atmosphere is. According to the Brazilian information source the etneric covering of our planet extends 400,822 km. beyond the solid surface of planet Earth, and our moon lies within the fringe area of this gigantic ether shell. The ether is described as an 'electric fluid' forming the primary substance and the substratum for electrons and protons, for all physical things and phenomena. The result of the studies of Sir Oliver Lodge, Professor Todeschini and Dr. Seesemann, coupled with the above-mentioned claims of Kraspedon, point to a gigantic scientific fallacy, resulting in false conclusions in contemporary physics: "All those (new) experimental results," states Todeschini, "deny the postulate of light's constant speed, put as the basis of physical theories since 1905 until nowadays, and make us certain that such theory does not correspond to physical reality." "The result of all the optical experiments (by Todeschini) prove to us that light's speed is relative to the chosen reference system, as is the speed of
*Lodge, The Ether of Space, op. cit.
68 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
anything else in movement." Todeschini continues to shoot holes in contemporary theories by stating that " . . . bodies' shrinkage and times' dilation predicted in Lorentz's transformation equations and forming the basis of Einstein's pseudorelativity do not happen at all in natural reality; actually, they were postulated (as we have shown) following an erroneous physical interpretation both of astronomic aberration and of Michelson's experiment."* The theories of Einstein, Heisenberg and Schrödinger appear very questionable if the existence of the ether can be verified, and it will not be an easy task to show the obsolescence of all those accepted physical theories. A coming re-evaluation will prove the truth of Max Planck's statement, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." Edgar Cayce repeatedly mentioned air ships at the time of Atlantis which were able to navigate "without the use of wings" (195-70) and which were .propelled by the application of electrical forces. Present earthly technology is limited to the application of jet-and-rocket propulsion, but the elusive "Unidentified Flying Objects" (UFOs) exhibit many characteristics of Edgar Cayce's aircraft at the time of Atlantis. Films
and photographs of such objects show their absence of wings, and there have been countless reports of magnetic and electrical disturbances connected with their flight over populated areas. The existence of these objects has been denied because they defy scientific explanation; a similar treatment is being given the results of ether research, unpublicized U.S. patents and experimental results pertaining to the possible propulsion of UFOs. The reader will recall our statements pertaining to Philipp Lenard's experiment, in which the Lenard rays appeared to open a tunnel in the atmosphere, and Sir Oliver Lodge's claim that "we can only get it (the ether) electrically." The definition of the ether by Dino Kraspedon as an 'electric fluid' does indeed fit the picture of this primary substance of all physical things. Experimenters with Lenard rays have claimed that they were able to "decompose" oxygen, nitrogen and the other gases which make up the atmosphere and theorized that they were able to revert these elements to their "etheric" condition, thus creating a vacuum in their place. On the basis of experimental work starting in 1926 and lasting to this day, Thomas Townsend Brown was able to produce thrust by charging an electrical condenser made of special materials; he ultimately was flying spherical, saucer-shaped condensers in a hard vacuum, thus eliminating the orthodox explanation of "electric wind" as the source of the UFOs' propul
*Todeschini, op. cit.
The Case for the ETHER 69
sion. Quite evidently there cannot be wind, i.e., movement of air, in a vacuum. Brown describes how thrust was achieved in the direction of the positively charged edge of these airfoils: The objects had no propellers, no jets, no moving parts at all. There were no frictional losses involved. The saving of energy in terms of increased efficiency becomes evident if one considers that the actual, usable energy output of our conventional power stations is only about 34% of the total energy input; thermodynamic losses (converting heat to mechanical action in turbines and dynamos) amount to 45%, not counting so-called heat losses in the system. The energy efficiency of the propulsion system discovered by Brown, depending on a highly charged body with a positive leading edge, is close to 100%! T.T. Brown was granted several U.S. patents* and his work was ignored! The results of his experiments simply did not fit into the scheme of present-day scientific theory, period. Since the ether theory had been tossed out the window, one could not even speculate that Brown's experiments were possibly explainable as "straining the ether," to use the words of Sir Oliver Lodge. On many occasions, Edgar Cayce referred to an energy which he called "etheric energies" or "aetheronic energies." There indeed are vibrations or energies which have distinctly different properties from those of the electromagnetic spectrum. Using these vibrations, Dr. Galen Hieronymus has been able to trace the physiological functions of U.S. astronauts circling the moon. This strange energy does not show the usual attenuation characteristics of E/M energies; the strength of the signals does not depend on the distance from the sender. There is good reason to assume that these vibrations of the ether are the basis for practically all so-called psychic phenomena, which are unexplained to this day. This energy has been called: "Eloptic energy" by Hieronymus, "Prana" by Indian metaphysicians, "Orgone Energy" by Wilhelm Reich, "Bio-Cosmic Energy" by Dr. Brünier, "X-Force" by the British scientist Eeman, "Nervous Ether" by Richardson, "Odic Force" by Baron von Reichenbach, "Animal Magnetism" by Mesmer, "Vital Fluid" by medieval alchemists, "Mumia" by Paracelsus, and "Vis Medicatrix Naturae" by medical scientists. "Eloptic Energy operates in a different medium," claims Galen Hieronymus. He elaborates further that this energy can be refracted through a prism and conducted along light rays. It can also be conducted along copper wires, insulated by certain types of materials, and conducted through electronic condensers or capacitors: "The energy from a person can be conducted along light rays and implanted on a light-sensitive film, and again onto a print made from that film. The print can be moved to any distance away from the person, and it will act as a perfect reproduction of the person,
*U.S. Patents No. 3,022,430; 3,187,206; 3,018,394; and 2,949,550, Thomas T. Brown
70 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
changing from moment to moment as the person changes. It was this principle that we used in order to follow the astronauts out into space, arid test them as they changed due to high 'G' stress arid to other influences they were subjected to." These claims could possibly be disregarded as the ravings of a lunatic scientist, were it not for the fact that, around the turn of the century, Professor R. Blondlot in Nancy, France discovered a radiation with exactly the same properties; he named it "N" radiation, after the location in Nancy. The Nobel Prize winning (1903, in physics) French researcher, Professor Jean Becquerel, who was the original discoverer of the phenomenon later called ''radio-activity" by Marie Curie, reported the discovery of his "N" rays in a scientific paper in France.* He stressed one outstanding difference with E/M radiation, namely that "N" rays have a very slow speed of propagation along wires. The same fact was confirmed not only by Hieronymus in the U.S., but also by Eeman ("Eemari-circuits") in England and by a German, Dr. med. et phil., Joseph Wuest.** The incredible importance of research on this particular subject (etherradiations) had been recognized by Rudolph Hess, deputy of Adolf Hitler, who privately financed Dr. Joseph Wuest. This fact was mentioned to this writer by Dr. Wuest personally just a few years ago. Only World War II put an end to his research. If the above statements sound heretical, we should not forget that the heresies of Galileo's day are now universally accepted "scientific facts." Among the still unexplained phenomena are, for instance, telepathy, which cannot be explained by means of electromagnetic hypothesis. The importance of the discovery of the carrier-mechanism of telepathy was described by the Soviet scientist, Vasilyev: "To discover such energy would be tantamount to the discovery of nuclear energy!" Psychometry is another example of a still enigmatic energy-form which could be explained by the ether theory. The "aka-threads" of the Polynesian Kahuna-priests of old and the fear of some natives to be photographed also come to mind. Spirit apparition becomes explainable as a condensation of the elusive ether by manipulation of so-called spirit entities. The observed drop in temperature at all such occurrences supports the thesis of a transformation of ether-energy to a semi-material substance. The Swiss professor, Eugen Matthias, claims that we are dealing indeed with a "PRE-PHYSICAL STATE OF MATTER,"*** and nothing could describe the nature of ether better than this definition, which is almost identical to that given by Edgar Cayce.
* Becquerel, Jean, In Comptes Rendues, Tome 138, p. 1413, Le Roux, France, 1904 **Wuest, Joseph, "About a New Type of Radiation Surrounding All Inorganic and Organic Substances as Well as Biological Objects." University of Munich, 1933-34, (Available only in German)
***Matthias, Eugen, Die Strahlen des Menschen Kunden sein Wesen, (The Radiations from Man Proclaim His Whole Being), Zurich, Switzerland: Europa—Verlag, 1955.
The Case for the ETHER 71
Man has walked on the moon, but the basic cause of smell—the physical radiation-transmitting energies of the fragrance of a flower—is still unexplained. Our physical bodies and their behavior patterns cannot be completely explained in terms of conventional atomic and chemical processes. Practitioners of psychosomatic medicine all know that a mind-and-matter relationship holds the key to treating the majority of diseases that beset man today. Could it be possible that the medium in which "mind" functions is the ether? This would explain telepathy, for instance, and make it as easily understandable as a radio transmitter and receiver which are tuned to the same frequency. It would also explain the important effects our thought processes have on the physical world. Our inadequate knowledge has no answer to the enigma of the pyramid effect, the observed "radiation of form." However, the researchers quoted in this paper have observed that the energy in question can be refracted, reflected, polarized and even focused.* Is it not very possible that the pyramid is an extremely efficient focusing device for the ether? After all, the mummification and dehydration effects of a properly constructed and oriented pyramid are not new discoveries and were not invented by the Czechs or Soviets. They are as old as Egypt and Atlantis. We cannot ignore the role of the ether, a bio-cosmic energy, as the necessary link between mind and matter in all the reported PK phenomena. If we wish to investigate the magic of Uri Geller, we will have to investigate the properties of the ether first. We simply cannot afford to turn the other way if the topics of ether and etheronic energies are repeatedly mentioned in the Edgar Cayce readings. But above all, we cannot afford to continue to ignore the available evidence, resulting from countless years of research, which indicates the existence of the ether and its potential for useful applications in our world.
*Wuest, op. cit.
Note: The material in this section has been published previously by the author under the title: "EDGAR CAYCE and the 'ETHER' Controversy," A.R.E. Journal, Vol. XI, May 1976, No. 3, Association for Research and Enlightenment, Inc., Virginia Beach, Va. 23451
72 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
Direction of Thrust
Impulse on ETHER
Recoil by ETHER
The T.T. Brown Experiment and its relationship to the universal cosmic energy (ETHER)
circular-plate CAPACITOR (T.T. Brown, USA)
"ETHER-VORTEX-TURBINE" IN ENGLAND
"There is a gentleman named John R.R. Searl in England who claims to have developed an anti-gravity device. He is attempting to develop it now into a saucershaped commercial aircraft. The principle of it is allegedly that, when a metal annulus is rotated at sufficient speed, the conduction electrons are displaced outwards by centrifugal force, so producing a very intense negative charge on the outside perimeter and a positive charge on the inside. The rotating electric field so obtained can be tapped by induction coils around the annulus to provide current for electromagnets placed in an electric-motor
arrangement around the annulus so as to drive the annulus, thus producing a feedback effect resulting in very intense electric and magnetic fields. When the electric potential is about 1014 volts, this being conducted to a metal hull around the annulus, shielding from both gravity and inertia is obtained. Because of the shape of the rotor and the need to maximize the charge on the hull, the best shape of hull is like two saucers clamped together at very sharp edge. Directional control is obtained by use of flight coils to produce assymetry in the
(force-)field." (From a private letter of Mr. C.B. Wynniatt, Professional Engineer, 25 Commins Street, Onerahi, Whangarei, New Zealand, to the author.)
The following sections of this chapter will attempt to present a scientific overview of the Searl observations and an intelligent analysis of the observed effects.
The Ether—Vortex Turbine by J. Searl, England (The Barret Report) issued by P.L. Barret B.Sc.
In 1949, Mr. J.R.R. Searl was employed by the Midlands Electricity Board as an electronic and electrical fitter. He was very enthusiastic about the subject of electricity, though he had no formal education on the subject other than that required by the job. Unhindered by conventional ideas about electricity, he carried out his own investigation into the subject. During work on electrical motors and generators, he noticed that a small EMF was produced by spinning metal parts—the negative towards the outside and poi,
73
74 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
Experimental set-up of the British inventor John Searl
"Ether-Vortex-Turbine" in England 75
towards the rotational axis. In 1950 he experimented with rotating slip rings and measured a small EMF on a conventional meter. He also noticed that when the rings were spinning freely and no current was taken, his hair bristled.
His conclusions were that free electrons in the metal were spun out by centrifugal force, a centripetal force being produced by the static field in the metal. He decided to build a generator based on the principle. It had a segmented rotor disc, passing through electromagnets at its periphery. The electromagnets were energized from the rotor, and were intended to boost the EMF. By 1952, the first generator had been constructed and was about three feet in diameter. It was tested in the open by Searl and a friend. The armature was set in motion by a small engine. The device produced the expected electrical power, but at an unexpectedly high potential. At relatively low armature speeds a potential of the order of 10s volts was produced, as indicated by the static effects on near objects. A characteristic crackling and the smell of ozone supported the conclusion. The really unexpected then occurred. While still speeding up the generator lifted and rose to a height of some fifty feet, breaking the union between itself and the engine. Here it stayed for a while, still speeding up and surrounded itself with a pink halo. This indicated ionization of the air at a much reduced pressure of about 10"3 mm Hg. More interesting was the side effect, causing local radio receivers to go on of their own accord! This could have been due to ionizing discharge or electromagnetic induction. Finally, and perhaps thankfully, the whole generator accelerated at a fantastic rate and is thought to have gone off into space. Since that day, Searl and others have made some ten or more small flying craft, some of which have been similarly lost, and developed a form of control. Larger craft have also been built—some 12ft., and two 30ft. in diameter. The antics of his machines have given rise to much speculation as to the nature and origin of so-called "flying saucers." One wonders why Searl has not come to the notice of scientists and the public at large. The fact is that he has; but for fear of being ridiculed, people keep the knowledge or interest to themselves. The public has been educated to scoff at the subject of flying saucers, and the reported behavior of the things cannot be explained on current scientific theory. Such "difficult to explain" topics (as with telepathy, dowsing, homeopathic healing, etc.) must be given the "no comment" treatment, so as not to upset the uncertain structure of present scientific theory. Searl's records do show however that his efforts have not gone unnoticed. Government departments and people of all classes and education know about him. Some have attempted to steal the idea, but their thinking along the lines of the electromagnetic theory and the
76 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
law of conservation of mass and energy, has misled them or confused them. This narrow thinking has made many conclude that Searl is a crank or imposter. Also some are prejudiced in their attitude that new ideas are the prerogative of a hierarchy of intellectuals. It is suspected that Searl is to come up with something more momentous than his games with power lines and the unsuspecting motorist. In that event, the conventional thinker must be ready to adapt the Searl Effect into existing theory, or chance the alternative fate of a complete disruption and révisai of physical theory—from Ampere, Galvani and Volta onwards. Any theory must explain these various phenomena, some of which have been observed by Searl himself, and some by the general public:
1. Anti-gravity or lévitation. 2. Very high electrostatic fields. 3. The peculiar magnetic effect: The generator produces a "D.C." static field with negative polarity at the rim and positive at the center. However, the magnetic field from the generator produces induction in conductive loops when there is no relative movement. The effect is seen . . . and used . . . in a U.F.O. detector put out by a club. This instrument, on being examined, was found to be a deflection magnetometer with a closed conductive loop. The presence of a craft is indicated by the deflection of the magnet from the N/S line. It seems, therefore, that the flux from the generator is continually expandingwhich implies an indefinite, or infinite, quantity of energy! 4. "Perpetual Motion": Once the machine has passed a certain threshold of potential, the energy output exceeds the input. From then on, the energy output seems to be virtually limitless. The estimated power output of the generator is some 1013 or 10ls Watts, which puts the figure too high to be attributable to a solar source. 5. Inertia loss: Above threshold potential, which must be some 1013 volts, the generator and attached parts become inertia free. This, of course, jars very severely with accepted concepts of inertia in mass. 6. Drive: By altering the distribution of potential on the surface of the craft, it is possible to propel it. The preferred direction of travel at ultra-high speeds is away from the planet, the plane of the generator being at 90 degrees to the gravity field. When in horizontal flight the craft takes up an angle to the gravity field suggestive of the balance between like vector fields. The generator may produce a gravity field of its own. 7. Ionization of the air: This is a simple electrostatic effect. It gives rise to a translucent glow surrounding the craft and glowing trails. The intensity of the field is such that it is capable of excluding the ionized air, creating a near vacuum around the craft.
"Ether-Vortex-Turbine" in England 77
8. Permanent electric polarity: Searl noticed that after working near craft or generators he had a "cobweb" sensation on the skin. His clothes clung to him and also the bed linen. This was accompanied by occasional crackling and'lasted some hours. This effect could be attributed to a permanent polarity of dielectric material, in this case the material being body tissue. Little work has been done on permanent dielectrics, but reference may be found in the records of the PhysicoMathematical Society of Japan, 1920. The work was carried out by Prof. Eguchi, Naval College, Tokyo. 9. Matter snatch during acceleration: This occurs when the craft is on the ground, and the drive is suddenly switched on. The rising craft takes up a lump of the ground with it, leaving the familiar tracks.
APPLICA TION OF THEOR Y
The ultra-high potential produced by the Searl ring generator being that much greater than the ionization potential of the air, causes ionic breakdown of the air at some feet from the craft skin as this acts as the positive electrode. The negative side of the generator is connected to the periphery of the disc and is isolated from the skin. The field at the negative terminal loses electrons and the resulting ions are repelled away from the terminal with high acceleration. The electrons pass through the generator, constituting the current in the generator and provide the charge at the negative terminal to produce negative ions in the air near the rim. The craft, therefore, is enveloped in a vacuum.
In ordinary high voltage generators, maximum potential is limited by the ionized breakdown of the air. Flashover occurs and the accumulated energy is lost. The geometry and the arrangement of the field coils in the Searl generator is such that flashover is eliminated until the thing is in a vacuum and is then impossible. Energy is required to build up the potential and initially has to be supplied from an external source. As the vacuum layer increases about the craft, less energy is required to maintain the potential. The generator soon reaches a potential where the Searl Effect takes place, and the device produces its own energy along with the lévitation phenomenon. On the basis of the theory, at this potential the stress on the space "fabric" cannot be equalized by flowing magnetism (current flow) through the air and craft as a circuit. The space fabric breaks down to provide the magnetism to relieve the stress, but the energy by-product is absorbed by the generator, which reinforces the field. The generator then must set up an ether flow or flux along the lines of the electric field as is conventionally represented. The direction of ether flow
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is, however, in at the positive and out at the negative. This is deduced from the Schappeller theory. The type field and the net effect of the craft field plus the earth's gravitational field gives rise to a condition where the ether density below the craft is higher than that above it. The craft therefore is strongly repelled away from the planet and to stop it from shooting off into space the field of the craft must be intentionally perturbed or limited. In the drive condition, the craft is shot out of the earth field like a wet orangepit from between the fingers. The acceleration is enormous, but since all matter associated with the craft is linked with the field, no distortion of any part, including passengers if any, occurs. The limit to the speed is unknown, but since the craft has no inertia there is possibly no limit as we know it. Conventionally it would be safe to say, however, that the limit should be below the speed of light. Above this speed too much is unknown to take any risk, but since the craft carries its own space with it, in a sense the theory of relativity is inapplicable! (Another way to say it is that the craft does not travel through space, but past it!)
It can be seen that a neutral zone appears below the craft as well as the neutral ring above,—when the lévitation drive is on. If matter becomes located in the Zone, then it is held there. In consequence, the Searl effect craft so far made have left their mark on the countryside in the form of large neat holes when they suddenly take off. The chunk of earth is taken up with it. . . .
The Searl Generator runs at low speeds and is unlikely to fly apart by centrifugal force. Apart from this, the side effect electromagnetic forces help to keep it together. As with other gravity fields, the flux favors passage through matter, and so the field within the craft may be tailored by appropriately distributing the mass in the craft. This is of particular convenience in manned craft, where the comfort of the crew may be improved by making the cabin field about l/2 "G." When travelling in free space, the external field of the craft would resemble that of the combined earth and craft, since it would be moving relative to a (comparatively) stationary ether. Collision between the craft and large objects in space is very unlikely, except in direct line of flight—when such could be seen and the craft rapidly turned. The field is such that the objects are diverted past the craft. If the object qualifies as a planet or moon, having its own gravity, then the craft, oriented by the interaction of fields, is strongly repelled anyway, unless measures are taken to alter the field of the craft. Small objects such as meteorites are pushed out by the combined electric and dynomagnetic fields. An object entering such a powerful static field is at first attracted, then ionized, and then strongly repelled. The dynomagnetic field induces a mag
"Ether-Vortex-Turbine" in England 79
nostatic (ordinary magnetic) field in objects which will interact with the craft's magnetostatic field at considerable distances (miles), and repel it. It should be pointed out that only a very small amount of space fabric (ether) passes through the craft and an even smaller amount is converted for energy. However, as previously mentioned, small changes in the ether lead to large physical effect. Even in deep space, the craft has an electronic flow through the generator, which is continuous along the electric field outside the craft. Electrons are picked up, and some leave the rim at relativistic speeds. These do not contribute to the drive. So the craft also carries its own negative space charge. In the atmosphere, the electronic flow is much greater, and the generator current is much higher. The craft therefore functions a lot better and has greater flexibility in space. In air, the recombination of ions gives rise to a pink to blue glow around the craft, and in damp conditions the ions in the air can give rise to condensation. The only hazard thus far observed is that, if the craft hovers too long near the ground, the soil becomes burnt, due to the electric currents in it, which build up heat. Also, the nervous system of animals is interfered with by ionizing discharge, if they happen to get too close.
Bibliography:
1. Electromagnetic Theory Stratton 2. Principles of Quantum Mechanics Hauston 3. My Philosophy Oliver Lodge 4. Physics of the Primary State of Matter Davson 5. The Dramatic Universe J.G. Bennett 6. Congress of Radionics & Radiesthesia, 1950 7. Energy of the Orgone Reich
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Simplified Principle of Ether—Vortex in Operation
Observations by numerous reliable witnesses: Seawater peaked up toward the craft as shown. Or: Snow was sucked up by low-flying craft overhead. Or: Cars, trucks, and even a US helicopter in flight, were lifted up. Or: Craft kicked up a small sandstorm in the desert. Or: Chunks of soil are lifted up, treetops are spinning wildly, etc. etc.
Summary: The crafts observed obey Newton's third law of motion: "IMPULSE = RECOIL" (in the universal cosmic energy medium)
The Ether Flow Diagram of the rotating Searl generator, described by Mr. J.P. Roos on the following page as a double toroidal vortex, is somewhat more complex and therefore not shown here.
FEEDBACK CONCERNING THE BARRET REPORT
Mr. Jan P. Roos of Austin, Texas, a fluid dynamicist and president of the private "Association for Pushing Gravity Research," had this comment to make of the Barret Report:—"The theoretical explanation in the Barret Report, based on the existence of an ether, is quite correct. As a matter of fact, it parallels ideas I have on the subject. It is not difficult for a fluid dynamicist, as I am, to add the following to the report. "The Searl generator creates a double toroidal vortex of ether flow, where the ether enters the axis of the double toroid at both sides, and emerges at the periphery of the circle where both toroids join. The wonderful aspect of toroidal flow is that it stabilizes itself such that its axis aligns with the direction of the surrounding flow. In other words-if the toroidal axis is at an angle to the direction of flow, a moment exists that tends to restore the angle to zero. Two such stable positions exist, 180 degrees apart. Hence the direction of flow, plus or minus, is of no importance. The joining of two toroids of opposite sign to form the above double toroid will not change this natural stability. "If the gravitational ether flow is thought of as a flow of ether perpendicular to a flat earth surface, then the double ether toroidal vortex is stable when the ether flows in from below and from above, and emerges at the periphery of the horizontal circle joining the two vortices, as is demonstrated in the Barret Report. I think that this stability is very meaningful for this type of drive, and it certainly compares favorably with the special design problems required to maintain stability in helicopters, for example. Further, fluid dynamic theory states that, pertaining to forces in toroidal vortices, a toroidal fluid flow will not experience any force in a purely parallel fluid stream. "Vertical flight control of a craft could therefore be done by varyinp t^· moment of one of the vortices; horizontal flight control could be ac
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pushed—as referred to in the Barret Report—by segmented toroidal flow, and by allowing a local toroidal section to increase in momentum (as presumably only the Searl generator is capable of) .... "Congruent with the above formulation is the report that John Searl's first generator shot straight up into the air and disappeared, without arcing off into a horizontal direction! This is exactly what would be expected from the interaction of a symmetrical double vortex within a converging field. One could consider this all as a proof that the phenomenon of gravity is due to a converging (sink) flow of ether, as had been postulated by O.G. Hilgenbergbackin 1931.* "I myself can see that a cosmological ether theory leaves room for the Searl generator to be a reality. Only the non-material drive consisting of two super fluidic (non-viscous) ether vortices, excited and nursed to sufficient, strength by a material drive, can explain John Searl's success."
We also have the published testimony of Dr. Arthur Cain, an American space expert, who travelled from California to England in order to examine Searl's claims:—"I was very skeptical indeed. In the meantime I have let myself be convinced that Searl's calculations are sound, and that he will make it." And further, Dr. Cain commented that . . . . "Searl's propulsion system will make customary propulsion as obsolete as a mill-wheel . . . ."
And More Feedback
Professor Shinichi Seiki, Uwajima City, Ehime Prefecture, Japan, developed a somewhat more elaborate theory of the Lorentz-Force, incorporating the use of the "ether." Starting with the so-called "Kramer-equation," which describes the movements of atoms in the presence of exterior electrical and magnetic fields—the basic components of the Lorentz-Force—Professor Seiki conceived of the possibility of creating "negative gravitational energies" by utilizing a suitable electro-magnetic field. Currently, in a process called NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance), we only utilize the changes in spatial electron spins due to the application of magnetic fields. The substance to be examined is placed in a high frequency field, and we observe energy absorption effects peculiar to the frequencies typical of a given molecule of matter. Seiki went one step further and introduced NER (Nuclear Electrical Resonance), which influences both the polar and the axial spin. Polar spin, he claimed, is directly related to the gravitational field. Describing a rotating electrical AC field superimposed on a DC magnetic field, he claims that an
*"Uber Gravitation, Tromben and Wellen in Bewegten Medien."
Feedback Concerning the Barret Report 83
exponential increase of "negative gravitational energies" occurs at a certain resonance frequency. This means that energy from the earth-gravitational field enters the system of the secondary artificial field created by the antigravity motor. The negative G-energies cause a weakening of the earth-gravitational field, ultimately cancelling it altogether. Further depolarization then causes the vehicle to be repulsed by the larger gravitational body (earth). It seems that the reason Prof. Seiki's NER effects have not yet been "officially" utilized, is that nuclear electrical resonance can occur only at extremely high electrical voltage simultaneously with ultra-high AC fre
quencies. Below this threshold, the probability of negative-G-energy conditions is extremely small. Above this critical frequency (also called"Larmor Frequency"), the effect of this type of gravity engine is also dependant upon the electro-magnetic polarization potential of the materials used. Professor Seiki proposes ferromagnetic substances, such as ferrit and ferromagnetic materials such as barium-strontium-titanate. In his design, three spherical condensers are alternately charged and discharged by three magnetic coils. At first glance, the entire idea seems to be just another "perpetuum mobile." However, the only energy transfomation used is that of gravitational energy into mechanical and electrical and vice versa. Seiki calculated a power output of 3 . 109KW for an anti-gravity engine, using one ton each of ferrit and barium-strontium-titanate for the design. This is more than the total power output of a Saturn rocket, but, even so, Seiki's vehicle could carry a payload of about one ton! Professor Seiki's work does seem to be taken seriously, as attested to by the fact that Dr. Wernher Von Braun considered it of sufficient interest to discuss it personally with him during one of Von Braun's trips to Japan.
And Still More Feedback:
Rotational Force Fields and Gravitation
From France comes a Dr. MJ.J. Pages, who postulates a "plenum"—substance analogous to the ether or cosmic energy medium—and describes a technique which could be defined as "lighter than spatial energy" (analogous to "lighter-than-air" craft.) Published in "REVUE FRANÇAISE D'ASTRONAUTIQUE, No. 3, 1967," Dr. Pages considers it possible to imagine an entire astronautical technique with extraordinarily high performance; so high, in fact, that it jeopardizes all of the physical and biophysical concepts presently considered as infallible dogma at most universities.
After giving his definition of an electro-magnetic Magnus Effect, he declares: "To illustrate these mechanisms (of directive, degravitative, pro
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pulsive effects), I wish very specially to describe an experiment that I personally performed in 1921, and that I found later in a scientific magazine. By reason of the importance of this experiment, I believe that the full text of its description is in order. Here is the text. (Historic, French original).
Electrostatic Experiment of the Flying Disk
"We also saw in the Ducretet House an old apparatus that has been forgotten for a long time and which merits being returned to a place of honor. As can be seen, it is a mica disk which is mobile on a point and which assumes a very rapid revolving motion when it is presented to a very powerful static machine, such as the Wimshurst machine. "The rotation is then so energetic that gravity appears to be eliminated by centrifugal force although the latter seems to give only horizontal components, and the disk flies off . . . . "I saw the disk revolve, for the first time, in London a short while after the Coup d'Etat, when I was taking the Faraday courses. Some time after returning from exile, Ruhmkorff again showed me the experiment, and we discussed causes of the phenomenon that were not indicated by Faraday, but neither of us could arrive at an acceptable idea. "This incident came to my mind twenty years later when I thought of using an iron disk which does not revolve at a lesser speed and which we place in motion in many different manners, as we shall explain at greater length on occasion. Then I discovered an explanation for the motion of the iron disk which I think is a proper explanation and which I hope to see accepted by official science. I shall wait and see if it does not happen to apply to the mica disk, "mutatis mutandis." "The motion of the iron disk produced by electromagnetism has already been used in industry in the form that I conceived and by the processes that I indicated. More or less satisfactory modifications have permitted a considerably wider use, and we think that it is far from having said its last word in the great question of the transportation of force from a distance. "Who is the inventor of the mica disk which to me seems a required
complement of any respected electrical machine, at a time when it is such a question of revolving magnetic fields and direct rotations to which—by a series of strange circumstances—he indirectly gave birth? Mr. Ducretet, who built the model that we are presenting, informed me that Rumkorff claims to have invented it and that the invention claim was contested by Abbe Laborde; but the description published in "Les Mondes" (No. 23) goes back only to 1870, at a date much later than the experiment which I witnessed. There remains the question of the Faraday priority that I reserve." "What is certain is that a similar disk is described under the name of
Feedback Concerning the Barret Report 85
"Franklin tourniquet" on page 271 of the Sigaud-de-la-Fond treatise, but this disk is fitted with a band of tin which does not exist in the disk that we are discussing. Placed between the two balls of a Wimshurst or Holtz machine, the Franklin disk assumes a very great speed without the necessity of using points.
"This experiment, forgotten for more than a century, is obviously similar to the other two and served as their preface. This is not the only time that we can note that nothing is more fruitful than to compare with modern electricity the theories, the principles and the experiments of 18th century electricity—a forgotten science that we disdain and disregard too much today. With the meager means at their disposal, the 18th century electricians were absolutely marvelous! "Since there is a constant strict analogy between the phenomena of the two electricities, and since after all the same forces are at work, an intelligent look thrown to the rear is often the most powerful manner of reading in the darkness of the future. W. de Fonvielle"
At this point, the reader cannot disregard the fact that we have certain historical precedents to the Searl experiments with flying discs! A compatriot of the French reporter above is John Carstoiu, Senior Research Scientist of the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center, State Univ. of New York, at Albany, and also of the Univ. of Paris, Dept. of Theoretical Mechanics, Paris, France. In a paper dealing with the unexplained inertial properties of spinning objects, and entitled "The Need for a Critical Reappraisal of Einstein's General Relativity," he states: "There are a great number of gravitational phenomena on which Einstein's theory throws no light. For instance, it is very odd that neither Newton's Law or Einstein's Relativity can explain the rotations of the planets. Everybody takes the rotation of a planet for granted, but would the latter admit an explanation as planetary orbits do?" He continues to press the issue by stating,—"The curved space-time universe of Einstein is a splendid object of mathematics, but what about its physical reality? . . . There is no experimental check to support the very heavy mathematical structure of purely mathematical extensions, complements or modifications of the original theory— without any additional experimental evidence." In another paper,* dealing with the possibility of gravitational vortices, Carstoiu indicates that:—"A variety of cosmogony, in particular the rotations of planets, might be related to the existence of the gravitational
*Gravitation and Electromegnetism— tentative synthesis and applications, (unpublished paper) John Carstoiu, The University of Paris Theoretical Mechanics, Paris, France.
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vortex . . . as we see, the gravitational vortex opens large fields of investigation."
Bruce DePalma, an M.I.T. graduate and former appointed M.I.T. lecturer, is likewise concerned with rotational effects on gravitation—as well as with the blind ineptitude and unwillingness of the scientific establishment to investigate these matters,—"We have discovered that the spinning or rotation of objects changes their inertial" He is able to prove experimentally that rapid spinning or rotation radically alters the physical properties of an object. DePalma says that the experiment goes to the very heart of the nature of things; atoms, which are also rotating objects or force fields! As rotation affects the physical properties of matter, it necessarily changes the very things upon which physicists have so fondly based their theories in the past. The effect goes against the grain of Einstein and Newton's theories of gravitation—which state, basically, that all objects, regardless of mass, fall at the same rate because of their inertia. (The tendency to remain at rest when at rest, and to remain in motion when in motion.) The analogy between the kinematics of a spinning sphere and that of the electron in the gravitational field may cast some light on the mechanism of Searl's discs. Again, according to Dr. Pages, when the axis of spin of the electrons is merged with the radius of gyration, we witness electromagnetic propulsion by Magnus Effect:—"The electromagnetic spatial vehicle—once it has degravitated from the ground by injection of the required energy for the necessary time—will be able to maintain this state of degravitation theoretically indefinitely . . . by creating a 'hole' in the cosmic energy (ether); such a hole would give an Archimedean effect." And if we recall our History of Science, we will remember that it was Archimedes who discovered the "principle of buoyancy"! One wonders what the picture will look like when all the pieces of the puzzle are properly placed relative to one another.
WHAT SOME SCIENTISTS THINK ABOUT IT
(Report of a Scientific Sub-Committee)
The functioning of the Levity Disc, depends entirely on the Searl Effect Generator. This is an electrical generator of unique design, capable of generating potentials above some 109 volts (thousand million) at relatively low speeds of rotation. At a potential difficult to estimate, but of the order of 1010 to 1014 volts, the generator and attached metal parts become weightless. This fact is difficult to reconcile with current scientific theory and one might wonder why the phenomenon has not been discovered before. This is probably because potentials of this order of magnitude have never before been produced in the charging of large conducting bodies. It has been impossible because ionic breakdown of the air shorts out high voltage generators. The problem has been solved in the Searl design and the ionic discharge is used to create a vacuum around the generator. Thus the generator works in a perfect insulator, and the fields are so arranged as to limit the possibility of flashover. By "weightless" we mean free from gravitational force and free from inertia. Thus, although energy is required to maintain the electrostatic potential of the craft, little force or energy is required to propel the craft at tremendous speeds. Also, since inertia is absent, the laws of physics no longer apply and acceleration can be almost instantaneous without forces being felt on matter within the craft. The claimed facts above conflict in concept with accepted theory, but it must be remembered that a theory exists to explain the Searl Effect, based on a space continuum which is more than the absence of matter. It is regarded as a fundamental substance from which all matter and energy is derived. This is not anew idea, but one which has not been developed as have other theories. (ETHER THEORY!) The second staggering property of the Searl generator is that when running above the "threshold potential" it produces energy from no known source, is self-perpetuating and continually pours out energy into the discharge corona surrounding the craft. It also
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transmits energy in a magnetic field, not as electromagnetic radiation but as a non-oscillatory field which continually expands.
The disc shape of the craft is the obvious shape to contain the generator which is made up of concentric rotating discs and rings and the composite machine is tailored specifically for a space vehicle. For flight at high speeds in the atmosphere, the ratio of depth of the disc to its radius is a specific value. The comparison between the levity craft and the rocket is the comparison between an electric motor and a water wheel. The rocket principle is relatively crude and has been developed very little since the German V-2. It certainly has been surrounded by some very clever ancillary equipment. But the fact still remains that the rocket is the end product of war effort and reflects the thinking of men of the Earth, not of the Universe.
The Searl craft can not be used to deliver bombs, since they can not be released from the field of the craft. Also, it is suspected that the energy precipitation quietly reduces unstable elements to a stable state and so nuclear bombs become useless. (The research on this is yet to be done.) The craft's features most compatible with space travel are the possible high velocities, the anti-gravitational and the inertia-free properties. Occupants of such a levity disc are, as it were, in a world of their own, a "space" of their own! There should be no acceleration forces, no vibration, no feeling of movement; and to add to the comfort of the crew, the gravity flux generated by the craft can be partly directed through the cabin to give an acceptable weight to matter inside. The craft has no need to carry energy as fuel, since it creates energy from the medium it rides upon. Because of this, the planets of our solar system need not be the limit of its range. Since the craft is independent of the space medium and is inertia-free, it is not limited by the medium in its maximum attainable velocity.* In other words, it should be capable of speeds greater than that of light. However, this is venturing very much into the unknown, and more work will have to be done on the nature of the space-time continuum before risking such a speed with man-carrying craft. It is the intent of the principals involved with the Searl Effect Generators to form a company, devoid—insofar as possible—of purely financial and governmental interests, so as to insure the fullest benefits of the invention to mankind as a whole.
*This statement is probably somewhat erroneous . . . a loose use of language. My understanding is that the craft is interdependent with the space fabric, "ether" or whatever we choose to call it, and until more is learned of the properties both of this "ether" and the functional interaction between the medium, the generator, and changing inertial forces, we would presume that there is some upper limit to velocity—although this may well be above the speed relationship which we now term the "speed of light," which is actually only relevant to our three-dimensional space/time concepts, (the editor) R.K.
PROF. BURKHARD HEIM AND THE GERMANS
A human symbol of shattered Germany at the end of WW—II, Burkhard Heim had lost his eyes and his hands in a laboratory explosion. Besides that, he was left almost deaf. But his drive and his intuition were still very much intact. In spite of these seemingly insurmountable handicaps, he managed to graduate in theoretical physics (1954) and since 1956 he became heavily engaged in research pertaining to the nature of forcefields. In order to develop and test his new theories, a special "Research Institute for ForcefieldPhysics" was established in 1958, associated with the University of Goettingen in Northeim, Hannover. As proclaimed on the letterhead of the Institute it also represents the "German Section of the European Center for Gravity Research." As early as 1952, Heim had presented his first public lecture* in Stuttgart, revealing the discovery of a positive lead to anti-gravity, involving a "transitional field" which acts as an intermediary from electricity to gravity. Alas, when Prof. Heim disclosed his theory of "field propulsion" for space-flight at the Second International Congress for Astronautics in Innsbruck, Austria (1952), the history of science gave a repeat performance—Heim was ridiculed! Considering that this occured quite a few years before SATURN moon rockets and MARINER landers had become household words, and astronautics as such was about as unpopular in scientific circles as serious UFOresearch is today, perhaps this should not have been too surprising. Stung by that experience, Heim swore to remain silent henceforth, until even the last iota of his new theory could be proven by exact laboratory data without the slightest remaining doubts. Since then, mysterious but generally poorly-informed references to his research have shown up in the European, North American and South American press, but officially, by and large, there was only discrete silence about his research results.
*"Die dynamische Kontrabarie als Losung des astronautischen Problems," (lecture) Stuttgart, 1952
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One of the first American observers to call attention to the work of Heim was Major Donald E. Keyhoe, the former director of NICAP*: "If Heim were right, the amazing properties commonly ascribed to the mysterious 'flying saucers' would be in fact, sound physics and proper engineering." The official silence surrounding Heim's research caused Major Keyhoe to conclude somewhat hastily:—"Heim's work toward the goal of an actual anti-gravity device using 'field inducers' has evidently been put under official German security. He has refused to divulge the key to his formula." He also gave an additional hint of Heim's difficulties when he declared:—"Heim's findings would indicate that anti-gravity researchers may discover new scientific laws and that their work may invalidate old theories. Some scientists are already saying privately that Einstein's famous 'General Theory of Relativity' may turn out to be totally fallacious." Perhaps it is this last statement which comes closest to the real truth.
Ever since this time, speculations abound—about the research results of Heim,
(who is listed in the official "Who is Who").**
In any case, a personal letter written by him in January of 1976 explains (translated from the German)*** ". . . it is correct that I worked in the field of gravitational physics . . . it seems to me that a publication is certainly justified; however, it is questionable whether I, as a 'loner,' will be able to push through such a publication in the Federal Republic of Germany—in spite of the present 'science management.' I shall be happy to inform you if I should be able to achieve this goal." (signed) HEIM At the time of this writing, the following facts are already known about his work:—He arrived at a "Unified quantum field theory of matter and gravitation" which has eluded Einstein during his lifetime. This field incorporates among other features: a. The existence of a "gravitational vortex" phenomenon. b. A propulsion method through "effective acceleration fields" based on what Heim terms the KONTRABARIC EFFECT. c. The emission of gravitational waves with resultant electromagnetic radiation fields and induction of strong magnetic and electrical fields. d. The apparatus which can achieve the transformation of E/M energies
into gravitational forcefields will have to be large-surfaced (as-for instance—a disc-shape). In short, Heim's theory predicts all the effects which have been observed in connection with UFO sightings for decades.
*"I Know the Secret of the Flying Saucers" by Major Donald E. Keyhoe, USMC (Ret.) TRUE Magazine, Jan. 1965. USA **"Wer ist Wer" Das Deutsche Who is Who, XIV edition, ARAMI Verlags GMBH Berlin-Gruneweld * **(private communication)
Prof. Burkhard Heim and the Germans 91
In the opinion of a German physicist who claims to be familiar with Heim's work, it represents (quote)—"The only consistent formula for the mass of elementary particles and resonances as well as their lifetimes, whose values are given exactly . . . Heim's theory makes it possible to test in the laboratory new results concerning reciprocal action between electromagnetic and gravitational fields. The CONTRABARIC EFFECT should make possible the production of gravity waves." It is claimed that Heim's theory can provide the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ΕΤΗ) of many UFO's with a sound theoretical basis. Latest available information would indicate the official publication about his research to be already in preparation.
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FRANCE: "THE GRAVITATIONAL FORCE CAN
BE NEUTRALIZED "
Dr. Marcel Pages, doctor of nuclear engineering and medicine, born in Perpignon, France, is a founder and member of C.I.R.G., an international research center on gravitation created in Rome, Italy, in 1961. He determined the characteristics of an experimental prototype of a true spaceship and received a patent (No. 1, 251.902) for such a vehicle, which is described and reproduced in his book "Le Défi De L'Antigravitation" (The Challenge of Antigravitation; published by Editions Chiron, Paris, 1974). A strong proponent of a universal cosmic energy medium (the "ETHER"), Dr. Pages explains that objects are not attracted by internal terrestrial forces of this or other planets, but rather held down by a force of cosmic space. The apparent end result is the same and does not contradict Newton's law. His basic principle of antigravitation is remarkably similar to that of other scientists defending the existence of the ether. "In only a few months I could give France the number one position in the space race . . . that would leave cyclopic American or Russian rockets of classical conception far behind. Applying the antigravitation principle, this spacecraft could rush into interstellar space faster than light," explains Dr. Pages." A body falls towards Earth or ricochets back towards the cosmos accordingly as its density is greater or less than that of the environment in which it ingresses." He lists the examples of cork in water or a hydrogen balloon in the atmosphere. Consequently, this cosmic (ether) energy must create around a planet a particular energetic atmosphere analoque to the planets gaseous atmosphere, with a few fundamental differences. A priori, its mean density must be inferior to that of matter since the material body falls into it. On the other hand, if it could be possible to determine an energetic climate of lesser density than the ambient environment of our atmosphere, there would occur the manifestation of an ascending repulsion. Dr. Pages explains: "We must notice the complete analogy between the Archimedian reaction of an airless balloon in the atmosphere which is crushed by atmospheric pressures
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of many thousands of tons of which the ascending force is only due to the weight differences of displaced air, and the Archimedian reaction between two hemispheres charged positively and negatively that are crushed by colossal forces, but of which the elevating force is solely due to the difference between the mathematical mass of the energy that has been transformed by manipulative interference inside the balloon and that of the ambient energy. The gravitational force can be neutralized by producing an inversed field of electromagnetic nature. Any engine or rocket capable of producing such a field will escape gravity and limitlessly actuate itself, guided simply by field orientation." Dr. Pages' design of a space vehicle of this type is explained in his book by the following principles: Weight cancellation is possible by causing a charge of electrons, extracted from the body to be degravitated, to rotate around that degravitated body. Such a degravitation is, theoretically, accompanied by the neutralization of the effective mass—thus the inertia of the whole system. In consequence, a minimal acceleration in this state provokes phenomenal speeds. Based on this premise, a machine of such a type will have its external appearance in perfect conformity with the shape of the well-known "flying saucer": a central sphere encircled by two inversed discs. Within the central metallic sphere, the pilot's cabin would be situated. Charged plates would ornament the exterior of the isolated disks on the top and underside, being connected to an ultra-high frequency generator. Dr. Pages' conclusion is stated thus: "It is therefore possible to be ejected out to the cosmos at theoretically unlimited speeds."* * One chapter of his book is devoted to a critique of relativity, and a quote from the reputable French magazine "Science & Vie" reproduced in Dr. Pages' book seems worth repeating as a tribute to gallic pride: "In this particular domain (of antigravity research), the French physicists are several years ahead of their foreign colleagues." (Sept. 1967, No. 600, p. 54). This claim is perhaps fairly close to the facts. Another team of three top French scientists have been reported to be on the verge of solving the propulsion mysteries of UFO's, among them Prof. Claude Poher, director at the National Center for Space Studies, the French equivalent of NASA.
Having investigated about 35,000 UFO sightings by computer analysis, Dr. Poher has stated in public that "UFO's really exist!" A small model of their UFO—propulsion unit, about one m2 in size,
*"Le Défi De L'Antigravitation" Editions Chiron, Paris, 1974, by Marcel Pages (no English edition available) **"Cosmos Express" P.O. Box 3, Jonquiere, Québec, Canada
France: "The Gravitational Force Can be Neutralized . . ." 95
reportedly utilizes electromagnetic and nuclear energy. "Our engine captures and harnesses that energy to provide tremendous thrust," claims Dr. Jean Pierre Petit, a plasma physicist at the French Government's National Organization for Scientific Research. This so-called "Petit-Viton" engine uses both an E/M field and a magnetic field and is supposed to be capable of moving a spacecraft model at a simulated speed of three times the speed of sound without producing a sonic boom. "All the elements are already available—it's simply a question of putting them in order," states Dr. Petit*. On the aspect of UFO reality in general, Jean Claude Bourret, chief editor of the TF1 (the first French TV program) replied to a reporter for the publication "La Suisse" (June 26, 1976) in response to his question of how many UFO—sightings have been confirmed all over the world: "About 90 millions during the last 40 years!" Whatever the case might be, the conclusion of James M. McCampbell, Director of Research of MUFON, USA, is very much to the point: "The French are moving out!"**
Addendum
Perhaps one of the most remarkable contributions was made by the French Minister of Defense, M. Robert Galley, in an official interview broadcast on the French radio program "France-Inter," in 1974. During this particular interview with Jean-Claude Bourret, the high French official freely admitted that: 1. UFO's exist, 2. They are a serious problem, 3. Many landings have taken and are taking place, 4. The French Ministry of Defense has secretly studied the problem since 1954, and 5. Has forwarded all reported UFO-material to French scientists for evaluation.
*"National Enquirer "Nov. 2, 1976, p. 4 "Team of Top Scientists Say They've Found the Secret of
How UFO's Fly." (USA); **private communication from James M. McCampbell, dated 2-14-1977.,
INPUTS FROM OTHER SPHERES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
INPUTS FROM OTHER SPHERES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
"When science turns toward spiritual discoveries, it will make more progress in
50 years than in all its past history."
(Charles Steinmetz, 1865-1923)
More and more of the "top" men in science begin to lean towards spiritual factors, as demonstrated by Professor Kistemaker in Holland who combined the function of Director of the Atomic Laboratory with that of President of the Dutch Society for Psychical Research. It certainly was no accident that Einstein was interested in extrasensory perception; nor that Nobel Prize physicist Professor Max Planck stated, "The finding of the truth can only be secured by a determined step into the realm of metaphysics." As an interesting intellectual experiment, let us follow Max Planck's suggestion with an attempt to analyze the existing "metaphysical" information on the legendary sunken continent Atlantis in reference to electromagnetic field propulsion for aerial vehicles. The term "metaphysika" derives from the Greek and can be best interpreted as "beyond physics." Information from sources which are generally considered scientifically unacceptable will, of course, not convince a skeptical person and this attempt should not be construed as anything even faintly approaching the claim of "scientific proof." However, it is presented here because of the truly amazing, inherent redundancy in all of the following statements stemming from psychic sources, and in order to prepare our thinking habits for the existence and use of potential corroborating information—sources of very considerable importance. The first known, historically documented account of the legendary sunken continent Atlantis can be found in Plato's writings, which descri^ a
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Edgar Cay ce - 1943

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Forward astronaut Capt. Edgar D. Mitchell, Ph. D.
ETHER
TECHNOLOGY
A Rational Approach to Gravity Control
by Rho Sigma
THE UNDERGROUND CLASSIC IS BACK IN PRINT!
THE NEW SCIENCE SERIES:
•MAN-MADE UFOS: 1944—1994, 50 Years of Suppression •UNDERGROUNDBASES&TUNNELS •THE FREE ENERGY DEVICE HANDBOOK •THE FANTASTIC INVENTIONS OF NIKOLA TESLA •THE ANTI-GRAVITY HANDBOOK •ANTI-GRAVITY & THE WORLD GRID •ANTI-GRAVITY & THE UNIFIED FIELD •VIMANA AIRCRAFT OF ANCIENT INDIA & ATLANTIS
THE LOST CITIES SERIES:
•LOST CITIES OF ATLANTIS, ANCIENT EUROPE & THE MEDITERRANEAN •LOST CITIES OF NORTH & CENTRAL AMERICA •LOST CITIES & ANCIENT MYSTERIES OF SOUTH AMERICA •LOST CITIES OF ANCIENT LEMURIA & THE PACIFIC •LOST CITIES & ANCIENT MYSTERIES OF AFRICA & ARABIA •LOST CITIES OF CHINA, CENTRAL ASIA & INDIA
THE MYSTIC TRAVELLER SERIES:
•IN SECRET TIBET by Theodore Illion (1937) •DARKNESS OVER TIBET by Theodore Illion (1938) •IN SECRET MONGOLIA by Henning Haslund (1934) •MEN AND GODS IN MONGOLIA by Henning Haslund (1935) •DANGER MY ALLY by Michell-Hedges
ETHER-TECHNOLOGY A rational approach to gravity-control
by Rho Sigma
Published by Rho Sigma
ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
A Rational Approach to Gravity Control
©Copyright 1977
Rho Sigma
All rights reserved
This printing March 1996
ISBN 0-932813-34-8
Published by
Adventures Unlimited Press
One Adventure Place
Kempton, Illinois 60946 USA
Printed in the United States of America
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to make grateful acknowledgments for the individual research contributions of the following persons and friends in the USA and abroad:
Capt. Edgar D. Mitchell, Ph.D. Mr. Thomas Townsend Brown, P.E. Dr. Erwin Saxl Dr. h.c. Galen T. Hieronymus Dr. Daniel Fry Mr. James B. Beal, P.E. Mr. James M. McCampbell Mr. Bruce De Palma Mr. George W. Meek Mr. Jan P. Roos
USA USA USA
USA
USA USA
USA
USA
USA
USA
Dr. Henry F. Pulitzer Mr. John R.R. Searl Mr. William Whamond, P.E. Mr. C. B. Wynniatt, P.E.
England England Canada New Zealand
Dr. Georg Unger Monsieur Henry Durrant Prof. Dr. Marco Todeschini Sig. Hellmuth Hoffmann Herr Gotthard Barth, physicist Dr. Wolfgang Fragner Dr. Burkhard Heim Prof. Hermann Oberth, Dr. h. c. Herr Hubert Malthaner, Oberstudienrat a. D. Herr Wilhelm Laun, Dipl.Ing.
Switzerland France Italy Italy Austria Germany, BRD Germany, BRD Germany, BRD Germany, BRD Germany, BRD
My heartfelt thanks for editing of the material to Mrs. Violet M. Shelley, and to Mr. Roland Klemm for re-editing some new chapters. To the A.R.E. and Edgar Cayce Foundation, for permission to quote from the "Edgar Cay ce Readings"; To the F.I.L., (Fellowship of the Inner Light), Virginia Beach, Va., for permission to quote from the "Paul Solomon Readings"; And to all those in other spheres of consciousness whose inspirations rnarl· this publication possible. Last, but not least, to my very brave and precious dear wife, whose neverending support made it a reality.
CONTENTS
Preface : Knowledge as a Resource 9 Foreword : Capt. Edgar D. Mitchell, Ph.D.,
"A Change of Consciousness" 13
THE AMERICAN SCENE
Genesis of a New Technology 19
Taking Inventory:
How Much is ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN in Science? 21 A Dramatic Report (T.T.Brown) 25 Commentary on Brown's Work 38 "ELECTRIC WIND" in a Hard Vacuum? 44 The Gravitational CONSTANT is Not Constant At All! 50 "An Entirely New Discovery in Fund. Physics ..." 54 Honestly Now: What IS Gravitation? 56
MEANWHILE-BACK IN EUROPE 59
The Case for the ETHER 62 "Ether-Vortex-Turbine" in England 73 Feedback Concerning the Barret Report 81 What Some Scientists Think About It 87 Prof. Burkhard Heim and the Germans 89 France: "The Gravitational Force Can be Neutralized. . ." 93
INPUTS FROM OTHER SPHERES OF CONSCIOUSNESS 97
CONCLUSIONS . .105
PREFACE
Knowledge as a resource
"Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment or men of dogma. The men of experiment are like the ant; they collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course; it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own."
(Sir Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, 1620)
The two crucial faults Sir Francis Bacon observed in most of his contemporaries are still with us. On one side are rationalizing philosophers (the spiders), whose theories have little relation to observed phenomena. On the other side are "men of experiment" (the ants), who are more or less content to collect facts in various categories, with little interest in integrated theory. It was Bacon's genius to clarify the complex relationships between theory and experiment (the way of the bee). This cornerstone of scientific inquiry forms the most important step in transforming knowledge into a true resource for the improvement of human society. The major portion of this book contains reports of officially little known experiments, observations, and other work carried on privately in small laboratories and by individuals throughout the world for some decadesapparently with little intercorrelation or communication as to how their work relates to other efforts being generated simultaneously elsewhere. Progress in borderland areas is generally painfully slow, and some conjecture is offered as to how these experiments and observations may be related in a meaningful, useful manner to the innovative and inspirational theories of brilliant "loners."
9
10 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
Since an understanding of related UFO observations seems essential in any investigation of new energies and gravity-technologies, one chapter in the forthcoming second book of this study series will present an overview of the observed propulsion aspects of UFO's and the macabre history of the official handling of the problem which will give the reader an appreciation of the calibre of the people involved and the thoughts which have gone into the investigation of the UFO enigma and related energy problems generally. The intelligent reader may thereby learn more in an area of human experience in which the "modus operandi" has for years been one of controversy, ridicule, suppression of data, and personal embarrassment. We trust that, with the publication of this work, this period of awkwardness and disbelief will finally be laid to rest and the genesis of a new consciousness may—hopefully —pave the way to a new science and technology worthy of the coming New Age.
12 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
"Apollo 14" Astronaut Mitchell in spacesuit before starting on his Moon voyage
FOREWORD-CAPT. EDGAR D. MITCHELL, Ph.D.
"A CHANGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS"
"The view from space which I was privileged to have of our planet is an event that has profoundly affected my life. The pictures you have seen in books, magazines and on television help give some sense of that awesome but magnificent sight. But photography has its limits and a photograph cannot tell you of the way my philosophy and my committment to philosophy has been changing since that voyage to the moon." Thus began an address written by the former U.S. astronaut, Capt. Edgar D. Mitchell, and presented August 25, 1972, to the 21st International Conference on Parapsychology and the Sciences in Amsterdam by my colleague, NASA Engineer James B. Beal. "To see a small, majestic planet Earth floating in a black sky—in its blue and white splendor is something you cannot forget. It stays with you profoundly, long after the splashdown, the hero's welcome and the parades have been forgotten. Because the view from space has shown me—as no other event in my life has—how limited a view man has of his own life and that of the planet. "Man fancies himself the highest development in nature—the ruler and most intelligent of creatures on Earth. About that notion, I have strong reservations. If animals could communicate with us, and some experiments going on now indicate they might some day—I will suggest that the first thing they would say is; how glad they are not to be human. Because no other animal commits the atrocities and stupidities that men do. In our surfeit of knowledge but paucity of wisdom, we've come near the brink of global destruction. The possibility of nuclear Armageddon is very real. The possibility of our extinction due to environmental pollution is just as real and only a little bit slower than using fission or fusion. Certainly these man-made threats to life on Earth cast some doubt on the supremacy of human intelligence.
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14 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
"So the situation is desperate, and I became acutely aware of that as I gazed at Earth from a quarter of a million miles away. It put a new perspective on things far beyond just the visual dimension. I could see the potential of the planet, if it were to function in accordance with the natural design of the Universe. I could see what Earth can be if Man could choose to make it so. Yet I knew back on Earth people were fighting, stealing, raping, deceiving—totally unaware of their individual part, or responsibility for, the possible future of the planet; just living unconsciously or distrustfully or greedily or callously or apathetically. And at the same time other people were living in poverty, ill-health, near-slavery, starvation, fear and misery from prejudice or outright persecution, because as individuals and as a planet we have not had the will to change these conditions. "As I said, those thoughts and perceptions stayed with me and worked on my mind. I could see the problem; but even more importantly, I began to see a solution. It's the only possible solution but it will be enormously difficult to achieve. The solution is: a global change of consciousness. "Man must rise from his present ego-centered consciousness to sense his intimate participation in the planet's functioning, and beyond that, in the functioning of the Universe. Otherwise we're doomed. It's as simple as that. It is not for the Universe to bow itself to man. It is for man, who inhabits an insignificant little planet, to find within himself, individually and collectively, ways to bring his consciousness into attunement with the Universe."
"Fear"; "prejudice"; "outright persecution" were some of the key terms in Mitchell's address. The reported facts in this book will bring into focus the rather startling conclusion that "human nature" really hasn't changed much since the Italian philosopher, Giordano Bruno, was burned alive at the stake in Rome, Feb. 17, 1600—almost four centuries ago. During those dark ages of the Inquisition, the concept of heresy was very much in vogue. Today we are inclined to feel secure and confident in the belief that we live in an enlightened and progressive age. Or are there still fields of endeavor in the present, considered to be scientific heresies? Perhaps the conspiracy of the Inquisition has only been replaced by a less spectacular, but by no means less effective, conspiracy of silence? At times it almost seems as though the religious dogmas of the past have been superseded by the more insidious scientific dogmas of our day. There can be little doubt that research reports and experimental results seeming to run counter to accepted viewpoints can be either actively suppressed or purposely ignored whenever they tend to challenge a tenuous, hard-won equilibrium .... Outsiders with the audacity to announce new findings—scientific pioneers daring to question the established foundations of tenets considered sacred and infallible remain highly suspect.
Foreword 15
"Prejudice! Outright persecution!" were some of the strong terms used in Mitchell's address. "Just living greedily ..." was another stern warning of that modern-day Savonarola of the space-age, Capt. Edgar D. Mitchell.
Between his warnings and the following statement made to a Congressional panel in Washington, May 1974, there could indeed be a connection pertaining to the present world energy crisis. It was made by Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate, who charged that American energy companies are actively blocking development of new forms of energy that threaten to cut into their profits:—"The energy industry is more interested in an energy source it controls." According to the AP newspiece, he also accused large oil companies of keeping devices from being developed through a 'suppression of technological efficiency':
"The fuel industry wants to sell oil, gas, coal and uranium. Yet with reasonable research and development programs this country could develop far more abundant, cleaner and safer energy sources," said Nader.*
Is it suppression or simply neglect by inertia? An American quip states that if there is anything more afraid of controversy than the average governmentfunded scientist, it is two of them. The reader will be able to decide for himself whether technological and scientific research into new energies is being suppressed or merely neglected. In the case of talent without power, versus power without talent, the documented reports, experiments and patents listed in this book will speak for themselves.
As an essential part of the introduction of this book a short review of the course of the history of inventions and discoveries is listed below. This rather shocking review, published in an Engineering Publication in 1963, caused the author to be "called on the carpet," receiving in his personnel file the admonition: "It is restated that any journalistic activity along this line should be submitted for approval through company management."
The Content of the "Objectionable" Historical Review follows:
"Late in the 16th century, Sir William Gilbert said, 'Science has done its utmost to prevent whatever science has done.' "
1. Only about 40 years ago, Professor Herman Oberth, the teacher of Dr. Wernher von Braun, offered his book, By Rocket to Interplanetary Space to about 10 different publishers. Each sent it back to him. Most had probably
*Source material: AP newspiece, May 23, 1974.
16 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
never read more than the title. A one-time expert, Geheimrat Spiess, who reviewed Oberth's book, wrote, "We believe the time has not yet come for delving into such problems as these—and indeed probably never will come."
2. In his day, professor Goddard was called "Moon-mad Goddard." But last July the House passed a bill to establish March 16 as National Goddard Day. This is the anniversary of the day in 1926 when Goddard launched the first successful liquid-fueled rocket. Yet NASA's Deputy Administrator, Dr. Hugh Dryden, reported in the May, 1962 Saturday Evening Post, "One day in April last year a distinguished group of medical men called on me to argue that men still did not have the basic research needed to risk launching astronaut Alan Shepard. Manned space flight, they claimed, was just not feasible yet. When I tried to explain that we had to learn by doing, they threatened to go over NASA's head to the President! The next day, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin went into orbit."
3. Conservatism is always the most formidable barrier to progress, and scientific truth is no respecter of recognized authorities. "It is assuredly most uncomfortable for scientists with a hard academic glaze to be confronted with an upsetting of the applecart," said Dr. George CO. Haas, himself a scientist. To refuse to see new facts, to impede progress, to curb science, is to imitate the cartographers of old Europe, who used to write on their maps at the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar): "Hie deficit orbis" (Here the World Ends).
4. The forces of Conservatism, often coupled with an astonishing and profound lack of humility, are so strong that many scientists wilh'ngly believe that facts which cannot be explained by current theories do not exist. In 1830 the Royal Medical Society claimed, "The fast movement of trains causes terrific mental disturbances to the travellers as well as to the onlookers" Contemporary scientists laughed at Luigi Galvani and his electrical principles. Galileo was considered crazy by his contemporaries when he taught that the earth moves about the sun. The church pointed him out as a heretic and promptly excommunicated him.
5. Franklin was the subject of laughter at the English Academy of Science when he reported his discovery of the lightning rod. They refused to print his report. When the first telephone was on exhibition in the Academy of Science in Paris, one of the most honorable professors declared it a fake and ventriloquism!
6. Count Zeppelin, inventor of the steerable balloon, was ridiculed in 1902 on a German Engineer Day in Kiel. Paracelsus, the great physician with revolutionary ideas, was persecuted and his books were burned. Finsen, discoverer of the curative power of ultra-violet rays, was persecuted too ... yet after his death a monument was errected in his honor.
Foreword 17
7. The possibility of "stones falling from heaven" (meteoric iron) was vehemently denied by the great Gassendy, although a big piece of still-hot
meteorite iron was brought to him. The French scientists Bertholon and Vaudin did the same, disregarding certified proof of a meteor-fall with the signatures of the mayor and 200 witnesses.
8. In the early thirties, scientists of note wrote positively that any attempt to
exploit the energy contained in the nucleus would be doomed to failure
because the energy derived from disintegration would be less than that re
quired to bring about that disintegration.
9. Admiral William D. Leahy, then Chief of Staff to the President, had this to say about the atom bomb: "That is the biggest fool thing we have ever
done. The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives."
(The Truman Memoirs) A short time later, an atomic bomb vaporized a hundred thousand people.
T.H. Huxley once said, "The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority as such; for every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority." And Charles F. Kettering, the famous inventor, commented on the same subject by stating, "In research, you need a lot of intelligent ignorance. When you begin to think you know all about any subject, it stops your progress dead in that subject. It is not the things you don't know that hurt you . . . it's the things you think you know for sure that are not so."
Napoleon is supposed to have said once:
"Impossible? Ce mot n'est pas français!"
(Impossible? This word is not French!)
Well, neither is it desirable in any other language. Especially not in the language of scientific investigation!
THE AMERICAN SCENE
Taking Inventory:
TAKING INVENTORY
HOW MUCH IS ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN IN SCIENCE?
"Don't keep forever on the public road, going only where others have gone. Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. You will be certain
to find something you have never seen before . . . ."
Alexander Graham Bell
The nuclear scientist Dr. Edward Teller has a favorite story he likes to tell: "When Columbus took off, the purpose of the exercise was to improve relations with China. Now, that problem has not been solved to this very day, but look at the by-products!" A close reexamination of the historical growth of today's scientific dogmas or commonly accepted 'fundamental concepts reveals likewise some surprising facts, surfacing as the by-products of such a historical review. Starting with the velocity of light, we will find for instance the following facts, revealing some glaring discrepancies in comparison to the claims of contemporary textbooks.
THE SPEED OF LIGHT
Claim:—Nothing can exceed the speed of light in vacuum, which is a constant 186,000 miles per second (Or 299,792 km/sec.)
Facts:—The Danish astronomer Olaf Roemer announced the calculation of the speed of light to the Academy of Sciences in Paris in 1676. He had calculated the velocity as 227,000 km/sec, or 141,000 miles per second. In 1926, Prof. A.A. Michelson flashed light between mirrors on mountain peaks 22 miles apart and clocked the speed at 182,284 miles per second. To ob
21
22 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
a more accurate figure, he directed the construction of a tube a mile long at Pasadena, California so that the speed of light could be measured in a vacuum. After his death in May 1931, the task was carried on by two other scientists. In 1932, the light measurements showed such marked discrepancies with previous results as to occasion a distress call to the U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey, whose surveyors repeatedly remeasured the length of the
tube and found no error. Variations of 12 miles per second and more were recorded. The speed seems to vary with the season and also in a shorter cycle lasting about two weeks.* Finally, the scientists ended by taking an average of all the readings, which was announced in 1934 as 186,271 miles per second.
The Special Theory of Relativity began by assuming the velocity of light in a vacuum to be a fundamental and unvarying constant. (Einstein in 1905) The same theory postulates that the velocity of light is the ultimate speed limit. At that speed, mass would become infinite. Not so, claims Dr. J.H. Sutton of NASA, who is concerned with finding clues toward a better understanding of gravity. Einstein's equations only make it impossible to find enough energy to accelerate a particle of finite mass to a speed greater than that of light. A particle "born" with a speed in excess of c (speed of light) is not prevented by relativity from continuing on its way! The discovery of new particles in nuclear physics challenges Einstein's theories. In 1967, Prof. Gerald Feinberg, a theoretical physicist at Columbia University, New York, published his new theory concerning tachyons, a word derived from the Greek "Tachyos" = fast. Feinberg supplied mathematical proof that these particles move infinitely fast, but become slower as they approach the speed of light. (Published in PHYSICAL REVIEW, 1967). On August 28, 1970, two British scientists, John Allen and Geoffrey Endean announced their discovery of an E/M field in which particles move at a speed of about twice that of light. According to these scientists, the characteristics of this particular E/M field alone "would prove erroneous Einstein's theory." In 1974, Dr. Marcel Pages, doctor of nuclear engineering and medicine in France; a founder-member of C.I.R.G., an international research center for gravitation; created in Rome, Italy, in 1961, published his important book, "Le Défi de L'anti-gravitation" (The Challenge of Antigravitation) which
states calculated fields with speeds superior to the speed of light are possible. Some of Dr. Pages' scientific articles in "Revue Française D'Astronautique" have been translated by the NASA translation service for the benefit of NASA researchers.
""Mystery of Variation in Speed of Light," in Popular Science Monthly, March 1934, p. 25 (USA)
How Much is ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN in Science? 23
The Gravitational Constant
Claim:—The acceleration of gravity, G, is constant, at any location. For instance the weight of one kg. near the surface of the earth where the acceleration of gravity is 9.8 m/sec. every second, is 9.8 Newtons.
Remark:—If the gravitational constant holds true, then the weight of an object is proportional to its mass. However, while weight and mass are proportional to one another, it should be noted that they are different entities. Weight is the vertical force of gravity, mass is an inertial property. The mass of an object referred to in the law of gravitation is called gravitational mass, in contrast to inertial mass. Einstein used the seeming equality of the inertial and gravitational mass as a basis for the general theory of relativity. Facts:— Dr. Erwin J. Saxl, a one-time student of Albert Einstein, proved in his experiments that the assumption of gravitational constant is incorrect and obsolete (See Sec. No. 5: "The Gravitational Constant is not constant at all"). Dr. Saxl was able to verify that gravity and electricity do in fact interact under dynamic conditions. In 1968, Dr. Saxl's claims were unexpectedly confirmed from another corner of the world by a dissertation from the Karl Marx University in Leipzig. Titled (translated) "About the influence of electrostatic fields on the periods of gravitational pendulae," this thesis by one Harald Fischer from Taucha DDR, (German Democratic Republic) is available at the university library in Mainz, West Germany. Like a chain reaction, the fundamental definition for inertia enters the changing picture when we hear about the late French Nobel Prize winner in physics, Gabriel Lippmann (1908) and his assertion that an ordinary atom in the normal state has inertia only because it has certain electrical properties, more precisely a net positive charge effect; small as it may be. He too demonstrated the validity of the principle when he found that bodies in the charged state offered a greater resistance to acceleration than when they were uncharged, thus altering the inertial properties of these bodies. His experiments were quickly and conveniently "forgotten" since they undermined the established scientific "laws" involving mass and inertia. Prof. Hermann Oberth, the teacher of space scientist Dr. Wernher von Braun, stated in a private letter of Nov. 5, 1970 to this author: "I am inclined to believe, more and more, that inertia, gravity and energy represent merely different sides of one and the same thing. Similar to the fact that one cannot very well dissect my person and then claim: This is the Professor, this is the Hermann, and this is the Oberth."
24 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
Returning again to Dr. Saxl's work, this short excursion into strange territory could be concluded by repeating that the gravitational constant can apparently be altered and modified by electrical forces. Or to put it more bluntly: it appears now certain that the force of gravity can be altered, influenced and even reversed by electrical forces. This bold assertion may serve as the icebreaker and introduction for the experiments reported in the following chapter.
A DRAMATIC REPORT
There is a strange report on the shelves of an American Technical library, the Pacific Aeronautical Library in Los Angeles, 7660 Beverly Boulevard. Datelined April 8, 1952, its author is listed as Mason Rose, Ph.D., formerly President of the now defunct "University for Social Research" in California. Surprisingly, it is not classified as CONFIDENTIAL or SECRET, although its implications can only be compared to those of a rough, uncut diamond in value. Illustrated with simple, freehand sketches, this so-called "nomograph for human technoloy" portrays the findings of Professor Biefeld of Denison University and T. Townsend Brown, his protege, concerning the coupling effects between electricity and gravitation. A summary of the report follows:
THE FLYING SAUCER
A Simplified Explanation of the Application of the Biefeld-Brown Effect to the Solution of the Problem of Space Navigation.*
by Mason Rose, Ph.D., President University for Social Research
The scientist and layman both encounter a primary difficulty in understanding the Biefeld-Brown effect and its relation to the solution of the flying saucer mystery.
*A copy of the original report is in the possession of the author.
25
26 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
This difficulty lies in the fact that scientist and layman alike think in electromagnetic concepts, whereas the Biefeld-Brown effect relates to electrogravitation.
Neither scientist nor layman can be expected to know the details of electrogravitation, in as much as it is a comparatively recent and unpublished development. Townsend Brown is the only known experimental scientist in this new area of scientific development. Thus anyone who wishes to understand electrogravitation and its application to astronautics must be prepared to lay aside the commonly known principles of electromagnetics in order to grasp the essentially different principles of electrogravitation. Electrogravitation must be understood as an entirely new field of scientific endeavor and technical development, which does not obey the known principles of electromagnetism. Perhaps the best way to gain an understanding of electrogravitation is to review the evolutionary development of electromagnetism. From the smallest atom to the largest galaxy, the Universe operates on three basic forces—namely, electricity, magnetism, and gravitation. These three forces can be represented as follows:
ELECTRICITY
MAGNETISM GRAVITATION
Taken separately, neither is of much practical use. Electricity by itself is static electricity, and therefore functionless. It will make your hair stand on end, but that is about all. Magnetism by itself has few practical applications aside from the magnetic compass, whereas gravity simply keeps objects and people pinned to the earth. However, when these are coupled to work in combination with each other, almost endless technical applications arise. To date, our total electrical development is based on the coupling of electricity with magnetism, which provides the basis for the countless uses we make of electricity in modern societies.
A Dramatic Report (T.T.Brown) 27
Faraday conducted the first productive empirical experiments with electromagnetism around 1830, and Maxwell did the basic theoretical work in 1865. The application of electromagnetism to microscopic and submicroscopic particles was accomplished by Max Planck's work in quantum physics about 1890; then in 1905 Einstein came forward with Relativity, which dealt with gravitation as applied to celestial bodies and universal mechanics. It is principally out of the work of these four great scientists that our electrical developments ranging from the simple light bulb to the complexities of nuclear physics have emerged. Then, in 1923, Professor Biefeld of Denison University suggested to his protege, Townsend Brown, certain experiments which led to the discovery of the Biefeld-Brown Effect, and, ultimately, to the electrogravitational energy spectrum. After twenty-eight years of investigation by Brown, it appeared that for each electromagnetic phenomenon there exists an electrogravitational analogue. From the technical and commercial viewpoint, this means that the potential for future development is as great or greater than that of the entire present electrical industry! Consider only that electromagnetism is basic to telephone, telegraph, radio, television, radar, electric generators, motors, and power production and transmission. Secondarily, it is indispensible to transportation of all kinds. One does not then have to stretch the imagination far to foresee a parallel development in the electrogravitational field!
The first empirical experiments by Townsend Brown had the characteristic simplicity which has marked most other great scientific advancements, and concerned the behavior of a condenser when charged with electricity. The startling revelation was that, if placed in free suspension with the poles horizontal, the condenser, when charged, exhibited a forward thrust toward the positive pole! A reversal of polarity caused a reversal of the direction of thrust.
Uncharged Charged Charged
28 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
Further development ot the implications of this phenomenon illustrated an "antigravity" effect. When balanced on a beam balance, and then charged, the condenser moves. If the positive pole is up, the condenser moves up (i.e., becomes "lighter"); if the positive pole is pointed down, it moves down (becomes "heavier").
These two simple experiments demonstrate what is now known as the Biefeld-Brown effect. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first method known of affecting a gravitational field by electrical means, and may contain the seeds of the control of gravity by Mankind. The intensity of the effect is determined by five factors. 1. The separation of the plates of the condenser—closer plates, greater effect. 2. The higher the "K" factor, the greater the effect. ("K" is a measure of the ability of a material to store electric energy in the form of elastic stress.) 3. The greater the area of the condenser plates, the greater the effect. 4. The greater the voltage (potential) difference between the plates, the greater the effect. 5. The greater the mass of the material between the plates (dielectric), the greater the effect.
It is this last point which is inexplicable from the electromagnetic viewpoint, and which provides the connection with gravitation.
On the basis of further experimental work, in 1926 Townsend Brown described what he called a "space car"—a method of flight presented for experiment while motor-propelled planes were yet in a very primitive stage. Further, if we consider that thrust is produced with no moving parts, we could conjecture that control of such a mechanism, or vehicle, could be possible merely by governing the direction and magnitude of the polarities surrounding the object. For example:
UNCHARGED CHARGED CHARGED
A Dramatic Report (T.T. Brown) 29
Forward-Up Forward-Down Reverse-Up Reverse-Down
Knowing that the "saucer" always moves toward its positive pole, control is accomplished simply by varying the orientation of the positive charge. That is, by switching charges, rather than by dynamic control surfaces. The direction of movement would be a vector sum (added average) of the direction and amount of negative and positive charges acting on such a body. By experiment, Brown had developed an electrostatic propulsion method which was proven on a scale model going around a stationary pole (Pat. No. 2,949,550). There seemed to be no limit to the speed possible, when run in a vacuum, and the machine had to be shut off before it developed enough inertia to fly apart under those conditions. Further, the evolutionary development dictated that the plan view most appropriate for the best results was circular—being developed along the lines shown below. (Lines left of the figure indicates the positive electrode, the "disc" itself being electrically negative.)
1. 2. 3. 4.
After working with the problem of horizontal thrust, Brown developed a profile shape which would be most efficient to shape the resulting electrogravitational field for maximum lift. The final profile was approximately the shape shown here.
30 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
There are two other problems inherent in the attempt to produce a viable flying machine by these basic principles; one is the problem of directional control—the other, the question of stability, of which more will be said in a later chapter. Directional control (as well as forward speed) could be achieved, in part, through the use of segmented structure, whereby a turning effect, or rotational effect, could be imparted to the mechanism by switching in different segments.
Top View
Side View
Charged Rim Segments
Charge is shifted to change direction
Note that the upper plate is charged positive, the lower, negative, for lift: Resultant direction between thrust and lift is indicated by arrows.
With these basic operations in mind, let us recall that the first recorded report of a disc-shaped object in the sky dates back to the Sixteenth Century (excluding Biblical references in the Book of Ezekiel, and folklore.) At long intervals in the interim, other reports enter the stream; most of them probably distorted by telling and retelling. In the older reports, as well as in the numerous series which has accumulated since 1947, there is a tantalizing common thread concerning appearance and behavior which makes any certainty about the "unreality" of flying saucers most debatable. 1. There is, in most cases, no method of propulsion which can readily be understood. No propellors. On occasion, a long flame jet trailing behind a cigar-shaped object, which is usually orange-red in color (indicating an inefficient combustion), which in turn would make it ineffective as a reaction jet such as we know in rockets and jet planes. 2. Descriptions show a range of speeds from stationary hovering to speeds greater than present-day rockets can deliver. Changes in rate of motion, direction, and the resultant stresses seem beyond the capabilities of any vehicles we know of today, operating within our currentlyaccepted framework of Newtonian physics. The accelerations, within this system of thought, would impose impossible stresses on any occupants. 3. Reports of night sightings describe a glow, usually blue or violet color, around the periphery of the object. Physicists have noted that
A Dramatic Report (T.T.Brown) 31
such a glow is one characteristic of a very high voltage electrical discharge. 4. Description of shapes and performance seems to indicate a complete disregard of currently understood aerodynamic principles. The objects seem to be independent of the fluid (air—in some cases, water) thru
which they move. They seem to need no specially formed surfaces to interact dynamically with the fluid to generate pressure differences, and thus, "lift."
Let us now review these observations in the light of what we know of the Biefeld-Brown Effect.
1. No understood method of propulsion. —The "Saucers"made by Brown have no moving parts at all. They create a modification of the gravitational-electrical field about themselves, which is somewhat analogous to putting them on the incline of a hill. They act as a surfboard on a wave; the electrostatic activity apparently creating a local distortion of the gravitational field, down which the vehicle "slides." 2. Tremendous accelerations and changes of direction. —According to current thinking and technology, both machine and occupants would endure unbearable stresses. "Not so," says Brown. No stresses would be felt, since craft, occupants, and load respond equally to the wave-like distortion of the local gravitational field as a unit. In a plane, the propellor pumps air backward, and by reaction moves itself forward. The reaction against the propellor is transferred to the frame of the aircraft, which then shoves occupants and load forward, contrary to their natural tendency to move at a constant rate in a constant direction. In the saucer, the entire assembly moves in unison in response to the locally modified gravitational field. (Our nearest analogy would be in going down in an elevator. When the elevator starts down, both elevator and its occupants share a gravitational tendency to move down, and they do so without any shoving or stresses between elevator and passengers. If acceleration is controlled smoothly enough, there is barely any perceptible sensation of movement.) 3. Brown's discs require a highly-charged leading edge, the positive pole. Such a charged edge produces a visible corona. On the largest models made, this develops a decided bluish-violet glow, easily visible in darkness or dim light. A full-scale ship would be expected to produce a spectacular corona effect, visible for miles. 4. Independence of aerodynamic effects. —The ionized air generated by the positive pole ahead of the disc
32 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
Thomas Townsend Brown
A Dramatic Report (T.T.Brown) 33
would tend to create a partial vacuum—sort of a "buffer zone" permitting movement of the air out of the way of the moving object (which we conjecture is being; driven by an altered electrostatic field interacting with earth's gravitational field in some way.) It needs no air for lift. 5. Finally, when Brown turned his attention to improved ways of gencrating high voltages, the most promising new method was the use of a flame jet to convey negative charges astern! This flame was relatively inefficient as a generator when it was adjusted for the best combustion of the fuel; but if it. was adjusted to orange-red, indicating incomplete combustion of the fuel, it conveyed the charges very efficiently, and set up the required negative space charge behind the craft!
We here refer the interested reader to Professor Dudley's experiments with rockets (Pat. No. 3,095,167) and its application to points four and five above. It should be noted that in a jet plane or guided missile the extra weight added to create the Biefeld-Brown electrogravitational effect, (or, in the methods of Dr. Dudley), would be well compensated for by the additional thrust created by the movement of the vehicle toward the positive field created in front of it. Dudley's rockets achieved heights of up to six times the normal, utilizing the same propulsive charge.
A short summary of T. Townsend Brown
While questioning the basis of the above report, the existence of Denison University can quickly be established; and it is equally possible to verify a former faculty member as a Professor Paul Biefeld. A careful survey, following Dr. Rose's report, revealed that Denison University in Granville, Ohio, was founded in 1831 as a religious institute of learning. The library of the university verified that a Prof. Paul Alfred Biefeld did serve as a member of the faculty there. The 1944 edition of American Men of Science states that (page 45) Prof. Paul A. Biefeld was born in Konigswalde, Germany, March 22, 1867; received his Ph.D. in Zurich, 1900, and became assistant to Prof. H.F. Weber in Switzerland. From 1900 to 1906 he served as professor of physics, mathematics, and electrical engineering at the Technical School in Hildburghausen, Germany, and from 1911 to 1936 as professor of Astronomy and Director of Swasey Observatory, Denison, Ohio. His specialties are listed as physics and electrical engineering. The U.S. Patent Office in Washington confirms the granting of 6 different patents to a Mr. Thomas Townsend Brown: the first, issued on September 25, 1934, for an electrostatic motor. The last, under Patent No. 3,187,206,
34 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
June 1, 1965, for an electrokinetic apparatus. The patent contents in turn confirm the basic legitimacy of the claims made in Dr. Rose's report of Section 1. It is a rather disconcerting commentary that the vast majority of aerospace engineers and scientists have never heard of Brown's work; nor, apparently, have the fortunate few who have, grasped its significance. (A 1956 article in a well-known international magazine for aviation and astronautics published in three languages a summary of Brown's finding under the title "Towards Flight Without Stress or Strain—or Weight.") We find that Thomas Townsend Brown was born in 1905, the son of a rather well-to-do family in Eastern Ohio. One of the mysterious discoveries of that period was the "X-ray"; and apparently Thomas had wondered whether this could possibly be a key to space travel. He purchased a Coolidge X-ray tube to begin his experiments, since this mysterious machine of Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen was far more fascinating •to the youth of that time than it is today. After all, didn't X-rays permit photography through walls, and even through the human body? Thomas carefully mounted his X-ray tube in a balance, like a telescope; and by pointing it in different directions, he somehow hoped to find a variation in the power of the tube or in the strength of the X-rays it generated. A wild idea, perhaps, but curiosity must be satisfied! However, no matter how he oriented his tube, there appeared to be no difference in power output—no variation in the strength of the X-rays. BUT—and here is where the genius for careful observation comes in—he did notice something rather unexpected. The Coolidge-tube generated a type of thrust, as if it wanted to move! He soon learned that this tendency to move was not produced by the X-rays as such, but was a "by-product" of the high voltage, which the tube required. He made certain that the force was not one of the already known effects of high voltage, finding instead that it acted like a mass force—like gravity! Extending his investigations, Brown designed and fabricated an apparatus called a "gravitor." This was essentially a multiple capacitor—and perhaps indeed an optimistic designation. But when the apparatus was put on a scale and connected to fifty thousand volts D.C., the scale indicated either again or a loss of one percent of weight! This gain or loss depended only on whether the "Gravitor" was oriented with the positive or the negative side upwards. Though local newspapers reported this experiment, no scientist expressed the slightest interest. Badly disappointed, Brown decided to enroll in a University as a Freshman, in order to gain the prerequisites for recognition of his discovery. His
A Dramatic Report (T.T.Brown) 35
first school year showed him to be an excellent laboratory man and mathematician. At the end of the year he set up the "Gravitor" in his quarters, inviting all faculty members who could reasonably be expected to have some interest in his discovery to witness a demonstration of the electro-gravitational force. Not a single member showed up! Brown, deeply hurt by what he felt to be high-handed treatment, quit school and joined the Navy. Completing his technical education, he wrote his first paper in August of 1929, describing his discovery in Science and Invention as "How I Control Gravitation." A subtitle explained how the article dealt with the meaning of "Field Theories" and the relationships between electro-dynamics and gravitation. Experimental confirmation and practical results were given: "Dr. Einstein's announcement of his recent work has spirited the physicists of the entire world to locate and demonstrate—if possible—any structural relationship between electro-dynamics and gravitation . . . . The writer (Brown) and his colleagues anticipated the situation as early as 1923, and began to construct the necessary theoretical bridge between the two then separate phenomena—electricity and gravitation. "Since the first tests, the apparatus and methods used have been greatly improved and simplified. Molecular gravitors made of solid blocks of massive dielectric have given greater efficiency. Rotors and pendulums operating under oil have minimized atmospheric considerations of pressure, temperature, and humidity, Disturbing effects of ionization, electron emission, and pure electro-statics have likewise been carefully analyzed and eliminated. After years of refinement in methods, we succeeded in observing the gravitational variations produced by the moon and sun, and the much smaller variations produced by the different planets. It is a curious fact that the effects are most pronounced when the affecting body is in the alignment of the differently charged elements, and least pronounced when it is at right angles I"
"Much of the credit for this research is due Dr. Paul Alfred Biefeld, Director of Swasey Observatory. The writer (Brown) is deeply indebted to him for his assistance and for many valuable and timely suggestions." Brown concluded his paper, "The Gravitor, in all reality, is a very efficient motor. Unlike other forms of motors it does not in any way involve the principles of electromagnetism, but instead it utilizes the principles of electro-gravitation. A simple gravitor has no moving parts, but is apparently capable of moving itself from within itself. It is highly efficient for the reason that it uses no gears, shafts, propellors, or wheels in creating its motive power. It has no internal mechanical resistance and no observable rise in temperature. Contrary to the common
36 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
belief that gravitational motors must necessarily be vertical acting, the gravitor, it is found, acts equally well in every conceivable direction,
"While the gravitor is at present primarily a scientific instrument—perhaps even an astronomical instrument—it also is rapidly advancing to a position of commercial value . . . multi-purpose gravitors weighing hundreds of tons may propel the ocean liners of the future. Smaller and more concentrated units may propel automobiles and even airplanes. Perhaps even the fantastic 'space cars' and the promised visit to Mars may be the final outcome. Who can tell?" The reader will bear in mind that when this paper was published in 1929, the term "UFO" and the observed E/M effects of these mechanisms were both completely unknown! By mid-WW Π, Mr. Brown's scientific ability and reputation as a brilliant engineer had catapulted him to the rank of Lieutenant Commander, and Commanding Officer of the U.S. Navy Radar School at Norfolk, Virginia. Working too many hours, he finally collapsed. Retiring from the Navy, he was able to recuperate after a period of six months, and accepted a position with Lockheed-Vega. In the ensuing years, he never again, on his own initiative, attempted to interest anyone in his discovery of electro-gravitation. When questioned by his colleagues concerning his experiments, he would refer to them only in terms of "stress in dielectrics"—a pertinent paraphrase, but one sounding much less sensational. After the war, a group of Navy students at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, repeated the experiments under the guidance of an engineer friend of Brown's. In the presence of U.S. Admiral Radford, the experiment succeeded, and Brown was congratulated for his discovery. Though his colleagues were immensely proud of him, despite the fact that the lifting force was still quite small, no one in the academic world seemed to evidence any interest. Not easily discouraged either, his friends arranged demonstrations to the business world and for governmental officials. The experiments were noted to be "interesting," but considered "of little commercial value." The support his friends had hoped for did not materialize. Even the late Dr. Robert Alillikan, invited to attend a demonstration of influencing gravitational forces, was reported to have said, "Such a thing is impossible and out of the question." Brown's friends eventually concluded that scientists in America were intellectually inert, and arranged to have Brown go to Europe in hopes of finding more perceptive interest there. In England and France, he received encouraging commentaries and was written up in Air and Space magazines; however, the expected recognition
A Dramatic Report (T.T.Brown) 37
for his breakthrough did not materialize. Meanwhile, a small corporation was organized to carry out further work without depending on federal financial support. Applications for over 75 patents in 12 major countries were initiated. Lift, or gravitational force, was slowly increased until one particular type of apparatus was capable of lifting itself directly when voltage was applied. At about this time, T.T. Brown secrns to have made "the mistake of his life." He showed an interest in the newly-reported phenomenon of "Unidentified Flying Objects," and founded the Organization NICAP in Washington, D.C., September, 1956. The doors of America's scientific press clanged shut, arid the "Conspiracy of Silence" took precedence, before all else!
COMMENTARY ON T.T. BROWN'S WORK
In the spring of 1956, the internationally known aviation magazine INTERAVIA in Genf, Switzerland, published a sensational article, "Towards Flight Without Stress or Strain . . . or Weight," which carried the editiorial remark: "The following article is by an American journalist who has long taken a keen interest in questions of theoretical physics and has been recommended to the Editors as having close connections with scientific circles in the United States. The subject is one of immediate interest and INTERAVIA would welcome further comment from initiated sources." On the first page of this particular article, a photo is displayed with the caption, "The American scientist, Townsend T. Brown has been working on the problems of electro-gravitics for more than thirty years. He is seen here demonstrating one of his laboratory instruments, a disc-shaped variant of the two-plate condenser." The article states, "Electro-gravitics research, seeking the source of gravity and its control, has reached a stage where profound implications for the entire human race begin to emerge. Perhaps the most startling and immediate implication of all involved aircraft, guided missiles, atmospheric and free space flight of all kinds . . . and towards the long-term progress of mankind and man's civilization, a whole new concept of electro-physics is being levered out into the light of human knowledge." Commenting on technical details of the work involved, it continues: "A localized gravitic field used as a ponderomotive force has been created in the laboratory. Disc airfoils two feet in diameter and incorporating a variation of the simple two-plate condenser charged to fifty kilovolts and a total continuous energy input of fifty watts have achieved a speed of seventeen feet per second in a circular course twenty feet in diameter . . . . More recently, these discs have been increased in diameter to three feet and run in a fifty-foot
38
Commentary on Brown's Work 39
diameter air course under a charge of 150 kilovolts, with results so impressive as to be highly classified. Variations of this work done under a vacuum have produced much greater efficiencies that can only be described as startling. Work is now under way developing a flame-jet generator to supply power up to fifteen million volts." "The most successful line of the electrogravitics research so far reported is that carried on by Townsend T. Brown, an American who has been researching gravity for over thirty years. He is now conducting research projects in the U.S. and on the Continent. He postulates that there is between electricity and gravity a relationship parallel and/or similar to that which exists between electricity and magnetism. And as the coil is the usable link in the case of electromagnetics, so is the condenser that link in the case of electro-gravitics. Years of successful empirical work have lent a great deal of credance to this hypothesis. The detailed implications of man's conquest of gravity are innumerable. In road cars, trains and boats, the headaches of transmission of power from the engine to the wheels or propellers would simply cease to exist. Construction of bridges and big buildings would be greatly simplified by temporarily induced weightlessness, etc." The author finally concludes with the carefully phrased remark, "Of course, there is always a possibility that the unexplained 3% of UFO's,'Unidentified Flying Objects' as the U.S. Air Force calls flying saucers,—are in fact vehicles so propelled, developed already and undergoing proving tests . . . but by whom, the U.S., Britain, or Russia? However, if this is so, it is the best-kept secret since the Manhattan Project, for this reporter has spent over two years trying to chase down work on gravitics, and has drawn from Government scientists and military experts the world over only the most blank of stares. This is always the way of exploration into the unknown."
A mere month or two later, a Frenchman named Lucien A.A. Gerardin, Head of the Nuclear Physics Section, Compagnie Française ThomsonHouston, in Le Raincy, France, published a follow-up to the Interavia article, entitled ELECTRO-GRAVITIC PROPULSION. As to the theoretical part of the problem, he says,—"For propulsion to be ideal a balance would have to be created on the atomic level. This is a new approach to the problem which has virtually no point of contact with the present solution. It would no longer be a matter of generating a force localized at one point, but a field of inertial forces roughly uniform in the whole of the region around the vehicle. With weight thus being balanced on the atom level, there would no longer be any limitation on the accelerations possible. As this field of forces is no longer strictly localized, the air adjacent to the vehicle will also be carried along. The heat barrier, ultimate limiting factor to the speed of present aircraft, will disappear. Actually, however, the field will decrea
40 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
distance from the generator increases. Thus only part of the air will be carried along; nevertheless the maximum speed obtainable will be very high." Proceeding then to considerations of nuclear physics, he continues,"Though electrically neutral in the mean, matter is built up of enormous quantities of negative electricity (electrons) and positive electricity (protons). An attempt may be made to explain gravitational attraction as due to a very small residue of interaction between electricized particles. Such an attempt at explanation must be guided by the specific characteristics of gravitation. Gravitation may then be connected with kinetic electromagnetic quantities, for example, the multi-polar moments in the nuclei. It is thus clear that knowledge of the nature of gravitational forces is closely connected with the nature of the atomic nucleus." "As Frederick J. Belinfante wrote in 1955, 'The discovery of many types of strange particles during recent years has drawn new attention to the fact that we really don't understand why those particles exist with the properties we observe'." "Why, for instance, is a proton 1,836 times heavier than an electron? Why is there no neutral mu-meson of mass 200? Why is hc/e2 equal to 137? An ultimate theory of matter should explain such things." Further considerations in the article by Monsieur Gerardin seem to be of interest principally to the scientifically trained reader. In concluding his paper, he is attempting to make a point: "In 1955 Anselm E. Talbert wrote in the New York Herald Tribune that up to now no scientist or engineer, so far as is known in scientific circles, has produced the slightest alteration in the magnitude or direction of gravitational force although many cranks and crackpots have claimed to be able to do this." But this certainly does not mean that the thing is impossible and that our century will not see vehicles with electro-gravitational propulsion. After all, it took only some ten years to reach industrial mastery of Atomic Energy. When referring to electro-gravitational propulsion (a problem which his company was the first to tackle in the United States) George S. Trimble, Vice-Président of the Glenn L. Martin Company said, "I think we could do the job in about the time that is actually required to build the first atomic bomb if enough trained scientific brain-power simultaneously began thinking about and working towards a solution. Actually the biggest déterrant to scientific progress is a refusal of some people, including scientists, to believe that things which seem amazing can really happen."
In connection with T.T. Brown's visit to Europe, the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society was daring enough to print a detailed commentary written by Mr. A.V. Cleaver, Assistant Chief Engineer of the Aero Engine Division of world-famous Rolls-Royce, Ltd. Headlined "ELECTRO
Commentary on Brown's Work 41
GRAVITICS, WHAT IT IS OR MIGHT BE." the article started as follows, "During the past two years, there can be few people in any way interested in either aeronautics or astronautics who have not encountered the unfamiliar term 'electro-gravities' and reacted to it with perplexity, amusement, skepticism, or perhaps a mixture of all three of these attitudes." "What are the facts," inquires Mr. Cleaver, "insofar as they are publicly known, or (as of this date) knowable?" "Well, they seem to amount to this; the Americans have decided to look into the old science-fictional dream of gravity control or anti-gravity—to investigate, both theoretically and (if possible) practically, the fundamental nature of gravitational fields and their relationship to electro-magnetic and other phenomena. And someone (unknown to the present writer) has apparently decided to call all this study by the high-sounding name of 'electro-gravities' . . . However, that the effort is in progress there can be little doubt. And, of course, it is entirely to be welcomed. On the other hand, our own Arthur C. Clarke tells me that he recently discussed the matter with a well-known American science journalist in New York and was assured that the whole business was a case of 'much ado about nothing' started by 'a bunch of engineers who don't know enough physics.' "It is much more probable that the work is, by modern standards, proceeding on a quite modest and exploratory scale, and that we simply have to wait and see how it will turn out. We can at least hope that, if the effort persists, the physicists in the long run may provide the essential new and basic knowledge for the 'ignorant' engineers to use. At any rate, there is one conclusion which can, even at this juncture, be stated with certainty. If any anti-gravity device is ever to be developed, the first thing needed is a new discovery in fundamental physics—a NEW PRINCIPLE—not a new invention or application of known principles, is required. New knowledge of the sort required might come from theoretical researchers in the more abstruse realms of mathematical physics, or from a more or less accidental experimental observation. Both these avenues have, in the past, led to fundamental scientific discoveries." Proceeding next to the problematical nature of gravity, Cleaver has this to say,—"Gravity is, in fact, a most mysterious and intractable phenomenon. It is perhaps doubtful whether many people, even technically-trained people, realize just how true this is or whether they notice the conspiracy of silence with which it is treated in most textbooks. One is almost reminded of a Polynesian 'taboo' or the Victorian attitude to certain things, like sex or certain parts and functions of the body, considered 'not quite nice.' The student is taught that all masses attract one another according to the law He learns that it governs the stability of the Universe and the various Newtonian equations which describe its effect, such as H=1/2 χ g x t2 .
42 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
However, unless he is a very specialized post-graduate student in pure science, he is likely not to be expected to accept the old idea of 'action at a distance'; and it is rather improbable that any of his teachers will draw his attention to our complete lack of knowledge of the physical relationship between gravitation and other phenomena, simply because we do know nothing, and the academic world apparently prefers not to advertise the fact!" "A great modern physicist, Max Born, once wrote, 'perhaps when we had a more complete knowledge of the interaction of forces in the atomic nucleus we should find that gravitation was the result of something left over, a sort of incomplete compensation.' "Having made the statement that 'in the past, a familiar pattern has been that new scientific advances have been pioneered over here, or on the Continent, and then exploited by our friends across the Atlantic. The basic science has been mainly European, even when the technology has become predominantly American, at least in its later stages'," Mr. Cleaver concluded his article with the comment, "If native Americans produce anti-gravity, by any method, then the achievement will also be notable for being one of the first major scientific discoveries or inventions to their credit. This is not meant in any derogatory sense, for the Americans might well rest content with their great reputation for the subsequent development and application on a vast scale of the ideas of others. Nevertheless, it remains a historical fact (possibly a historical accident) that more original thought has tended, in the past, to emanate from Europe, together (let us admit) with a lot of shortsightedness about its application." "Let us conclude then, by wishing our American cousins the greatest of good fortune with 'electro-gravitics.' If they succeed in producing an antigravity device, they will have revolutionized a good deal more than astronautics. Aeronautics, too, fairly obviously; but consider also the effects on the design and construction of buildings and other structures, the effect on the use of cranes, lifts, escalators, stairways; in fact, each and every kind of lifting device known to man. And the rocket, after all the work and hopes lavished upon it for a couple of generations, might go the astronautical way of the dirigible in aeronautics-a vehicle which never fulfilled its promise."
To render the foregoing more intelligible, the reader might well consider the following summary: Since all matter consist of atoms and each and every atom possesses an electro-positive nucleus (protons) surrounded by electronegative electrons, a typical atom is always in an electrically neutral field. However, if the atom is placed within the electrical field of a capacitor, its atomic field will become distorted, the nucleus being pulled in towards the negative plate, and the electron-field being pulled in the opposite direction,
Commentary on Brown's Work 43
towards the positive plate. Thus the normally symmetrical field of the atom becomes asymmetrical when placed in an electrical field and acquires the properties of a dipole with a polarity opposite that of the inducing field. It is for this reason that Townsend T. Brown preferred to call what is now known as the "Biefeld-Brown Effect" by the name "stress in dielectric material." Thus, according to Monsieur Lucien A.A. Gerardin again, gravitation might therefore possibly become a function of "kinetic electromagnetic phenomena within the atomic nuclei."
References:-1. INTERAVIA, Vol. XI, No. 12, 1956, pp. 992 (Switzerland) 2. JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH INTERPLANETARY SOCIETY, Vol. 16, 1957 pp. 84-94
ADDENDUM
Electron Cloud Displacement of Charge
Atom without
Applied Field Atom with Applied Field
ELECTROFLUIDMECHANICS: "A Study of Electrokinetic Actions in Fluids'" by Henry R. Velkoff. (Technical Report No. ASD TR 61-642)-not classified-Feb. 1962 p. 18 Propulsion Laboratory, Aeronautical Systems Division Air Force Systems Command Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio
"ELECTRIC WIND" IN A HARD VACUUM?
Some months following the German "Pilot" publication of this work, the author, Rho Sigma, succeeded in locating Brown's whereabouts. A letter from THE TOWNSEND BROWN FOUNDATION, LTD. Nassau, Bahamas, and dated February 14, 1973 arrived, carrying the following information, personally signed by T. Townsend Brown. (Only the introduction and complimentary closing passages are omitted.)
Dear (Rho Sigma), You have asked several questions which I shall try to answer. The experiments in vacuum were conducted at Soc. Nat. Construe, Aeronaut, in Paris in 1955-56, in the Bahnson Laboratories, Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 1957-58 and at the General Electric Space Center at King of Prussia, Penna. in 1959. Laboratory notes were made, but these notes were never published and are not available to me now. The results were varied, depending upon the purpose of the experiment. We were aware that the thrust on the electrode structures were caused largely by ambient ion momentum transfer when the experiments were conducted in air. Many of the tests, therefore, were directed to the exploration of this component of the total thrust. In the case of the G.E. test, cesium ions were seeded into the environment and the additional thrust due to the seeding was observed. In the Paris test miniature saucer type airfoils were operated in a vacuum exceeding 10~6 mm Hg. Bursts of thrust (towards the positive) were observed every time there was a vacuum spark within the large bell jar. These vacuum sparks represented momentary ionization, principally of the metal ions in the electrode material. The DC potential used ranged from 70 KV to 220 KV.
44
"ELECTRIC WIND" in a Hard Vacuum? 45
Condensers of various types, air dielectric and barium titanate were assembled on a rotary support to eliminate the electrostatic effect of chamber walls and observations were made of the rate of rotation. Intense acceleration was always observed during the vacuum spark (which, incidentally, illuminated the entire interior of the vacuum chamber.) Barium Titanate dielectric always exceeded air dielectric in total thrust. The results which were most significant from the standpoint of the BiefeldBrown effect was that thrust continued, even when there was no vacuum spark, causing the rotor to accelerate in the negative to positive direction to the point where voltage had to be reduced or the experiment discontinued because of the danger that the rotor would fly apart. In short, it appears there is strong evidence that the Biefeld-Brown effect does exist in the negative to positive direction in a vacuum of at least 10~6 Torr. The residual thrust is several orders of magnitude larger than the remaining ambient ionization can account for.
Going further in your letter of January 28th, the condenser "Gravitor" as described in my British patent, only showed a loss of weight when vertically oriented so that the negative-to-positive thrust was upward. In other words, the thrust tended to "lift" the gravitor. Maximum thrust observed in 1928 for one gravitor weighing approximately 10 kilograms was 100 kilodynes at 150 KV DC. These gravitors were very heavy, many of them made with a molded dielectric of lead monoxide and beeswax and encased in bakélite. None of these units ever "floated" in the air. There were two methods of testing, either as a pendulum, in which the angle of rise against gravity was measured and charted against the applied voltage, or, as a rotor 4 ft. in diameter, on which four "gravitors" were mounted on the periphery. This 4 ft. wheel was tested in air and also under transformer oil. The total thrust or torque remained virtually the same in both instances, seeming to prove that aero-ionization was not wholly responsible for the thrust observed. Voltage used on experiments under oil could be increased to about 300 KV DC and the thrust appeared to be approximately linear with voltage. In subsequent years, from 1930 to 1955, critical experiments were performed at the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C.; the RandallMorgan Laboratory of Physics, University of Penna., Philadelphia; at a field station in Zanesville, Ohio, and two field stations in Southern California, of the torque of multi-segmented rotors containing hi-K dielectrics. The torque was measured continuously day and night for many years. Large magnitude variations were consistently observed under carefully controlled conditions of constant voltage, temperature, under oil, in magnetic and electrostatic shields, not only underground but at various elevations. These variations, recorded automatically on tape, were statistically processed and several sig
46 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
nificant facts were revealed. There were pronounced correlations with mean solar time, sidereal time and lunar hour angle. This seemed to prove beyond a doubt that the thrust of "gravitors" varied with time in a way that related to solar and lunar tides and a sidereal correlation of unknown origin. These automatic records, acquired in so many different locations over such a long period of time, appear to indicate that the electrogravitic coupling is subject to an extra-terrestrial factor, possibly related to the universal gravitational potention or some other (as yet) unidentified cosmic variable.*"
In response to additional questions, a reply of T.T. Brown, dated April 5, 1973, stated: "The apparatus which lifted itself and floated in the air, which was described by Mr. Kitselman, was not a massive dielectric as described in the English patent. Mr. Kitselman witnessed an experiment utilizing a 15" circular, domeshaped aluminum electrode, wired and energized as in the attached sketch. When the high voltage was applied, this device, although tethered by wires from the high voltage equipment, did rise in the air, lifting not only its own weight but also a small balance weight which was attached to it on the underside. It is true that this apparatus would exert a force of upward of 110% of its weight.
The above experiment was an improvement on the experiment performed in Paris in 1955 and 1956 on disc airfoils. The Paris experiments were the same as those shown to Admiral Radford in Pearl Harbor in 1950. These experiments were explained by the scientific community as due entirely to "ion-momentum transfer," or "electric wind." It was predicted categorically by many "would-be" authorities that such an apparatus would not operate in vacuum. The Navy rejected the research proposal (for further research) for this reason. The experiments performed in Paris several years later, proved that ion wind was not entirely responsible for the observed motion and proved quite conclusively that the apparatus would indeed operate in high vacuum.
Later these effects were confirmed in a laboratory at Winston-Salem, N.C., especially constructed for this purpose. Again continuous force was observed when the ionization in the medium surrounding the apparatus was virtually nil. . . . In reviewing my letter of April 5th I notice, in the drawings which I attached, that I specified the power supply to be 50 KV. Actually, I should have indicated that it was 50 to 250 KV DC for the reason that the experiments were conducted throughout that entire range. The higher the voltage, the greater was the force observed. It appeared that, in these rough
*The reader is referred to the chapter "THE CASE FOR THE ETHER."
"ELECTRIC WIND" in a Hard Vacuum? 47
48 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
"ELECTRIC WIND" in a Hard Vacuum? 49
tests, that the increase in force was approximately linear with voltage. In vacuum the same test was carried on with a canopy electrode approximately 6" in diameter, with substantial force being displayed at 150 KV DC. I have a short strip of movie film showing this motion within the vacuum chamber as the potential is applied." Kindest personal regards,
Sincerely,
T. Townsend Brown.
THE GRAVITATIONAL CONSTANT IS NOT CONSTANT AT ALL! (Dr. Erwin J. Saxl)
Do we have further scientific confirmation of the validity of T. T. Brown's fundamental experiments that would indicate some form of interacting relationship between electricity and gravity? Indeed we do! A former student of Albert Einstein published the results of most convincing experiments in the reputable British Scientific Magazine NATURE,* July 11, 1964. The author, Dr. Erwin Saxl, of Harvard, Mass., and a native of Austria, felt justified in making the following statement:—"When working as a post-doctoral student with Einstein, we discussed the possibility that there were interrelations between electricity, inertial mass, and gravitation. These experimental results make me wonder whether they may properly be so interpreted." Dr. Saxl concluded his paper by expressing thanks to Professor Hans Thirring, who put on record the original disclosure of these findings before the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Dr. Saxl, a balding, heavy-set man with bushy brows, working quietly in his home laboratory for the past ten years, is well aware that he is making one of the most controversial scientific propositions of the century. If proven, it would mean a complete revision of current cosmological concepts and fundamental laws. His experiments, conducted with highly sophisticated and exquisitely sensitive electronic equipment, much of which he built himself with his own finances (in the neighborhood of $50,000), have indicated the presence of electro-gravitic forces—and he is firmly convinced that the equipment is not erroneous. However, partly because Dr. Saxl's work was privately financed, and not officially authorized or funded, the results were brushed aside—by at least some officials, according to information received by the author of this book—with the caustic remark, "Nutty!"
*An Electrically Charged Torque-pendulum, Dr. Erwin J. Saxl, NATURE, Vol. 203, July 11, 1964, p. 136-138, (England).
50
The Gravitational CONSTANT is Not Constant At All! 51
For the lay reader, a short description of the research results was published by the Boston Sunday Globe, Boston, Mass., June 14, 1964, under the heading, "Gravity Not Constant, Einstein Pupil Makes Discovery." The report starts as follows:—"A one-time pupil of Albert Einstein has obtained experimental evidence that upsets one of the most firmly established concepts of modern physics, the Boston Globe and North American Newspaper Alliance have learned. He has found that the so-called 'gravitational constant'—a number heretofore believed to be unchanging—appears to vary under dynamic conditions. At the same time he has found evidence that gravity and electricity, until now believed completely unrelated, do in fact interact. If his experiments are confirmed, it will mean rewriting the books from start to finish. In sum, it will be one of the most important scientific discoveries in history, on a par with Newton's laws of gravity and Einstein's theories of relativity, adding a completely new dimension to both their concepts of the Universe." . . . "This is the first time" concluded the paper, "gravitation and electricity have been connected experimentally, and if the evidence could be confirmed its scientific import would be staggering."* " 'It would make possible, finally, a completely unified picture of the Universe,' states Dr. Saxl flatly." We may safely assume that this news reporter had never heard of T.T. Brown's experiments. Nor, apparently, did he know of Michael Faraday's statement given in a lecture to the Royal Academy on November 28, 1850—more than 125 years ago—: "Here end my trials for the present. The results are negative. They do^not shake my strong feeling of the existence of a relation between gravity and electricity, though they give no proof that such a relation exists. " (M.F., Philosophical Transactions, London, MDCCCLI, 1-6 Paragraphs 2702-2717). Over the years, certain exceptions to Newton's Laws of Gravitation have been found which were largely resolved and accounted for in Einstein's relativistic concepts. But even now, serious flaws exist in the current theoretical framework of our Universe. According to Newton, any two bodies in the Universe attract each other with a definite force that can be calculated by a constant immutable law. But now Dr. Saxl's experiments—undertaken under unique conditions—suggest something completely different. On the one hand, in the macrocosm of space, if the gravitational laws are valid, scientists are hard put to explain how the Universe could be expanding, as the so-called "red shift" makes it appear. Distances notwithstanding, the masses of entire galaxies are so enormous that they should have no choice but to contract. On the other hand, in the microcosmic world of atomic nuclei, the
*Gravity Not Constant, Einstein Pupil Makes Discovery, Boston Globe, Boston, Massachusetts, June 14, 1964 (USA).
52 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
distances between particles are so small that, in spite of the tiny masses, the nucleus should theoretically collapse. Thus, while Newton's · laws describe very nicely what goes on in the medium range, of sun and planets, missiles and space probes, at the extremes of large and small they run into trouble.
By introducing the concept of dynamic interaction between electricity and gravity, we come upon a new and breathtaking view, which could explain a great deal! In essence, what Dr. Saxl did is this: Instead of testing the gravitational constant in a motionless system, he set about to study it under dynamic conditions. He built a system which permitted a huge ceramic disc to rotate freely from a solid suspension, specifically designed and constructed to prevent vibration or any outside interference. Then he found a way of regenerating the rotation of this "pendulum" electronically under exceedingly precise control. Finally, using a light beam and a photo-electric cell, he succeeded in measuring the time it took the pendulum to swing over a certain arc with an accuracy of one part in 10 million! Putting his system to work in the middle of the night, to avoid as much disturbance as possible to his incredibly sensitive instruments, he determined whether a pendulum, given precisely the same starting impulse every time, would take exactly the same amount of time to swing over its arc. Since the mass of a pendulum does not change, the swing of the pendulum should be strictly a function of gravity, and, according to Newton's law, should not change. But—Saxl found—it does ! Groping for the answer to the variations he obtained in the gravitational force as reflected in the movement of the pendulum, he decided to see what would happen if the pendulum were charged with electricity. In his own words, "All hell broke loose!" Specifically, he found that when the pendulum is charged positively, it takes longer to swing through its arc than when it is charged negatively! Extensive additional experiments with his instruments indicated that there is a definite relationship between gravity and electricity, an association which had never before been made. This means, since the mass of the pendulum does not change, that the electricity must be interacting in some manner with the "force of gravitation" to influence the length of the swing. "In space we know there are billions of electron volts, and we're dealing with masses of fantastic magnitude," observes Dr. Saxl. "If my little pendulum, moving over such tiny distances and with such modest voltages shows a distinct electro-gravitic effect, what forces may be operating in intergalactic space where the parameters are multiplied infinitely in both electric charge and mass?" Likewise, in atomic structure, electro-gravitic forces may be playing a crucial role. Specifically, the apparently enormous concentrated mass of a
The Gravitational CONSTANT is Not Constant At All! 53
nucleus may well be much smaller than now caluclated, as a result of electro-gravitic interaction. This would be an entirely satisfactory explanation for why they do not collapse.
Dr. Saxl concludes that one possibility is that the Universe is permeated by "electro-gravitic force fields," which influence the speed of light traveling millions and millions of light years through space and produces the red shift. Thus, the Universe may only appear to be expanding—though in reality it is not. "It will be hard for many scientists to swallow this," he told the Globe, "just as it is hard for them to accept any new experimental findings of a fundamental nature. But I know Einstein, for one, would have welcomed this experimental evidence with open arms. Back in Berlin he once told me that he'd give anything to find some precise factors tying gravitation in with electricity!"
A great deal has happened since the report appeared in the Boston Globe. Major improvements were made in the system of instrumentation of the data recorded automatically and fed into an IBM 370 computer. The observations proceed without manual monitoring. The isoelastic suspension wire is kept at a constant temperature. With the long runs thus made possible, periodicities are uncovered. Variations in period which have been consistently observed for many years continue to appear. These may require an extension of present gravitational theory, claims Dr. Saxl.
He also discussed his research with the late Dr. James E. McDonald. In a private communication, he states: "I was sorry to learn about the demise of Dr. McDonald. He was in my darkroom. He saw the instruments together with some reprints and extensive data in some of my note-books. He was most encouraging." Dr. Saxl's experiments continue to shake the foundations of contemporary dogma. So his fellow-scientists look tactfully the other way, pretending they do not exist.
"AN ENTIRELY NEW DISCOVERY IN FUNDAMENTAL PHYSICS. . ."
PROJECT OUTGROWTH: Advanced Propulsion Concepts
PROJECT OUTGROWTH is the open technical report AFRPLTR-72-31, dated—June 1972, by a special group of 28 members of the U.S. Air Force Systems Command, Edwards, California, attempting to predict major propulsion developments in the near future. The report deals with advanced concepts like field propulsion" in order to define their potential. A summary closes with the significant statement that the report was "designed to encourage and motivate talented and interested scientists and engineers once again to strive for 'advanced propulsion concepts'." Among others, the following selected categories are listed on field propulsion:
Electrostatic Effects Alfven Wave Propulsion Electromagnetic Spacecraft Propulsion Superconducting Particle Accelerator Antigravity Propulsion
Field Propulsion concepts are those which use electric and/or magnetic effects. It is in the area of field propulsion that the most revolutionary concepts appear. "The ability to perform objective analyses of many of these ideas was diminished because underlying principles governing transition from the known to the unknown are obscure. The category of field propulsion probably contains more ideas than any other concept area."
54
"An Entirely New Discovery in Fund. Physics ..." 55
The section titled: Antigravity Propulsion describes the control of gravitational forces of the earth and other celestial bodies as a method of propulsion and lists as its main attributes:
1. Infinite specific impulse 2. Near speed of light velocities attainable 3. Minimum damage to environment 4. Economic exploitation of space
The report notes, "Before attempting to control gravity, it will be necessary to know exactly what causes gravity. Many reputable scientists, including Michael Faraday, Max Born, and Albert Einstein, have attempted to explain this phenomenon by relating electromagnetic and gravitational forces. Other scientists are convinced that an entirely new discovery in fundamental physics is necessary for a full understanding of gravity. Physicists generally assume a relationship between electromagnetism and gravity because both obey the inverse-square law which says that the force of both fields decreases with the distance in the same mathematical relationship." "There are some intriguing differences between the two forces, however, since electromagnetism consists of two identifiable components,—an electrical field and a magnetic field—while, gravity appears to have only one component. In addition, electrical charges can repel and attract, while gravity always attracts." As the French mathematical physicist Borel wrote, "There was, however, something rather strange in this phenomenon of gravitation, something that distinguished it from other physical phenomena. This was its utter immutability and its absolute independence of all external actions. Light is arrested by opaque bodies, deviated by prisms and lenses; electrical and magnetic actions are modified by the neighborhood of certain bodies; gravitation alone remains always the same . . . "
HONESTLY NOW: WHAT 75 GRAVITATION?
"I would expect the next decade of research to be as momentous for gravitational theory as the decade 1925-1935 was for the Quantum Theory."
(Dr. J.W. Gardner, 1969)
Although taken for granted by all of us, gravity is a mysterious force if there ever was one. It is under constant scrutiny by searching scientists. Present—day concepts include gravitational waves, gravitons and comparable theories. The "Gravity Research Foundation" in the USA, a "European Center for Gravitational Research" and similar organisations and foundations are attempting to solve the riddle surrounding this force with the hope to—perhaps—eventually control it. Millions of schoolchildren all over the world have learned for generations:
"The laws of gravitation are well known and were firmly established by Sir Isaac Newton" (1642-1727).
Einstein's general theory of relativity describes gravity as a field influence in universal space but also failed to identify the cause of gravity. Interestingly enough, Isaac Newton himself tried to be most careful in denying any "cause" in these laws. His laws of gravity, by now about 300 years old, accurately describe the effects of this universal force in a broad spectrum, without mentioning anything about its causes. In his famous book "The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy," usually referred to as "The PRINCIPIA," he stated emphatically:
"For I here design only to give mathematical notion of those forces without considering their physical cause and seats."
56
Honestly Now: What IS Gravitation? 57
And in another context, he stressed again:
"You sometime speak of GRAVITY as essential and inherent to matter. Pray do not ascribe that notion to me; for the cause of gravity is what I do not pretend to know. "
Despite Newton's expressed caution about the cause of gravity, it soon became the custom to call the inverse square relationship between objects the law of gravitation. And when the chips were down during the critical moments of the near—tragic, aborted Apollo 13 moon voyage when the vehicle traced a curved line trajectory prior to re-entry into the earth's atmosphere, the world held its breath as Mission Control in Houston asked, "Who is guiding the ship?" With assuring calm, astronaut James Lovel replied, "Sir Isaac Newton."* Newton did associate gravity with the mass measure of particles and the magnitude of this attraction between all bodies of matter is said to be directly proportionate to the square of the distance between them. The resulting formula in its original form is the well-known: The attraction between the earth and an object near its surface is an example of this universal force, commonly described as being the "weight" of the object. However, there is a difficulty in the mathematics of Newton's formula and the implication of that has been brought out in a challenging intellectual experiment, conducted by Dr. Daniel W. Fry in his book "Atoms, Galaxies and Understanding," which is quoted here with permission by the author of that book:** "The difficulty with the statement that the force varies inversely as the square of the distance lies in the implication that if the distance (between two objects) becomes zero, the force (of gravity) should become infinite. Thus it would at first seem that a man standing or lying upon the surface of the earth would be one of two bodies between which the distance was zero, therefore, the weight of the man should be infinitely great. The reply to this assumption is that the force acts as though it originated at the center of the mass, called the "Center of Gravity," and that the man on the surface of the earth is still some four thousand miles from its center of gravity. This explanation, however, creates a new problem in that, if we accept it literally, we must assume that if there were a well or shaft extending to the center of the earth, and if a man descended this shaft, his weight would increase as he approached the center of gravity, becoming infinite as he reached it.
*"The Little Book," by Otto Luther, Key Research Corp, Box 100, Yorba Linda, Calif. 92686.
**Atoms, Galaxies and Understanding, by Daniel W. Fry, Ph.D., 1960, Understanding Publishing Co.,
Box 181, El Monte, Calif. (USA)
58 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
Actually, of course, his weight would decrease, becoming zero when his center of gravity coincided with that of the earth. So we are forced to the further explanation that gravity is inherent, not in "bodies," but in particles of matter, and since the man at the center of the earth would have an equal number of particles attracting him from every direction, the resultant of the forces would be zero. If we assume the gravity to reside independently within each atom, our problem is solved as far as the man and the earth are concerned, but if we look within the atom itself in the attempt to find the point where the distance becomes zero, and the force infinite, we find that the same problem again confronts us. We have not solved it, we have only changed our scale of observation." It appears from the foregoing that if we really want to find the cause of gravitation, we will have to examine the inside of the atom, the atomic nucleus more closely! We have shown that Newton was unable to furnish an answer to this problem. And when Einstein attempted to develop a Unified Field Theory that would include gravitational phenomena, he failed to succeed. We know from Einstein's book, "Mein Weltbild" what he was searching for:
"It would of course be a great step forward if we succeeded in combining the
gravitational field and the electro-magnetic field into a single structure. Only
so could the era in theoretical physics inaugurated by Faraday and Clark Maxwell be brought to a satisfactory close."
Einstein died in 1955, before he was able to develop the Unified Field Theory. It took more than ten years after his death until an American and a German scientist, both working independently, came up with a satisfactory explanation for the origin of the force we are accustomed to call "gravitation." And both men were ignored by official science!
MEANWHILE - BACK IN EUROPE
The Non-Existence of the Ether
Claim : — Michelson disproved the existence of the "Ether" by the celebrated Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887. Facts:—This most famous experiment-that-failed in the history of science was based on the assumption that the ether was motionless in space. It was therefore assumed that the earth, in its motion around the sun, must be passing through the motionless ether and, as a consequence of its motion, there must be an ether wind blowing past the earth at all times. The calculations were carried out under the assumption that the velocity of light and the velocity of the ether wind could be added as vectors. Contrary to public opinion, it is to be noted that no one advanced the idea at that time that the ether perhaps did not exist at all. The experiment merely proved the non-existence of an ether-wind. In Reuterdahl's comment on Einstein, published in the Minneapolis Morning Tribune of April 14, 1923, p. 21, Michelson is quoted as saying that even if relativity is here to stay we don't have to reject the ether. Material on the Einstein controversy is contained in box No. 116 of the papers of Dr. TJ.J. See at the Library of Congress, where it was verified by Prof. Stephen G. Brush of the Institute for Fluid Dynamics and applied Mathematics of the University of Maryland, in 1976. (From a private communication of Prof. Brush to Mr. C.B. Wynniatt, Whangarei, New Zealand). When Michelson was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics, 1907, it was for his optical studies generally, and not for "disproving the ether-concept," as is sometimes claimed. He was the first American to win a Nobel Prize in science.
61
THE CASE FOR THE ETHER
"The aetherless basis of physical theory may have reached the end of its capabilities and we see in the aether A NEW HOPE FOR THE FUTURE."
Prof. P.A.M. Dirac, 1954/Nobel Prize in physics 1933.
"By his willingness to change his model or his concepts, the scientist is admit
ting that he makes no claim to possessing ultimate truth."
Dr. Wernher von Braun
Progress in science occurs when new facts have been discovered, and their contradiction with the respective contemporary theory has been recognized. Then the newly emerged facts become explainable by a new and extended theory and the old theory is discarded. One theory of fundamental importance in science is the controversial theory of the non-existence of ETHER. The term "ether" stems from Aristotle's name for the fifth element that he considered to make up the heavens, a component of all objects outside the earth's atmosphere. (The other four elements were fire, water, earth and air, and these were restricted to the earth itself.) Early wave physicists postulated an 'ether' filling space and all transparent substances. Light consisted of waves in this ether, which thus carried light even through an apparent vacuum and was therefore called a luminiferous or "light-carrying" ether.* James Clerk-Maxwell defined ether as "a material substance of a more subtle kind than visible bodies, supposed to exist in those parts of space which are apparently empty." Newton employed the term for the medium
*Asimov, Isaac, Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1964
62
The Case for the ETHER 63
which fills space, including the space which appears to be occupied by matter; for to him the ether must also penetrate between the atoms, in the pores of matter. Clerk-Maxwell summed it up with the opinion: "Whatever difficulties we may have in forming a consistent idea of the constitution of the aether, there can be no doubt that the interplanetary and intersteller spaces are not empty, but are occupied by a material substance or body, which is certainly the largest, and probably the most uniform body of which we have any knowledge."* However, the concept of ether is by no means only a hypothesis of 19th century scientists. Many modern scientists, including Tydal, Bertrand Russell, C.W. Richardson, Carl F. Krafft, and Sir Arthur Eddington, have affirmed their belief in the existence of the ether. The crucial test to prove or disprove its existence was based on an assumption, an erroneous assumption as we shall see. It was believed that the ether was motionless and that the earth traveled through it. A light beam sent in the direction of earth's motion ought therefore to travel more rapidly than light sent at right angles to it. The two beams of light ought to fall out of phase and show interference fringes. Albert A. Michelson's first experiment in 1881 showed no interference fringes; neither did the second and much more elaborate experiment in 1887. The absence of an ether wind was equated with the absence of ether. Although a scientific theory was derailed, the attempts to bury it once and for all have failed.
The Conceptual Necessity of Ether and Early Experiments
"If waves setting out from the sun exist in space eight minutes before striking our eyes, there must be in space some medium in which they exist and which conveys them. Waves we cannot have, unless they be waves in something." This view expressed by Sir Oliver Lodge was the generally held opinion of his time. "The ether is a physical thing!" claimed Lodge; he explained further, "The ether is dealt with not as a rarefied essence but as a substance with ascertainable physical properties, to which the ideas usually and properly associated with the word 'ethereal' are foreign." One basic experiment showed the elasticity of the elusive ether, a property which was interpreted by Lodge: "We have no means of getting hold of the ether mechanically; we cannot grip it or move it in the ordinary way: we can only get it electrically. We are straining the ether when we charge a body with electricity; it tries to recover, it has the power of recoil. . . . "**
*Lodge, Sir Oliver, The Ether of Space, New York: Harper & Bros. 1909
**Ibid.
64 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
"WE CAN ONLY GET IT ELECTRICALLY"
The experiment was initiated in the middle of the 19th century by the Frenchman Gassiot, who made the first unsuccessful attempts to pass electricity through rarefied gases. After him, Plücker invented the tube used later by Geissler for his experiments, from which the name "Geissler tube" is derived. Other scientists of world fame, like Crookes, carried out experiments with success, resulting in considerable progress in the field of physics. Crookes proved the mechanical action of "cathode rays" of bombarding rotary blades within the evacuated tube with these rays and setting the blades in motion. (In a Geissler tube, the atmospheric pressure is reduced to between 1 and 3 mm. of mercury. If the tube contains air and the anode and cathode ends of it are put into contact with the positive and negative poles of a highvoltage electric current, the whole tube lights up with a violet light, with the exception of a space at the cathode end where the light is blue and separated from the violet light by a dark band. When a "Geissler tube" is placed in the field of an electromagnet, the fluorescent glow shifts its position. The shift alters its direction when the poles of the magnet are reversed. This was the first tentative move in the direction of subatomic particles.) There was one great difficulty with these cathode rays; they were unable to leave the tube of rarefied air since they were incapable of passing through glass. Hertz had discovered that cathode rays could penetrate thin layers of metal, and it was then that Philipp Lenard (Nobel Prize winner in physics in 1905), continuing on Hertz's previous experiments, made an aluminum "window" on the side of the vacuum tube opposite to the cathode. Through this window the rays were projected outside the tube, where they could be studied with ease in the open air. He proved that these "Lenard rays" could be propagated in the atmosphere, causing atmospheric phenomena similar to those inside the tube. The passage of electrons through the dense air of the atmosphere appeared to open a tunnel in which considerable air turbulence and luminous effects, varying according to the voltage used, were observed. The German physicist Eugen Goldstein studied the luminescence produced at the cathode. In 1886, by using a perforated cathode, he discovered that there were also rays going through the channels in the direction opposite to that taken by the cathode rays. He called these Kanalstrahlen ("channel rays" also called "canal rays" or "positive rays"). The study of these rays led eventually to the recognition by Rutherford of the existence of the proton, while JJ. Thomson, who supplied the final proof of the existence of particles in cathode rays, is usually considered the discoverer of these particles, our electrons. Evidently, some important papers of the Germans—Geissler, Plücker,
The Case for the ETHER 65
Hertz and Lenard never found their way into the English scientific literature, and we are indebted to the late Dr. Kurt Seesemann for the following information, published in Switzerland in 1956 under the title "Aetherphysik und Radiaesthesie" ("Etherphysics and Radiesthesia"). According to Seesemann, Philipp Lenard undertook a crucial experiment to prove the existence of the ether by having a second Pluckertube with an aluminum window connected by a glassblower to the window of the first tube, and evacuating both tubes. His argument was that if ether really did not exist, both the cathode rays and the canal rays should show identical behavior in both tubes: the first one, where they originated, and the second, which allowed them access via the aluminum window. Alas, only the cathode rays entered the second tube, and Lenard concluded that the vacuum of space permitted transmission of only the negatively ionized rays, thus indirectly proving the existence of a transmitting ether between the sun and our planet. In the same paper, Dr. Seesemann shows that Einstein revoked his stand on the non-existence of ether in 1952 (shortly before his death in 1955) after the British Nobel Prize winner Dirac at the University of Cambridge "proved the actual existence of ether by mathematical means."* Quite evidently, Einstein had repeatedly changed his opinion on the subject of ether. In his book Ether and Reality (1925), Sir Oliver Lodge quotes Einstein from his paper "Sidelights on Relativity" as follows: "There is (sic) weighty arguments to be adduced in favour of the ether hypothesis. To deny the ether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever. The fundamental facts of mechanics do not harmonize with this view . . . According to the general theory of relativity, space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether. According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable . . . ."** In contrast to the claims by Sir Oliver Lodge and Dr. Seesemann, Isaac Asimov merely states, in connection with the ether question, that Einstein had "cancelled out the ether as unnecessary by assuming that light traveled in quanta and therefore had particle-like properties and was not merely a wave that required some material to do the waving . . ."*** The same reference source describes very briefly the work of Sir Oliver Lodge, neglecting to mention at all his deep involvement in ether research, and concluding with the rather nasty remark: "He (Sir Oliver Lodge) became a leader of 'psychical research' and is one of the prime examples of a serious scientist entering a field that is usually the domain of quacks." The most important contribution to the ether controversy in modern times seems to come from an Italian, Professor Marco Todeschini of the
*Congres Mondiale de Radiesthésie, Livre de Rapport, Locarno, Switzerland, 1956 **Lodge, Sir Oliver, Ether and Reality, London: Hodder & Stoughton, Ltd., 1925
***Asimov, op. cit.
66 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
Theatine Academy of Sciences, Physics Branch, a recent contender for the Nobel Prize. In a foreword to Todeschini's hook, the President of the Academy, Mr. Angelo De Luca, points out that in March 1956. at the 25th International Convention of the American Society of Physics, the scientist Oppenheimer revealed that the behavior of anti-particles and the occurrence of sub-atomic phenomena are in sharp conflict with Einstein's relativity, and in harmony with Galilei's, The return to classical physics, says the President, should therefore be needful: " . . . the conclusion that it is Galilei's relativity and not Einstein's which is found in the Universe . . . allows modern theoretical physics to eliminate all its uncertainties and antitheses, proceeding on a ground of solid reality and opening wide horizons to scientific progress and its practical application." Considering Michelson's experiment and Bradley's astronomical aberration, discovered in 1728, Professor Todeschini reaches these conclusions: "A motionless ether exists in the whole Universe. It exists, but in proximity of the Earth it moves jointly with it in its revolutionary (rotating) movement round the Sun." If this is actually the case, the negative outcome of Michelson's experiment finds an explanation. Instead of a weightless ether, as until now conceived by physics, Todeschini postulated a fluid space possessing a constant density. From this theory, he was able to demonstrate that "the Sun is located in the center of a huge spheric field of fluid rotating space, which moves subdivided like an onion in many concentric layers having constant thickness and rotation speed diminishing with the increase of the square roots of their radiuses. From my theory it also follows that the Earth is located in the center of a similar smaller rotating field, placed at the periphery of the bigger solar one." Todeschini has conducted numerous tests to back up his claim, and the science-oriented reader will have to read his books in order to comprehend his conclusions. Returning to Michelson's experiment, Todeschini notes that it was based upon the assumption that the ether is motionless throughout the universe; but, he continues, "I have demonstrated . . . that our planet in its revolution movement drags with itself its surrounding medium of ether just as it carries along its atmospheric quilt, and this makes us certain that the Earth is in the center of an ether's planetary sphere and that both turn around the Sun with the same speed revolution of 30 Km/sec."* If we return for a moment to Sir Oliver Lodge, we will find the following statement: "Mr. Michelson reckons that by his latest arrangement he could see 1 in 4,000 millions if it (the ether drift) existed; but he saw nothing.
*Todeschini, Marco, Decisive Experiments in Modern Physics, Bergamo, Italy: Theatine Academy of Sciences, 1966 (Translated from the Italian)
The Case for ihe ETHER 67
Everything behaved precisely as it the etner was (sic) stagnant; as if the earth carried with it all the ether in its immediate neighborhood." * Lodge's conceptual theory is confirmed not only by the claims of Todeschini, but also by a Brazilian scientist with the pseudonym of Dino Kraspedon, whose book was translated into English in 1959 (Neville Spearman, Ltd., London, England). This information source states that, pertaining to Michelson's experiment of ether drift:
"He found none, nor could it be found. The retardation which he thought to
find in me speed or light, owing to the resistance of the ether, could not exist of the ether moves with the same angular velocity as the Earth. When two bodies develop identical velocity in the same direction, they remain in
the same relative positions, it does not matter what the speed is to an
observer outside the system; it is a question or relative velocity between two
points in the same system . . . However, Michelson is not to be blamed. The
blame lies with those who thougnt that the ether was universal and station
ary in relation to Earth. On this false premise, anybody would have corne to
the same erroneous conclusion. If a minor premise in a syllogisrn is wrong, the conclusion is wrong, just as it is if a major premise is involved. False
theories produce wrong results. As far as that experiment was concerned, it
was a false premise on which the people of Earth have elaborated a whole
theory."
It becomes apparent that Sir Oliver Lodge (an Englishman), Marco Todeschini (an Italian) and the information source of the Brazilian Dino Kraspedon are in full agreement on the important question of the existence of the ether, which is carried around by the Earth, in just the same way as the atmosphere is. According to the Brazilian information source the etneric covering of our planet extends 400,822 km. beyond the solid surface of planet Earth, and our moon lies within the fringe area of this gigantic ether shell. The ether is described as an 'electric fluid' forming the primary substance and the substratum for electrons and protons, for all physical things and phenomena. The result of the studies of Sir Oliver Lodge, Professor Todeschini and Dr. Seesemann, coupled with the above-mentioned claims of Kraspedon, point to a gigantic scientific fallacy, resulting in false conclusions in contemporary physics: "All those (new) experimental results," states Todeschini, "deny the postulate of light's constant speed, put as the basis of physical theories since 1905 until nowadays, and make us certain that such theory does not correspond to physical reality." "The result of all the optical experiments (by Todeschini) prove to us that light's speed is relative to the chosen reference system, as is the speed of
*Lodge, The Ether of Space, op. cit.
68 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
anything else in movement." Todeschini continues to shoot holes in contemporary theories by stating that " . . . bodies' shrinkage and times' dilation predicted in Lorentz's transformation equations and forming the basis of Einstein's pseudorelativity do not happen at all in natural reality; actually, they were postulated (as we have shown) following an erroneous physical interpretation both of astronomic aberration and of Michelson's experiment."* The theories of Einstein, Heisenberg and Schrödinger appear very questionable if the existence of the ether can be verified, and it will not be an easy task to show the obsolescence of all those accepted physical theories. A coming re-evaluation will prove the truth of Max Planck's statement, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." Edgar Cayce repeatedly mentioned air ships at the time of Atlantis which were able to navigate "without the use of wings" (195-70) and which were .propelled by the application of electrical forces. Present earthly technology is limited to the application of jet-and-rocket propulsion, but the elusive "Unidentified Flying Objects" (UFOs) exhibit many characteristics of Edgar Cayce's aircraft at the time of Atlantis. Films
and photographs of such objects show their absence of wings, and there have been countless reports of magnetic and electrical disturbances connected with their flight over populated areas. The existence of these objects has been denied because they defy scientific explanation; a similar treatment is being given the results of ether research, unpublicized U.S. patents and experimental results pertaining to the possible propulsion of UFOs. The reader will recall our statements pertaining to Philipp Lenard's experiment, in which the Lenard rays appeared to open a tunnel in the atmosphere, and Sir Oliver Lodge's claim that "we can only get it (the ether) electrically." The definition of the ether by Dino Kraspedon as an 'electric fluid' does indeed fit the picture of this primary substance of all physical things. Experimenters with Lenard rays have claimed that they were able to "decompose" oxygen, nitrogen and the other gases which make up the atmosphere and theorized that they were able to revert these elements to their "etheric" condition, thus creating a vacuum in their place. On the basis of experimental work starting in 1926 and lasting to this day, Thomas Townsend Brown was able to produce thrust by charging an electrical condenser made of special materials; he ultimately was flying spherical, saucer-shaped condensers in a hard vacuum, thus eliminating the orthodox explanation of "electric wind" as the source of the UFOs' propul
*Todeschini, op. cit.
The Case for the ETHER 69
sion. Quite evidently there cannot be wind, i.e., movement of air, in a vacuum. Brown describes how thrust was achieved in the direction of the positively charged edge of these airfoils: The objects had no propellers, no jets, no moving parts at all. There were no frictional losses involved. The saving of energy in terms of increased efficiency becomes evident if one considers that the actual, usable energy output of our conventional power stations is only about 34% of the total energy input; thermodynamic losses (converting heat to mechanical action in turbines and dynamos) amount to 45%, not counting so-called heat losses in the system. The energy efficiency of the propulsion system discovered by Brown, depending on a highly charged body with a positive leading edge, is close to 100%! T.T. Brown was granted several U.S. patents* and his work was ignored! The results of his experiments simply did not fit into the scheme of present-day scientific theory, period. Since the ether theory had been tossed out the window, one could not even speculate that Brown's experiments were possibly explainable as "straining the ether," to use the words of Sir Oliver Lodge. On many occasions, Edgar Cayce referred to an energy which he called "etheric energies" or "aetheronic energies." There indeed are vibrations or energies which have distinctly different properties from those of the electromagnetic spectrum. Using these vibrations, Dr. Galen Hieronymus has been able to trace the physiological functions of U.S. astronauts circling the moon. This strange energy does not show the usual attenuation characteristics of E/M energies; the strength of the signals does not depend on the distance from the sender. There is good reason to assume that these vibrations of the ether are the basis for practically all so-called psychic phenomena, which are unexplained to this day. This energy has been called: "Eloptic energy" by Hieronymus, "Prana" by Indian metaphysicians, "Orgone Energy" by Wilhelm Reich, "Bio-Cosmic Energy" by Dr. Brünier, "X-Force" by the British scientist Eeman, "Nervous Ether" by Richardson, "Odic Force" by Baron von Reichenbach, "Animal Magnetism" by Mesmer, "Vital Fluid" by medieval alchemists, "Mumia" by Paracelsus, and "Vis Medicatrix Naturae" by medical scientists. "Eloptic Energy operates in a different medium," claims Galen Hieronymus. He elaborates further that this energy can be refracted through a prism and conducted along light rays. It can also be conducted along copper wires, insulated by certain types of materials, and conducted through electronic condensers or capacitors: "The energy from a person can be conducted along light rays and implanted on a light-sensitive film, and again onto a print made from that film. The print can be moved to any distance away from the person, and it will act as a perfect reproduction of the person,
*U.S. Patents No. 3,022,430; 3,187,206; 3,018,394; and 2,949,550, Thomas T. Brown
70 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
changing from moment to moment as the person changes. It was this principle that we used in order to follow the astronauts out into space, arid test them as they changed due to high 'G' stress arid to other influences they were subjected to." These claims could possibly be disregarded as the ravings of a lunatic scientist, were it not for the fact that, around the turn of the century, Professor R. Blondlot in Nancy, France discovered a radiation with exactly the same properties; he named it "N" radiation, after the location in Nancy. The Nobel Prize winning (1903, in physics) French researcher, Professor Jean Becquerel, who was the original discoverer of the phenomenon later called ''radio-activity" by Marie Curie, reported the discovery of his "N" rays in a scientific paper in France.* He stressed one outstanding difference with E/M radiation, namely that "N" rays have a very slow speed of propagation along wires. The same fact was confirmed not only by Hieronymus in the U.S., but also by Eeman ("Eemari-circuits") in England and by a German, Dr. med. et phil., Joseph Wuest.** The incredible importance of research on this particular subject (etherradiations) had been recognized by Rudolph Hess, deputy of Adolf Hitler, who privately financed Dr. Joseph Wuest. This fact was mentioned to this writer by Dr. Wuest personally just a few years ago. Only World War II put an end to his research. If the above statements sound heretical, we should not forget that the heresies of Galileo's day are now universally accepted "scientific facts." Among the still unexplained phenomena are, for instance, telepathy, which cannot be explained by means of electromagnetic hypothesis. The importance of the discovery of the carrier-mechanism of telepathy was described by the Soviet scientist, Vasilyev: "To discover such energy would be tantamount to the discovery of nuclear energy!" Psychometry is another example of a still enigmatic energy-form which could be explained by the ether theory. The "aka-threads" of the Polynesian Kahuna-priests of old and the fear of some natives to be photographed also come to mind. Spirit apparition becomes explainable as a condensation of the elusive ether by manipulation of so-called spirit entities. The observed drop in temperature at all such occurrences supports the thesis of a transformation of ether-energy to a semi-material substance. The Swiss professor, Eugen Matthias, claims that we are dealing indeed with a "PRE-PHYSICAL STATE OF MATTER,"*** and nothing could describe the nature of ether better than this definition, which is almost identical to that given by Edgar Cayce.
* Becquerel, Jean, In Comptes Rendues, Tome 138, p. 1413, Le Roux, France, 1904 **Wuest, Joseph, "About a New Type of Radiation Surrounding All Inorganic and Organic Substances as Well as Biological Objects." University of Munich, 1933-34, (Available only in German)
***Matthias, Eugen, Die Strahlen des Menschen Kunden sein Wesen, (The Radiations from Man Proclaim His Whole Being), Zurich, Switzerland: Europa—Verlag, 1955.
The Case for the ETHER 71
Man has walked on the moon, but the basic cause of smell—the physical radiation-transmitting energies of the fragrance of a flower—is still unexplained. Our physical bodies and their behavior patterns cannot be completely explained in terms of conventional atomic and chemical processes. Practitioners of psychosomatic medicine all know that a mind-and-matter relationship holds the key to treating the majority of diseases that beset man today. Could it be possible that the medium in which "mind" functions is the ether? This would explain telepathy, for instance, and make it as easily understandable as a radio transmitter and receiver which are tuned to the same frequency. It would also explain the important effects our thought processes have on the physical world. Our inadequate knowledge has no answer to the enigma of the pyramid effect, the observed "radiation of form." However, the researchers quoted in this paper have observed that the energy in question can be refracted, reflected, polarized and even focused.* Is it not very possible that the pyramid is an extremely efficient focusing device for the ether? After all, the mummification and dehydration effects of a properly constructed and oriented pyramid are not new discoveries and were not invented by the Czechs or Soviets. They are as old as Egypt and Atlantis. We cannot ignore the role of the ether, a bio-cosmic energy, as the necessary link between mind and matter in all the reported PK phenomena. If we wish to investigate the magic of Uri Geller, we will have to investigate the properties of the ether first. We simply cannot afford to turn the other way if the topics of ether and etheronic energies are repeatedly mentioned in the Edgar Cayce readings. But above all, we cannot afford to continue to ignore the available evidence, resulting from countless years of research, which indicates the existence of the ether and its potential for useful applications in our world.
*Wuest, op. cit.
Note: The material in this section has been published previously by the author under the title: "EDGAR CAYCE and the 'ETHER' Controversy," A.R.E. Journal, Vol. XI, May 1976, No. 3, Association for Research and Enlightenment, Inc., Virginia Beach, Va. 23451
72 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
Direction of Thrust
Impulse on ETHER
Recoil by ETHER
The T.T. Brown Experiment and its relationship to the universal cosmic energy (ETHER)
circular-plate CAPACITOR (T.T. Brown, USA)
"ETHER-VORTEX-TURBINE" IN ENGLAND
"There is a gentleman named John R.R. Searl in England who claims to have developed an anti-gravity device. He is attempting to develop it now into a saucershaped commercial aircraft. The principle of it is allegedly that, when a metal annulus is rotated at sufficient speed, the conduction electrons are displaced outwards by centrifugal force, so producing a very intense negative charge on the outside perimeter and a positive charge on the inside. The rotating electric field so obtained can be tapped by induction coils around the annulus to provide current for electromagnets placed in an electric-motor
arrangement around the annulus so as to drive the annulus, thus producing a feedback effect resulting in very intense electric and magnetic fields. When the electric potential is about 1014 volts, this being conducted to a metal hull around the annulus, shielding from both gravity and inertia is obtained. Because of the shape of the rotor and the need to maximize the charge on the hull, the best shape of hull is like two saucers clamped together at very sharp edge. Directional control is obtained by use of flight coils to produce assymetry in the
(force-)field." (From a private letter of Mr. C.B. Wynniatt, Professional Engineer, 25 Commins Street, Onerahi, Whangarei, New Zealand, to the author.)
The following sections of this chapter will attempt to present a scientific overview of the Searl observations and an intelligent analysis of the observed effects.
The Ether—Vortex Turbine by J. Searl, England (The Barret Report) issued by P.L. Barret B.Sc.
In 1949, Mr. J.R.R. Searl was employed by the Midlands Electricity Board as an electronic and electrical fitter. He was very enthusiastic about the subject of electricity, though he had no formal education on the subject other than that required by the job. Unhindered by conventional ideas about electricity, he carried out his own investigation into the subject. During work on electrical motors and generators, he noticed that a small EMF was produced by spinning metal parts—the negative towards the outside and poi,
73
74 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
Experimental set-up of the British inventor John Searl
"Ether-Vortex-Turbine" in England 75
towards the rotational axis. In 1950 he experimented with rotating slip rings and measured a small EMF on a conventional meter. He also noticed that when the rings were spinning freely and no current was taken, his hair bristled.
His conclusions were that free electrons in the metal were spun out by centrifugal force, a centripetal force being produced by the static field in the metal. He decided to build a generator based on the principle. It had a segmented rotor disc, passing through electromagnets at its periphery. The electromagnets were energized from the rotor, and were intended to boost the EMF. By 1952, the first generator had been constructed and was about three feet in diameter. It was tested in the open by Searl and a friend. The armature was set in motion by a small engine. The device produced the expected electrical power, but at an unexpectedly high potential. At relatively low armature speeds a potential of the order of 10s volts was produced, as indicated by the static effects on near objects. A characteristic crackling and the smell of ozone supported the conclusion. The really unexpected then occurred. While still speeding up the generator lifted and rose to a height of some fifty feet, breaking the union between itself and the engine. Here it stayed for a while, still speeding up and surrounded itself with a pink halo. This indicated ionization of the air at a much reduced pressure of about 10"3 mm Hg. More interesting was the side effect, causing local radio receivers to go on of their own accord! This could have been due to ionizing discharge or electromagnetic induction. Finally, and perhaps thankfully, the whole generator accelerated at a fantastic rate and is thought to have gone off into space. Since that day, Searl and others have made some ten or more small flying craft, some of which have been similarly lost, and developed a form of control. Larger craft have also been built—some 12ft., and two 30ft. in diameter. The antics of his machines have given rise to much speculation as to the nature and origin of so-called "flying saucers." One wonders why Searl has not come to the notice of scientists and the public at large. The fact is that he has; but for fear of being ridiculed, people keep the knowledge or interest to themselves. The public has been educated to scoff at the subject of flying saucers, and the reported behavior of the things cannot be explained on current scientific theory. Such "difficult to explain" topics (as with telepathy, dowsing, homeopathic healing, etc.) must be given the "no comment" treatment, so as not to upset the uncertain structure of present scientific theory. Searl's records do show however that his efforts have not gone unnoticed. Government departments and people of all classes and education know about him. Some have attempted to steal the idea, but their thinking along the lines of the electromagnetic theory and the
76 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
law of conservation of mass and energy, has misled them or confused them. This narrow thinking has made many conclude that Searl is a crank or imposter. Also some are prejudiced in their attitude that new ideas are the prerogative of a hierarchy of intellectuals. It is suspected that Searl is to come up with something more momentous than his games with power lines and the unsuspecting motorist. In that event, the conventional thinker must be ready to adapt the Searl Effect into existing theory, or chance the alternative fate of a complete disruption and révisai of physical theory—from Ampere, Galvani and Volta onwards. Any theory must explain these various phenomena, some of which have been observed by Searl himself, and some by the general public:
1. Anti-gravity or lévitation. 2. Very high electrostatic fields. 3. The peculiar magnetic effect: The generator produces a "D.C." static field with negative polarity at the rim and positive at the center. However, the magnetic field from the generator produces induction in conductive loops when there is no relative movement. The effect is seen . . . and used . . . in a U.F.O. detector put out by a club. This instrument, on being examined, was found to be a deflection magnetometer with a closed conductive loop. The presence of a craft is indicated by the deflection of the magnet from the N/S line. It seems, therefore, that the flux from the generator is continually expandingwhich implies an indefinite, or infinite, quantity of energy! 4. "Perpetual Motion": Once the machine has passed a certain threshold of potential, the energy output exceeds the input. From then on, the energy output seems to be virtually limitless. The estimated power output of the generator is some 1013 or 10ls Watts, which puts the figure too high to be attributable to a solar source. 5. Inertia loss: Above threshold potential, which must be some 1013 volts, the generator and attached parts become inertia free. This, of course, jars very severely with accepted concepts of inertia in mass. 6. Drive: By altering the distribution of potential on the surface of the craft, it is possible to propel it. The preferred direction of travel at ultra-high speeds is away from the planet, the plane of the generator being at 90 degrees to the gravity field. When in horizontal flight the craft takes up an angle to the gravity field suggestive of the balance between like vector fields. The generator may produce a gravity field of its own. 7. Ionization of the air: This is a simple electrostatic effect. It gives rise to a translucent glow surrounding the craft and glowing trails. The intensity of the field is such that it is capable of excluding the ionized air, creating a near vacuum around the craft.
"Ether-Vortex-Turbine" in England 77
8. Permanent electric polarity: Searl noticed that after working near craft or generators he had a "cobweb" sensation on the skin. His clothes clung to him and also the bed linen. This was accompanied by occasional crackling and'lasted some hours. This effect could be attributed to a permanent polarity of dielectric material, in this case the material being body tissue. Little work has been done on permanent dielectrics, but reference may be found in the records of the PhysicoMathematical Society of Japan, 1920. The work was carried out by Prof. Eguchi, Naval College, Tokyo. 9. Matter snatch during acceleration: This occurs when the craft is on the ground, and the drive is suddenly switched on. The rising craft takes up a lump of the ground with it, leaving the familiar tracks.
APPLICA TION OF THEOR Y
The ultra-high potential produced by the Searl ring generator being that much greater than the ionization potential of the air, causes ionic breakdown of the air at some feet from the craft skin as this acts as the positive electrode. The negative side of the generator is connected to the periphery of the disc and is isolated from the skin. The field at the negative terminal loses electrons and the resulting ions are repelled away from the terminal with high acceleration. The electrons pass through the generator, constituting the current in the generator and provide the charge at the negative terminal to produce negative ions in the air near the rim. The craft, therefore, is enveloped in a vacuum.
In ordinary high voltage generators, maximum potential is limited by the ionized breakdown of the air. Flashover occurs and the accumulated energy is lost. The geometry and the arrangement of the field coils in the Searl generator is such that flashover is eliminated until the thing is in a vacuum and is then impossible. Energy is required to build up the potential and initially has to be supplied from an external source. As the vacuum layer increases about the craft, less energy is required to maintain the potential. The generator soon reaches a potential where the Searl Effect takes place, and the device produces its own energy along with the lévitation phenomenon. On the basis of the theory, at this potential the stress on the space "fabric" cannot be equalized by flowing magnetism (current flow) through the air and craft as a circuit. The space fabric breaks down to provide the magnetism to relieve the stress, but the energy by-product is absorbed by the generator, which reinforces the field. The generator then must set up an ether flow or flux along the lines of the electric field as is conventionally represented. The direction of ether flow
78 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
is, however, in at the positive and out at the negative. This is deduced from the Schappeller theory. The type field and the net effect of the craft field plus the earth's gravitational field gives rise to a condition where the ether density below the craft is higher than that above it. The craft therefore is strongly repelled away from the planet and to stop it from shooting off into space the field of the craft must be intentionally perturbed or limited. In the drive condition, the craft is shot out of the earth field like a wet orangepit from between the fingers. The acceleration is enormous, but since all matter associated with the craft is linked with the field, no distortion of any part, including passengers if any, occurs. The limit to the speed is unknown, but since the craft has no inertia there is possibly no limit as we know it. Conventionally it would be safe to say, however, that the limit should be below the speed of light. Above this speed too much is unknown to take any risk, but since the craft carries its own space with it, in a sense the theory of relativity is inapplicable! (Another way to say it is that the craft does not travel through space, but past it!)
It can be seen that a neutral zone appears below the craft as well as the neutral ring above,—when the lévitation drive is on. If matter becomes located in the Zone, then it is held there. In consequence, the Searl effect craft so far made have left their mark on the countryside in the form of large neat holes when they suddenly take off. The chunk of earth is taken up with it. . . .
The Searl Generator runs at low speeds and is unlikely to fly apart by centrifugal force. Apart from this, the side effect electromagnetic forces help to keep it together. As with other gravity fields, the flux favors passage through matter, and so the field within the craft may be tailored by appropriately distributing the mass in the craft. This is of particular convenience in manned craft, where the comfort of the crew may be improved by making the cabin field about l/2 "G." When travelling in free space, the external field of the craft would resemble that of the combined earth and craft, since it would be moving relative to a (comparatively) stationary ether. Collision between the craft and large objects in space is very unlikely, except in direct line of flight—when such could be seen and the craft rapidly turned. The field is such that the objects are diverted past the craft. If the object qualifies as a planet or moon, having its own gravity, then the craft, oriented by the interaction of fields, is strongly repelled anyway, unless measures are taken to alter the field of the craft. Small objects such as meteorites are pushed out by the combined electric and dynomagnetic fields. An object entering such a powerful static field is at first attracted, then ionized, and then strongly repelled. The dynomagnetic field induces a mag
"Ether-Vortex-Turbine" in England 79
nostatic (ordinary magnetic) field in objects which will interact with the craft's magnetostatic field at considerable distances (miles), and repel it. It should be pointed out that only a very small amount of space fabric (ether) passes through the craft and an even smaller amount is converted for energy. However, as previously mentioned, small changes in the ether lead to large physical effect. Even in deep space, the craft has an electronic flow through the generator, which is continuous along the electric field outside the craft. Electrons are picked up, and some leave the rim at relativistic speeds. These do not contribute to the drive. So the craft also carries its own negative space charge. In the atmosphere, the electronic flow is much greater, and the generator current is much higher. The craft therefore functions a lot better and has greater flexibility in space. In air, the recombination of ions gives rise to a pink to blue glow around the craft, and in damp conditions the ions in the air can give rise to condensation. The only hazard thus far observed is that, if the craft hovers too long near the ground, the soil becomes burnt, due to the electric currents in it, which build up heat. Also, the nervous system of animals is interfered with by ionizing discharge, if they happen to get too close.
Bibliography:
1. Electromagnetic Theory Stratton 2. Principles of Quantum Mechanics Hauston 3. My Philosophy Oliver Lodge 4. Physics of the Primary State of Matter Davson 5. The Dramatic Universe J.G. Bennett 6. Congress of Radionics & Radiesthesia, 1950 7. Energy of the Orgone Reich
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Simplified Principle of Ether—Vortex in Operation
Observations by numerous reliable witnesses: Seawater peaked up toward the craft as shown. Or: Snow was sucked up by low-flying craft overhead. Or: Cars, trucks, and even a US helicopter in flight, were lifted up. Or: Craft kicked up a small sandstorm in the desert. Or: Chunks of soil are lifted up, treetops are spinning wildly, etc. etc.
Summary: The crafts observed obey Newton's third law of motion: "IMPULSE = RECOIL" (in the universal cosmic energy medium)
The Ether Flow Diagram of the rotating Searl generator, described by Mr. J.P. Roos on the following page as a double toroidal vortex, is somewhat more complex and therefore not shown here.
FEEDBACK CONCERNING THE BARRET REPORT
Mr. Jan P. Roos of Austin, Texas, a fluid dynamicist and president of the private "Association for Pushing Gravity Research," had this comment to make of the Barret Report:—"The theoretical explanation in the Barret Report, based on the existence of an ether, is quite correct. As a matter of fact, it parallels ideas I have on the subject. It is not difficult for a fluid dynamicist, as I am, to add the following to the report. "The Searl generator creates a double toroidal vortex of ether flow, where the ether enters the axis of the double toroid at both sides, and emerges at the periphery of the circle where both toroids join. The wonderful aspect of toroidal flow is that it stabilizes itself such that its axis aligns with the direction of the surrounding flow. In other words-if the toroidal axis is at an angle to the direction of flow, a moment exists that tends to restore the angle to zero. Two such stable positions exist, 180 degrees apart. Hence the direction of flow, plus or minus, is of no importance. The joining of two toroids of opposite sign to form the above double toroid will not change this natural stability. "If the gravitational ether flow is thought of as a flow of ether perpendicular to a flat earth surface, then the double ether toroidal vortex is stable when the ether flows in from below and from above, and emerges at the periphery of the horizontal circle joining the two vortices, as is demonstrated in the Barret Report. I think that this stability is very meaningful for this type of drive, and it certainly compares favorably with the special design problems required to maintain stability in helicopters, for example. Further, fluid dynamic theory states that, pertaining to forces in toroidal vortices, a toroidal fluid flow will not experience any force in a purely parallel fluid stream. "Vertical flight control of a craft could therefore be done by varyinp t^· moment of one of the vortices; horizontal flight control could be ac
81
82 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
pushed—as referred to in the Barret Report—by segmented toroidal flow, and by allowing a local toroidal section to increase in momentum (as presumably only the Searl generator is capable of) .... "Congruent with the above formulation is the report that John Searl's first generator shot straight up into the air and disappeared, without arcing off into a horizontal direction! This is exactly what would be expected from the interaction of a symmetrical double vortex within a converging field. One could consider this all as a proof that the phenomenon of gravity is due to a converging (sink) flow of ether, as had been postulated by O.G. Hilgenbergbackin 1931.* "I myself can see that a cosmological ether theory leaves room for the Searl generator to be a reality. Only the non-material drive consisting of two super fluidic (non-viscous) ether vortices, excited and nursed to sufficient, strength by a material drive, can explain John Searl's success."
We also have the published testimony of Dr. Arthur Cain, an American space expert, who travelled from California to England in order to examine Searl's claims:—"I was very skeptical indeed. In the meantime I have let myself be convinced that Searl's calculations are sound, and that he will make it." And further, Dr. Cain commented that . . . . "Searl's propulsion system will make customary propulsion as obsolete as a mill-wheel . . . ."
And More Feedback
Professor Shinichi Seiki, Uwajima City, Ehime Prefecture, Japan, developed a somewhat more elaborate theory of the Lorentz-Force, incorporating the use of the "ether." Starting with the so-called "Kramer-equation," which describes the movements of atoms in the presence of exterior electrical and magnetic fields—the basic components of the Lorentz-Force—Professor Seiki conceived of the possibility of creating "negative gravitational energies" by utilizing a suitable electro-magnetic field. Currently, in a process called NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance), we only utilize the changes in spatial electron spins due to the application of magnetic fields. The substance to be examined is placed in a high frequency field, and we observe energy absorption effects peculiar to the frequencies typical of a given molecule of matter. Seiki went one step further and introduced NER (Nuclear Electrical Resonance), which influences both the polar and the axial spin. Polar spin, he claimed, is directly related to the gravitational field. Describing a rotating electrical AC field superimposed on a DC magnetic field, he claims that an
*"Uber Gravitation, Tromben and Wellen in Bewegten Medien."
Feedback Concerning the Barret Report 83
exponential increase of "negative gravitational energies" occurs at a certain resonance frequency. This means that energy from the earth-gravitational field enters the system of the secondary artificial field created by the antigravity motor. The negative G-energies cause a weakening of the earth-gravitational field, ultimately cancelling it altogether. Further depolarization then causes the vehicle to be repulsed by the larger gravitational body (earth). It seems that the reason Prof. Seiki's NER effects have not yet been "officially" utilized, is that nuclear electrical resonance can occur only at extremely high electrical voltage simultaneously with ultra-high AC fre
quencies. Below this threshold, the probability of negative-G-energy conditions is extremely small. Above this critical frequency (also called"Larmor Frequency"), the effect of this type of gravity engine is also dependant upon the electro-magnetic polarization potential of the materials used. Professor Seiki proposes ferromagnetic substances, such as ferrit and ferromagnetic materials such as barium-strontium-titanate. In his design, three spherical condensers are alternately charged and discharged by three magnetic coils. At first glance, the entire idea seems to be just another "perpetuum mobile." However, the only energy transfomation used is that of gravitational energy into mechanical and electrical and vice versa. Seiki calculated a power output of 3 . 109KW for an anti-gravity engine, using one ton each of ferrit and barium-strontium-titanate for the design. This is more than the total power output of a Saturn rocket, but, even so, Seiki's vehicle could carry a payload of about one ton! Professor Seiki's work does seem to be taken seriously, as attested to by the fact that Dr. Wernher Von Braun considered it of sufficient interest to discuss it personally with him during one of Von Braun's trips to Japan.
And Still More Feedback:
Rotational Force Fields and Gravitation
From France comes a Dr. MJ.J. Pages, who postulates a "plenum"—substance analogous to the ether or cosmic energy medium—and describes a technique which could be defined as "lighter than spatial energy" (analogous to "lighter-than-air" craft.) Published in "REVUE FRANÇAISE D'ASTRONAUTIQUE, No. 3, 1967," Dr. Pages considers it possible to imagine an entire astronautical technique with extraordinarily high performance; so high, in fact, that it jeopardizes all of the physical and biophysical concepts presently considered as infallible dogma at most universities.
After giving his definition of an electro-magnetic Magnus Effect, he declares: "To illustrate these mechanisms (of directive, degravitative, pro
84 ETHER-TECHNOLOGY
pulsive effects), I wish very specially to describe an experiment that I personally performed in 1921, and that I found later in a scientific magazine. By reason of the importance of this experiment, I believe that the full text of its description is in order. Here is the text. (Historic, French original).
Electrostatic Experiment of the Flying Disk
"We also saw in the Ducretet House an old apparatus that has been forgotten for a long time and which merits being returned to a place of honor. As can be seen, it is a mica disk which is mobile on a point and which assumes a very rapid revolving motion when it is presented to a very powerful static machine, such as the Wimshurst machine. "The rotation is then so energetic that gravity appears to be eliminated by centrifugal force although the latter seems to give only horizontal components, and the disk flies off . . . . "I saw the disk revolve, for the first time, in London a short while after the Coup d'Etat, when I was taking the Faraday courses. Some time after returning from exile, Ruhmkorff again showed me the experiment, and we discussed causes of the phenomenon that were not indicated by Faraday, but neither of us could arrive at an acceptable idea. "This incident came to my mind twenty years later when I thought of using an iron disk which does not revolve at a lesser speed and which we place in motion in many different manners, as we shall explain at greater length on occasion. Then I discovered an explanation for the motion of the iron disk which I think is a proper explanation and which I hope to see accepted by official science. I shall wait and see if it does not happen to apply to the mica disk, "mutatis mutandis." "The motion of the iron disk produced by electromagnetism has already been used in industry in the form that I conceived and by the processes that I indicated. More or less satisfactory modifications have permitted a considerably wider use, and we think that it is far from having said its last word in the great question of the transportation of force from a distance. "Who is the inventor of the mica disk which to me seems a required
complement of any respected electrical machine, at a time when it is such a question of revolving magnetic fields and direct rotations to which—by a series of strange circumstances—he indirectly gave birth? Mr. Ducretet, who built the model that we are presenting, informed me that Rumkorff claims to have invented it and that the invention claim was contested by Abbe Laborde; but the description published in "Les Mondes" (No. 23) goes back only to 1870, at a date much later than the experiment which I witnessed. There remains the question of the Faraday priority that I reserve." "What is certain is that a similar disk is described under the name of
Feedback Concerning the Barret Report 85
"Franklin tourniquet" on page 271 of the Sigaud-de-la-Fond treatise, but this disk is fitted with a band of tin which does not exist in the disk that we are discussing. Placed between the two balls of a Wimshurst or Holtz machine, the Franklin disk assumes a very great speed without the necessity of using points.
"This experiment, forgotten for more than a century, is obviously similar to the other two and served as their preface. This is not the only time that we can note that nothing is more fruitful than to compare with modern electricity the theories, the principles and the experiments of 18th century electricity—a forgotten science that we disdain and disregard too much today. With the meager means at their disposal, the 18th century electricians were absolutely marvelous! "Since there is a constant strict analogy between the phenomena of the two electricities, and since after all the same forces are at work, an intelligent look thrown to the rear is often the most powerful manner of reading in the darkness of the future. W. de Fonvielle"
At this point, the reader cannot disregard the fact that we have certain historical precedents to the Searl experiments with flying discs! A compatriot of the French reporter above is John Carstoiu, Senior Research Scientist of the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center, State Univ. of New York, at Albany, and also of the Univ. of Paris, Dept. of Theoretical Mechanics, Paris, France. In a paper dealing with the unexplained inertial properties of spinning objects, and entitled "The Need for a Critical Reappraisal of Einstein's General Relativity," he states: "There are a great number of gravitational phenomena on which Einstein's theory throws no light. For instance, it is very odd that neither Newton's Law or Einstein's Relativity can explain the rotations of the planets. Everybody takes the rotation of a planet for granted, but would the latter admit an explanation as planetary orbits do?" He continues to press the issue by stating,—"The curved space-time universe of Einstein is a splendid object of mathematics, but what about its physical reality? . . . There is no experimental check to support the very heavy mathematical structure of purely mathematical extensions, complements or modifications of the original theory— without any additional experimental evidence." In another paper,* dealing with the possibility of gravitational vortices, Carstoiu indicates that:—"A variety of cosmogony, in particular the rotations of planets, might be related to the existence of the gravitational
*Gravitation and Electromegnetism— tentative synthesis and applications, (unpublished paper) John Carstoiu, The University of Paris Theoretical Mechanics, Paris, France.
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vortex . . . as we see, the gravitational vortex opens large fields of investigation."
Bruce DePalma, an M.I.T. graduate and former appointed M.I.T. lecturer, is likewise concerned with rotational effects on gravitation—as well as with the blind ineptitude and unwillingness of the scientific establishment to investigate these matters,—"We have discovered that the spinning or rotation of objects changes their inertial" He is able to prove experimentally that rapid spinning or rotation radically alters the physical properties of an object. DePalma says that the experiment goes to the very heart of the nature of things; atoms, which are also rotating objects or force fields! As rotation affects the physical properties of matter, it necessarily changes the very things upon which physicists have so fondly based their theories in the past. The effect goes against the grain of Einstein and Newton's theories of gravitation—which state, basically, that all objects, regardless of mass, fall at the same rate because of their inertia. (The tendency to remain at rest when at rest, and to remain in motion when in motion.) The analogy between the kinematics of a spinning sphere and that of the electron in the gravitational field may cast some light on the mechanism of Searl's discs. Again, according to Dr. Pages, when the axis of spin of the electrons is merged with the radius of gyration, we witness electromagnetic propulsion by Magnus Effect:—"The electromagnetic spatial vehicle—once it has degravitated from the ground by injection of the required energy for the necessary time—will be able to maintain this state of degravitation theoretically indefinitely . . . by creating a 'hole' in the cosmic energy (ether); such a hole would give an Archimedean effect." And if we recall our History of Science, we will remember that it was Archimedes who discovered the "principle of buoyancy"! One wonders what the picture will look like when all the pieces of the puzzle are properly placed relative to one another.
WHAT SOME SCIENTISTS THINK ABOUT IT
(Report of a Scientific Sub-Committee)
The functioning of the Levity Disc, depends entirely on the Searl Effect Generator. This is an electrical generator of unique design, capable of generating potentials above some 109 volts (thousand million) at relatively low speeds of rotation. At a potential difficult to estimate, but of the order of 1010 to 1014 volts, the generator and attached metal parts become weightless. This fact is difficult to reconcile with current scientific theory and one might wonder why the phenomenon has not been discovered before. This is probably because potentials of this order of magnitude have never before been produced in the charging of large conducting bodies. It has been impossible because ionic breakdown of the air shorts out high voltage generators. The problem has been solved in the Searl design and the ionic discharge is used to create a vacuum around the generator. Thus the generator works in a perfect insulator, and the fields are so arranged as to limit the possibility of flashover. By "weightless" we mean free from gravitational force and free from inertia. Thus, although energy is required to maintain the electrostatic potential of the craft, little force or energy is required to propel the craft at tremendous speeds. Also, since inertia is absent, the laws of physics no longer apply and acceleration can be almost instantaneous without forces being felt on matter within the craft. The claimed facts above conflict in concept with accepted theory, but it must be remembered that a theory exists to explain the Searl Effect, based on a space continuum which is more than the absence of matter. It is regarded as a fundamental substance from which all matter and energy is derived. This is not anew idea, but one which has not been developed as have other theories. (ETHER THEORY!) The second staggering property of the Searl generator is that when running above the "threshold potential" it produces energy from no known source, is self-perpetuating and continually pours out energy into the discharge corona surrounding the craft. It also
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transmits energy in a magnetic field, not as electromagnetic radiation but as a non-oscillatory field which continually expands.
The disc shape of the craft is the obvious shape to contain the generator which is made up of concentric rotating discs and rings and the composite machine is tailored specifically for a space vehicle. For flight at high speeds in the atmosphere, the ratio of depth of the disc to its radius is a specific value. The comparison between the levity craft and the rocket is the comparison between an electric motor and a water wheel. The rocket principle is relatively crude and has been developed very little since the German V-2. It certainly has been surrounded by some very clever ancillary equipment. But the fact still remains that the rocket is the end product of war effort and reflects the thinking of men of the Earth, not of the Universe.
The Searl craft can not be used to deliver bombs, since they can not be released from the field of the craft. Also, it is suspected that the energy precipitation quietly reduces unstable elements to a stable state and so nuclear bombs become useless. (The research on this is yet to be done.) The craft's features most compatible with space travel are the possible high velocities, the anti-gravitational and the inertia-free properties. Occupants of such a levity disc are, as it were, in a world of their own, a "space" of their own! There should be no acceleration forces, no vibration, no feeling of movement; and to add to the comfort of the crew, the gravity flux generated by the craft can be partly directed through the cabin to give an acceptable weight to matter inside. The craft has no need to carry energy as fuel, since it creates energy from the medium it rides upon. Because of this, the planets of our solar system need not be the limit of its range. Since the craft is independent of the space medium and is inertia-free, it is not limited by the medium in its maximum attainable velocity.* In other words, it should be capable of speeds greater than that of light. However, this is venturing very much into the unknown, and more work will have to be done on the nature of the space-time continuum before risking such a speed with man-carrying craft. It is the intent of the principals involved with the Searl Effect Generators to form a company, devoid—insofar as possible—of purely financial and governmental interests, so as to insure the fullest benefits of the invention to mankind as a whole.
*This statement is probably somewhat erroneous . . . a loose use of language. My understanding is that the craft is interdependent with the space fabric, "ether" or whatever we choose to call it, and until more is learned of the properties both of this "ether" and the functional interaction between the medium, the generator, and changing inertial forces, we would presume that there is some upper limit to velocity—although this may well be above the speed relationship which we now term the "speed of light," which is actually only relevant to our three-dimensional space/time concepts, (the editor) R.K.
PROF. BURKHARD HEIM AND THE GERMANS
A human symbol of shattered Germany at the end of WW—II, Burkhard Heim had lost his eyes and his hands in a laboratory explosion. Besides that, he was left almost deaf. But his drive and his intuition were still very much intact. In spite of these seemingly insurmountable handicaps, he managed to graduate in theoretical physics (1954) and since 1956 he became heavily engaged in research pertaining to the nature of forcefields. In order to develop and test his new theories, a special "Research Institute for ForcefieldPhysics" was established in 1958, associated with the University of Goettingen in Northeim, Hannover. As proclaimed on the letterhead of the Institute it also represents the "German Section of the European Center for Gravity Research." As early as 1952, Heim had presented his first public lecture* in Stuttgart, revealing the discovery of a positive lead to anti-gravity, involving a "transitional field" which acts as an intermediary from electricity to gravity. Alas, when Prof. Heim disclosed his theory of "field propulsion" for space-flight at the Second International Congress for Astronautics in Innsbruck, Austria (1952), the history of science gave a repeat performance—Heim was ridiculed! Considering that this occured quite a few years before SATURN moon rockets and MARINER landers had become household words, and astronautics as such was about as unpopular in scientific circles as serious UFOresearch is today, perhaps this should not have been too surprising. Stung by that experience, Heim swore to remain silent henceforth, until even the last iota of his new theory could be proven by exact laboratory data without the slightest remaining doubts. Since then, mysterious but generally poorly-informed references to his research have shown up in the European, North American and South American press, but officially, by and large, there was only discrete silence about his research results.
*"Die dynamische Kontrabarie als Losung des astronautischen Problems," (lecture) Stuttgart, 1952
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One of the first American observers to call attention to the work of Heim was Major Donald E. Keyhoe, the former director of NICAP*: "If Heim were right, the amazing properties commonly ascribed to the mysterious 'flying saucers' would be in fact, sound physics and proper engineering." The official silence surrounding Heim's research caused Major Keyhoe to conclude somewhat hastily:—"Heim's work toward the goal of an actual anti-gravity device using 'field inducers' has evidently been put under official German security. He has refused to divulge the key to his formula." He also gave an additional hint of Heim's difficulties when he declared:—"Heim's findings would indicate that anti-gravity researchers may discover new scientific laws and that their work may invalidate old theories. Some scientists are already saying privately that Einstein's famous 'General Theory of Relativity' may turn out to be totally fallacious." Perhaps it is this last statement which comes closest to the real truth.
Ever since this time, speculations abound—about the research results of Heim,
(who is listed in the official "Who is Who").**
In any case, a personal letter written by him in January of 1976 explains (translated from the German)*** ". . . it is correct that I worked in the field of gravitational physics . . . it seems to me that a publication is certainly justified; however, it is questionable whether I, as a 'loner,' will be able to push through such a publication in the Federal Republic of Germany—in spite of the present 'science management.' I shall be happy to inform you if I should be able to achieve this goal." (signed) HEIM At the time of this writing, the following facts are already known about his work:—He arrived at a "Unified quantum field theory of matter and gravitation" which has eluded Einstein during his lifetime. This field incorporates among other features: a. The existence of a "gravitational vortex" phenomenon. b. A propulsion method through "effective acceleration fields" based on what Heim terms the KONTRABARIC EFFECT. c. The emission of gravitational waves with resultant electromagnetic radiation fields and induction of strong magnetic and electrical fields. d. The apparatus which can achieve the transformation of E/M energies
into gravitational forcefields will have to be large-surfaced (as-for instance—a disc-shape). In short, Heim's theory predicts all the effects which have been observed in connection with UFO sightings for decades.
*"I Know the Secret of the Flying Saucers" by Major Donald E. Keyhoe, USMC (Ret.) TRUE Magazine, Jan. 1965. USA **"Wer ist Wer" Das Deutsche Who is Who, XIV edition, ARAMI Verlags GMBH Berlin-Gruneweld * **(private communication)
Prof. Burkhard Heim and the Germans 91
In the opinion of a German physicist who claims to be familiar with Heim's work, it represents (quote)—"The only consistent formula for the mass of elementary particles and resonances as well as their lifetimes, whose values are given exactly . . . Heim's theory makes it possible to test in the laboratory new results concerning reciprocal action between electromagnetic and gravitational fields. The CONTRABARIC EFFECT should make possible the production of gravity waves." It is claimed that Heim's theory can provide the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ΕΤΗ) of many UFO's with a sound theoretical basis. Latest available information would indicate the official publication about his research to be already in preparation.
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FRANCE: "THE GRAVITATIONAL FORCE CAN
BE NEUTRALIZED "
Dr. Marcel Pages, doctor of nuclear engineering and medicine, born in Perpignon, France, is a founder and member of C.I.R.G., an international research center on gravitation created in Rome, Italy, in 1961. He determined the characteristics of an experimental prototype of a true spaceship and received a patent (No. 1, 251.902) for such a vehicle, which is described and reproduced in his book "Le Défi De L'Antigravitation" (The Challenge of Antigravitation; published by Editions Chiron, Paris, 1974). A strong proponent of a universal cosmic energy medium (the "ETHER"), Dr. Pages explains that objects are not attracted by internal terrestrial forces of this or other planets, but rather held down by a force of cosmic space. The apparent end result is the same and does not contradict Newton's law. His basic principle of antigravitation is remarkably similar to that of other scientists defending the existence of the ether. "In only a few months I could give France the number one position in the space race . . . that would leave cyclopic American or Russian rockets of classical conception far behind. Applying the antigravitation principle, this spacecraft could rush into interstellar space faster than light," explains Dr. Pages." A body falls towards Earth or ricochets back towards the cosmos accordingly as its density is greater or less than that of the environment in which it ingresses." He lists the examples of cork in water or a hydrogen balloon in the atmosphere. Consequently, this cosmic (ether) energy must create around a planet a particular energetic atmosphere analoque to the planets gaseous atmosphere, with a few fundamental differences. A priori, its mean density must be inferior to that of matter since the material body falls into it. On the other hand, if it could be possible to determine an energetic climate of lesser density than the ambient environment of our atmosphere, there would occur the manifestation of an ascending repulsion. Dr. Pages explains: "We must notice the complete analogy between the Archimedian reaction of an airless balloon in the atmosphere which is crushed by atmospheric pressures
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of many thousands of tons of which the ascending force is only due to the weight differences of displaced air, and the Archimedian reaction between two hemispheres charged positively and negatively that are crushed by colossal forces, but of which the elevating force is solely due to the difference between the mathematical mass of the energy that has been transformed by manipulative interference inside the balloon and that of the ambient energy. The gravitational force can be neutralized by producing an inversed field of electromagnetic nature. Any engine or rocket capable of producing such a field will escape gravity and limitlessly actuate itself, guided simply by field orientation." Dr. Pages' design of a space vehicle of this type is explained in his book by the following principles: Weight cancellation is possible by causing a charge of electrons, extracted from the body to be degravitated, to rotate around that degravitated body. Such a degravitation is, theoretically, accompanied by the neutralization of the effective mass—thus the inertia of the whole system. In consequence, a minimal acceleration in this state provokes phenomenal speeds. Based on this premise, a machine of such a type will have its external appearance in perfect conformity with the shape of the well-known "flying saucer": a central sphere encircled by two inversed discs. Within the central metallic sphere, the pilot's cabin would be situated. Charged plates would ornament the exterior of the isolated disks on the top and underside, being connected to an ultra-high frequency generator. Dr. Pages' conclusion is stated thus: "It is therefore possible to be ejected out to the cosmos at theoretically unlimited speeds."* * One chapter of his book is devoted to a critique of relativity, and a quote from the reputable French magazine "Science & Vie" reproduced in Dr. Pages' book seems worth repeating as a tribute to gallic pride: "In this particular domain (of antigravity research), the French physicists are several years ahead of their foreign colleagues." (Sept. 1967, No. 600, p. 54). This claim is perhaps fairly close to the facts. Another team of three top French scientists have been reported to be on the verge of solving the propulsion mysteries of UFO's, among them Prof. Claude Poher, director at the National Center for Space Studies, the French equivalent of NASA.
Having investigated about 35,000 UFO sightings by computer analysis, Dr. Poher has stated in public that "UFO's really exist!" A small model of their UFO—propulsion unit, about one m2 in size,
*"Le Défi De L'Antigravitation" Editions Chiron, Paris, 1974, by Marcel Pages (no English edition available) **"Cosmos Express" P.O. Box 3, Jonquiere, Québec, Canada
France: "The Gravitational Force Can be Neutralized . . ." 95
reportedly utilizes electromagnetic and nuclear energy. "Our engine captures and harnesses that energy to provide tremendous thrust," claims Dr. Jean Pierre Petit, a plasma physicist at the French Government's National Organization for Scientific Research. This so-called "Petit-Viton" engine uses both an E/M field and a magnetic field and is supposed to be capable of moving a spacecraft model at a simulated speed of three times the speed of sound without producing a sonic boom. "All the elements are already available—it's simply a question of putting them in order," states Dr. Petit*. On the aspect of UFO reality in general, Jean Claude Bourret, chief editor of the TF1 (the first French TV program) replied to a reporter for the publication "La Suisse" (June 26, 1976) in response to his question of how many UFO—sightings have been confirmed all over the world: "About 90 millions during the last 40 years!" Whatever the case might be, the conclusion of James M. McCampbell, Director of Research of MUFON, USA, is very much to the point: "The French are moving out!"**
Addendum
Perhaps one of the most remarkable contributions was made by the French Minister of Defense, M. Robert Galley, in an official interview broadcast on the French radio program "France-Inter," in 1974. During this particular interview with Jean-Claude Bourret, the high French official freely admitted that: 1. UFO's exist, 2. They are a serious problem, 3. Many landings have taken and are taking place, 4. The French Ministry of Defense has secretly studied the problem since 1954, and 5. Has forwarded all reported UFO-material to French scientists for evaluation.
*"National Enquirer "Nov. 2, 1976, p. 4 "Team of Top Scientists Say They've Found the Secret of
How UFO's Fly." (USA); **private communication from James M. McCampbell, dated 2-14-1977.,
INPUTS FROM OTHER SPHERES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
INPUTS FROM OTHER SPHERES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
"When science turns toward spiritual discoveries, it will make more progress in
50 years than in all its past history."
(Charles Steinmetz, 1865-1923)
More and more of the "top" men in science begin to lean towards spiritual factors, as demonstrated by Professor Kistemaker in Holland who combined the function of Director of the Atomic Laboratory with that of President of the Dutch Society for Psychical Research. It certainly was no accident that Einstein was interested in extrasensory perception; nor that Nobel Prize physicist Professor Max Planck stated, "The finding of the truth can only be secured by a determined step into the realm of metaphysics." As an interesting intellectual experiment, let us follow Max Planck's suggestion with an attempt to analyze the existing "metaphysical" information on the legendary sunken continent Atlantis in reference to electromagnetic field propulsion for aerial vehicles. The term "metaphysika" derives from the Greek and can be best interpreted as "beyond physics." Information from sources which are generally considered scientifically unacceptable will, of course, not convince a skeptical person and this attempt should not be construed as anything even faintly approaching the claim of "scientific proof." However, it is presented here because of the truly amazing, inherent redundancy in all of the following statements stemming from psychic sources, and in order to prepare our thinking habits for the existence and use of potential corroborating information—sources of very considerable importance. The first known, historically documented account of the legendary sunken continent Atlantis can be found in Plato's writings, which descri^ a
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Edgar Cay ce - 1943

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