ELECTRIC FLYING MACHINES: Thomas Townsend Brown
Careful examination of the effect before the NRL now proved perplexing. First, the “blackout effect” could be photographed as well as experienced. Therefore it was not a mere neurological response to some mysterious radiance. The blinding discharge was doing something to space itself. Researchers were now drawn into this project with a deep fascination. The “blackout” effect drew equally intense interest by Naval officials for obvious military reason. Careful study of research publications funded by NRL grants reveals an intense preoccupation with all such perception-related subjects.
But there were “other aspects” of the phenomenon which were chilling. Bizarre rumors were being shared by certain of the original weld-site workmen. Remember, these men were on the site throughout the period, which proceeded the project’s classification. They were privy to certain other phenomena, which had no rational explanations.
Personnel hoisted hull materials and braced the pieces in composite arrangements for the discharge operation to commence. The warning alarm sounding, all workers and inspection teams promptly left the site, frequently dropping tools and other implements where they stood. Capacitor charging required several minutes. The switch thrown, a tremendous rocking explosion shook the site. The discharge produced the blackout effect, and when the room was declared officially “clear”, workers returned to the chamber.
Workmen began noticing that tools and other weighty items, left on the floor or around the chamber, were somehow “misplaced” during the heavy arc discharge process. Imagining that these tools had been thrown into corners or possibly driven into walls by the room-rocking blasts, workers searched the entire welding facility. The tools and other materials could simply not be found (Puharich).
Now the mystery was intensifying to a degree, which demanded a complete study of the phenomenon from its first observation. Workmen were called in to report what they had seen, felt, and experienced. Repeated stories matched to such a degree that the “rumors” were now taken as “personal testimony”. The entire proceedings were so highly classified that military agents were not even aware of the study. What workmen told examiners was that their tools and other site materials were “disappearing”, and disappearing “for good”.
Foremen had scolded and ridiculed them repeatedly about this loss of materials and tools until experiencing it for themselves. One fact was clear, when the alarm blew and the discharge exploded, objects disappeared. Where they went, none could say. High-speed films proved that the effect was real. Objects were placed on pedestals near the discharge arc. On discharge, the objects dematerialized. The films proved it. They were certainly not “thrust away” at high speeds, or even “impacted” into walls by the intense arc blast. At first again, the conventional answers came forth. The blackout effect was seen as a mystifying radiant energy, possibly a specific variety of X-Rays. These rays had power to both neutralize human neurological response and disintegrate matter in its immediate vicinity. Here was the possible “death ray” for which the military had long been searching. The Second World War was raging, a possible second “theater” was developing in the Pacific, and this sort of fundamental discovery was enormous in military potential. To end the war was the aim. The only aim.
If this effect could be developed into a weapon, it would be deployed instantly thereafter. A weapons program of this kind would require the nation’s most eminent scientists, and levels of secrecy, which demanded the very highest stringency. Several Naval personnel were summoned for this study. Dr. Brown was requested to examine “the phenomenon”. His knowledge of “dielectric stress” phenomena and the activities associated with arc discharges made him a perfect candidate. Keeping him “in the blind” concerning their ultimate hopes for this new discovery would not be easy. He “had a name” for being the dreamer.
When Dr. Brown reviewed the material, his conclusions were strikingly different from those, which others gave. While academes adamantly insisted that the observed dematerializations were the result of “irradiation” and subsequent vaporization, no such evidence for the “vaporizations” could ever be found. Careful analysis of weld-chamber atmospheres proved negative in these regards. No gasified metals were detected in the room air throughout the discharge event. Truly mystifying. The NRL had to know more.
Dr. Brown was sure he knew what was happening here. Despite the fact that he had never observed these effects, his intuition taught him well. Though in his early experimentation, he never experienced any of these blackout effects, but Sir William Crookes had seen this very thing. Within the action space of his now famed high vacuum tube, Sir William beheld a curious sight. There, suspended over the cathode, was a black space, which was actually radiant. The radiance extended beyond the tube walls in certain special instances. Sir William had no difficulty accepting the fact that this was a “space-permeating” blackness, a radiance having far greater significance than a mere physical phenomenon. Crookes believed this radiance was a spiritual gateway, a juncture between this world and another dimension.
In the blackout phenomenon Dr. Brown yet recognized the signs that space distortions were taking place. What was the upper limit in strength of these space distortions? What other bizarre anomalies would they manifest? His own small gravitators operated through high voltages now considered “small”. When compared with those used in the new welding site, they were minuscule. Nevertheless, his experimentation proved the effects of small space warps. Material dragging was one such anomaly. In short, he believed that every anomalous inertial behavior could be traced to such space distortions. In studying the entire effect, no single part was unimportant. Dr. Brown knew that the massive hulls played their part. They were somehow “spreading out” the electrical field and giving it a specific shape. The electric arc, focused onto the hull by the mechanical applicator was the formidable field source. But something “extra” was occurring. Another realm of realities was entering the scene where arc discharges blasted through the welding chamber. He was the only one, perhaps with two others in the nation, who would propose that the phenomenon was the result of an interaction, which was “electrogravitic” in nature. These were electrogravitic phenomena.