Undaunted, Brown transferred to Kenyon College, Gam-bier, Ohio, in 1923, remaining there only one year and then transferring to Denison University at Granville, Ohio, where he studied as an electronics resident in the Department of Physics under Dr Paul Alfred Biefeld, professor of physics and astronomy and former classmate, in Switzerland, of Dr Einstein (one of only eight).
Unlike Dr Millikan at Caltech, Dr Biefeld proved to be interested in Brown's discovery, and together the two of them - professor and student - experimented with charged electrical capacitors and developed a principle of physics which came
to be tentatively known as the Biefeld-Brown Effect. Basically, the 'effect' concerned the observed ten-
The Force Fields of Townsend Brown 141 dency of a highly charged electrical condenser to exhibit motion towards its positive pole - the same motion observed earlier by Brown with his Coolidge tube.
Following the completion of his formal education. Town-send Brown joined the staff of the Swazey Observatory in Ohio, where he remained for some four years and during which time he married. In 1930, Brown left the staff of Swazey to sign on with the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., as specialist in radiation, field physics, and spectroscopy.
It was during this phase of his life that he participated as staff physicist in the U.S. Navy Department's International Gravity Expedition to the West Indies in 1932, and as physicist in the Johnson-Smithsonian Deep Sea Expedition of 1933. Later that same year the continuing depression caused the inevitable budget cutbacks, and Brown had to abandon what had looked like a promising career at the Naval Research Lab (NRL) in search of greener pastures. Much like Drs Jessup and Rinehart, Brown turned to the government for work. He joined the Navy Reserve and, finding scientific jobs of any type to be scarce, landed a position first as a soil engineer for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and later as an administrator for the Civilian Conservation Corps in Ohio.
Daytime jobs during the 1930s, however, did not prevent him from continuing his study of physics in general and the Biefeld-Brown Effect in particular during available evening and weekend hours. With the passage of time, the original 'gravitor' design saw numerous improvements.
In 1939, Brown, now a lieutenant in the Navy Reserve, moved to Maryland to become a material engineer for the Glenn L. Martin Company of Baltimore (later Martin Aerospace). He was there only a matter of months, however, when he was called upon by the Navy to become officer in charge of magnetic and acoustic minesweeping research and development under the Bureau of Ships.
It was shortly after receiving this appointment that Brown came into contact with the early development stages of the project that may have become the Philadelphia Experiment. According to Dr Rinehart:
'I believe that when he [Brown] was brought back from Martin into the Bureau of Ships as officer in charge of acoustic and magnetic minesweeping, all projects that Ross Gunn, then director of the Naval Research Laboratory, thought interesting were brought up to him because of his background in physics. This is where he got involved in your "project" - this is his beginning point.
'His section would have covered every new thing that would have come in regarding this, and they tried to get a good man to work on it. This was Brown. He was brought in because they were short of people - especially good ones -and needed someone who would not be a stick-in-the-mud with regard to the things they were thinking about. He undoubtedly would also have conferred with Captain Parsons on this project.
'Although my personal relationship with Brown never came any closer than an occasional few words (he was in a totally different department, you will recall), I can clearly remember his presence at the same table with me during several conferences at which this project was discussed. I don't believe I ever spoke to him more than once or twice at any length. He was a rather shy and retiring individual, as I recall; a man whose ideas and efforts were frequently more defended by his friends and associates than by himself.'
It is questionable whether Brown was really ever very heavily involved in the Philadelphia Experiment project. Although he tends to be rather unspecific on the point, it seems virtually certain that he would have had to have been involved in at least some capacity, since a great portion of the work of his research team was carried out in the related area of ship degaussing. He also performed what he characterizes as 'some very valuable high-vacuum work.'
In any event, his service with the Bureau of Ships, where he presided over the expenditure of some $50 million for research and at least a dozen junior Ph.D.s, can be regarded as exemplary to say the least. It was not to be exceptionally long-lived, however, for in the general shake-up that followed Pearl Harbour, he was transferred, with the rank of lieutenant commander, to Norfolk to continue his research while heading the Navy's Atlantic Fleet Radar School there.
According to another source of information, it was while serving in this assignment that he put forth some suggestions on how electromagnetic fields might be utilized to achieve partial radar invisibility, especally in air-to-sea situations. However, whether these ideas might possibly have been incorporated directly into the ongoing research into the Philadelphia Experiment project or whether they were ever even acted upon at all is not known. Brown was not the type to push his own ideas too hard unless they seemed to meet the willing approval of others.
In spite of his reticence, however, he was a willing and dedicated worker who continued to serve his country well during the next two years. Unfortunately, by December 1943, his long and hard work and his personal disappointment at the failure of his projects to gain proper recognition had finally taxed him to the limit.
He suffered a nervous collapse that sent him home to rest. Upon the recommendation of a team of naval physicians, retirement from the service quickly followed.
An interesting sidelight at this point is that Reilly Crabb has steadfastly claimed that the cause of Brown's breakdown was directly related to the Philadelphia Experiment. Certainly severe repercussions would have almost certainly followed any disastrous physical and psychological results of the sort reported to have been suffered by the crew of the DE 173, and the head of any person responsible for conducting such a project would undoubtedly have been placed on the block as a result. If such a thing did occur, it is not too difficult to imagine the extreme mental pressures that would result. However, in all fairness to Brown, it should be noted
that we have been totally unable to discover anything which would even begin to substantiate such a conjecture.
In any event, after six months of rest, the late spring of 1944 found Brown working as a radar consultant for the advanced-design section of Lockheed-Vega Aircraft Corporation in California. Colleagues there found him to be much the same as described by Dr Rinehart, referring to him as 'a quiet, modest, retiring man ... a brilliant solver of engineering problems' and 'exactly the sort one expects to find in important research installations.' More important, he was still working on his gravitor device, although (interestingly) he chose not to speak in terms of gravity when describing it. Instead, he seemed to prefer the more scientific but decidely less sensational term 'stress in dielectrics.'
After leaving Lockheed, Brown went to Hawaii to live and to continue his research. It was during this time, partly thanks to the efforts of an old friend, A. L. Kitselman, who was then teaching calculus at Pearl Harbour, that Brown's gravitor apparatus, somewhat improved over earlier ver-
The Force Fields of Townsend Brown 145 sions, came to the interest of Admiral Arthur W. Radford. Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet (and later to become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Eisenhower, 195357). As a result of Admiral Rad-ford's interest, Brown was temporarily accorded consultant status to the Pearl Harbour Navy Yard; but in spite of the fact that the former lieutenant commander was well treated by his Navy friends, it appears from the evidence that they considered his invention rather more of an interesting curiosity than any sort of key to space or interdimensi
onal travel. Perhaps had Brown been more of a salesman than a scientist, things might have been different; although it is also possible that the Navy had seen more than its share of force-field research during the war and was keeping its distance from any more such projects for obvious reasons. (Carlos Allende's statement that 'the Navy fears to use such results' returns to mind at this point.)
In the meantime, increased UFO activity at the turn of the decade had captured Brown's personal interest. Eagerly following the controversy as it raged among the military and scientific community in the late '40s and early '50s, Brown postulated that perhaps with the proper worldwide scientific approach the dilemma surrounding the power source of the UFO might be solved. In those days his belief in the abilities of modern science was such that he even dared to speculate on the possibility of a quick solution provided that the proper resources and manpower were poured into it. Of course, he remained constantly aware of the possibility that through his own efforts at research into electrogravitics he had hit upon one of the keys to the mystery.
Moving to Cleveland in 1952, Brown conceived of a project he called Winterhaven, an idea which he hoped (with proper refinements) could be offered for sale to the military establishment. Through patient research, he succeeded in improving the lift force of his gravitor apparatus until it was such that it could lift significantly more than its own weight - a success that should have raised the eyebrows of any respectable scientist or Pentagon official, but apparently didn't, even though the
apparatus involved was quite sophisticated and, as we shall see, the demonstration most impressive.
Theoretically speaking, Brown attempted to explain his results in terms of Unified Field physics. The point of departure between Brown and most of orthodox science is that Brown firmly believes in the existence of an observable coupling effect between gravity and electricity and that this coupling effect is precisely what is being demonstrated by his devices. In other words, he contends that the Biefeld-Brown effect not only represents a proved and demonstrable link between electricity and gravitation, but represents one which can actually be harnessed and utilized for propulsion purposes both within and outside of the earth's atmosphere. The similarities of all of this to the concepts reportedly utilized in the Philadelphia Experiment project are readily apparent.
A 'dielectric' is defined as a material which has the unique ability of absorbing electrical energy and 'charge' without ordinarily passing this energy on to neighbouring materials. Some dielectrics are able to absorb enormous quantities of electrical energy (also referred to as 'elastic stress') without discharging, provided that the energy is fed into the dielectric slowly and at low potential. Still others can be charged and discharged at extremely high potential at a rate of several thousand times each second. Townsend Brown concerned himself principally with this latter type. Using just such a dielectric, Brown constructed disc-shaped (or saucer-shaped) condensers, and, by applying various amounts of high-voltage direct current, witnessed the Biefeld-Brown Effect in action. With the proper construction and electrical potential (in the kilovolt range) the disc-shaped 'airfoils' were made to fly under their own power, emitting a slight hum and a bluish electrical glow as they did so. More scientifically, perhaps, this process of 'flight' might best be described as 'motion under the influence of interaction between electrical and gravitational fields in the direction of the positive electrode.'
In 1953, Brown succeeded in demonstrating in a laboratory setting the flight of disc-shaped airfoils 2 feet in diameter around a 20-foot-diameter circular course. The process involved tethering these saucer-shaped craft to a central pole by means of a wire through which the necessary direct-current potential was supplied at a rate of 50,000 volts with continuous input of 50 watts. The test produced an observable top speed of an amazing 17 feet per second (about 12 miles per hour).
Working with almost superhuman determination and at great cost to his personal finances, Brown soon succeeded in surpassing even this accomplishment. At his next display, he exhibited a set of discs 3 feet across flying a 50-foot-diameter course with results so spectacular that they were immediately classified. Even so, most of the scientists who witnessed the demonstrations remained sceptical and generally tended to attribute Brown's motive force to what they called an 'electrical wind' - this in spite of the fact that it would have required a veritable 'electric hurricane' to produce the lift potential observed! Nonetheless, pitifully few gave any credence whatsoever to ideas that the Biefield-Brown Effect might represent anything at all new to the world of physics. Government funding was sought to enable the work to continue, but in 1955, realizing that the money would not be
forthcoming, a disgruntled Brown went to Europe in hopes that perhaps he might be able to generate a little more enthusiasm there.
Although demonstrations were given first in England, it was on the Continent, under the auspices of a French corporation, La Soci&6 Nationale de Construction Aero-nautique Sud Quest (SNCASO), that things really began to look promising. During a set of tests performed confidentially within the company's research laboratory, Brown succeeded in flying some of his discs in a high vacuum with amazing results. Brown was ecstatic, for not only had he succeeded in proving that his discs flew more efficiently without air, but he had also shown that the speed and efficiency of his 'craft' could be increased by providing greater voltage to the dielectric plates. Contemporary accounts easily visualized speeds of several hundred miles per hour using voltages in the range of 100,000 to 200,000; and at least one writer spoke of a 'flame jet generator' then in the planning stages which supposedly would be able to provide power potential up to 15 million volts! In fact, plans had been laid for the immediate construction of a large vacuum chamber and a 500,000-volt power supply when disaster struck the project in the form of a corporate merger. SNCASO had agreed to combine with a larger company, Sud Est. The president of the emerging company proceeded to demonstrate an appalling lack of interest in 'these far-out propulsion research efforts' and favoured instead an increased interest in 'air frame manufacture.' Consequently, all facilities ordered by the former president to carry forward the electrogravitic research work were summarily cancelled and a thoroughly disappointed Brown was forced to return home to the U.S. in 1956.
The Force Fields of Townsend Brown 149 Within a year's time Brown was busily engaged as chief research and development consultant for the Whitehall-Rand Project, a new antigravity investigation being conducted under the personal auspices of Agnew Bahnson, president of the Bahnson Company of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Bahnson was something of a UFO buff who nurtured a personal desire to be the first man to set foot on the moon. Using his own funds, he constructed a well-equipped private laboratory and invited Brown to come down and consult. However, as fate would have it, just as things began to look good for the venture Mr Bahnson, an experienced pilot, was killed under somewhat unusual circumstances when his private aeroplane reportedly struck a high-tension wire. Bahnson's heirs were not interested in the project and it was quickly stopped.
In 1958, believing he had finally generated enough momentum to go it alone, Townsend Brown organized his own corporation under the name of Rand International Limited, and set himself up as president. Although numerous patents were applied for and granted both in the U.S. and abroad, and in spite of numerous patiently given demonstrations to interested governmental and corporate groups, success again eluded him. Curiously enough, such interest as he was able to generate seemed to melt away almost as fast as it developed - almost as if someone (or perhaps something?) was working against him. While the corporate framework of Rand International still exists, there has been little evident activity in recent years.
In the early '60s, Brown did a brief stint as physicist for Electrokinetics Inc. of Bala Cynwyd, Pa., and upon terminating his employment there, went into semiretirement. Since then he has lived on in California, quietly pursuing his research in hopes that perhaps someday, with a little luck, the world will n
otice.
His most recent involvement is with a project 'housed largely at Stanford Research Institute with additional assistance being provided by the University of California and the Ames Research Center of NASA.' The object of the research, details of which are still largely under wraps, is to try to determine what connection, if any, there is between the earth's gravitational field and rock electricity (also known as petroelectricity). If Brown can achieve his hoped-for goal of proving that petroelectricity in 'induced' by the earth's gravitational field, it would go a long way towards strengthening not only Unified Field concepts in general, but Brown's own personal theories on electrogravity as well.
This crystallizes the question indirectly posed by this entire chapter: Why indeed has Townsend Brown's promising life work gone virtually unnoticed for these past three decades? Even today Brown is still of the opinion that further research into the Biefeld-Brown Effect could lead to a sensational breakthrough in space propulsion methods -not to mention the more domestic variety - if appropriate funding could be made available. Granted, research is expensive. But is money the real reason for the apparent lack of interest? Or could it possibly be that the long shadow of a more-than-thirty-year-old-ship experiment has succeeded in casting its pall over his efforts - perhaps even to the extent of 'arranging' for the convenient demise of one of his most financially influential supporters? Or perhaps, as Brown himself suggests, the human race is not yet ready to accept such a revolutionary scientific concept.
The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility Page 14