This does not look like a Townsend Brown patent to me

[Jan Lundquist]

This is presently being presented as a TTB patent, though it clearly states that it is taken from the revised Bahnson lab video.
https://alchetron.com/Thomas-Townsend-Brown

My sense is that Townsend would not write something like that on a patent application.

j.

[Paul Schatzkin]

.
No, it doesn't. I dunno what this is.

I also saw this on Twitter last night and after getting a closer look this morning added my 2¢ to that tread.

I was suspicious as soon as saw "Electrokinetic Gravitators."

That phrase is almost oxymoronic.

I think "Electrokinetic" is what TTB used to describe the 'fluid dielectric' devices like the Fan, the lifters, and all the artifacts of the 'wounded prairie chicken' era.

The gravitators used 'solid dielectrics' and would have been referred to using the term "Electrogravitic."

This fluid -v- solid dielectric business, it really does get to the heart of the matter.

Which just reminds me that when I confronted my sources on that dichotomy years ago, they just said.... nothing.

--PS

[natecull]

I think "Electrokinetic" is what TTB used to describe the 'fluid dielectric' devices like the Fan, the lifters, and all the artifacts of the 'wounded prairie chicken' era.

Certainly "electrokinetic" is a standard and widely accepted term of art in mainstream science, meaning basically any motion in fluids (often dielectrics) due to electrical fields. Especially including things like "dieelectrophoresis" which is one possible modern mainstream interpretation of what Townsend's fluid dielectric devices are doing.

So it's what you would write on a patent application when you are trying to sell your device as *not* doing anomalous physics but just doing perfectly ordinary physics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrokinetics

"Electrogravitics", however, very definitely implies anomalous physics - the term originated with Faraday in the 1800s - and it would be a very hard sell to get past an alert patent examiner in the 1960s. I mean patent examiners have let all sorts of weird things past, but still, you wouldn't outright state "this device is based on nonphysical principles" if you were trying to maximise your chance of getting a patent.

Another acceptable mainstream term that Townsend used to describe his 1960s fluid-dielectric devices was "electrostriction". Interestingly, this term today leads us very quickly to.... sonar. (Solid electrostriction, not fluid electrostriction, but still). So that's one very obvious potential reason why a wall of secrecy might have come down over the Fan/Speaker.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrostriction

Applications
Sonar projectors for submarines and surface vessels

I get that the Prairie Chicken hypothesis comes straight from "Morgan" and given the (justified) paranoia over Communist spies and atom secrets in the early 1950s, has a certain amount of explanatory force. But still. My personal evaluation is that Townsend was not generally putting on his weirdness, he was genuinely and authentically honestly weird (by modern mainstream science standards) in his beliefs and in the friends he kept around him. He didn't keep hanging out with 1950s Theosophy / Scientology / proto-New Age types because he was trying to play the role of the bizarre circus ringmaster, but because that's really where his head was at. He was smart and a good lab man but he was also an extremely early adopter of the Adamski Venusian Scout Ship mythos, and that had to be because Adamski's story meshed with something Townsend already believed in.

He *might* have *also* been hyper-self-aware enough to realise that displaying his actual ideas in public could be deliberately weaponised as a shield to discredit those ideas. Or he might have just been being himself.

This might be one of those situations that Morgan kept talking about how "either/or" thinking isn't helpful. TTB could have been both trying to discredit his ideas and also trying to market them at the same time. I can see how if there were initial worries circa 1952 about Communist spies, then suddenly clamming up and going dark would be the best way to attract *more* attention, while just letting the idea naturally wither on the vine (with the help of suspiciously familiar FBI agents) would do it.

But in his patents, I believe he's being fairly straightforward and is using as established and mainstream language as he can to sell the idea, and isn't trying to discredit it. If he was trying to discredit the Fan in its patent, he'd say it was "electrogravitic".

Regards, Nate

[Paul Schatzkin]

.
Another phrase I saw a lot was "ElectroHydroDynamics."

Any denizens of the "Before Times" forums will recognized the initials: EHD.

--PS

[natecull]

Any denizens of the "Before Times" forums will recognized the initials: EHD.

Yes, and sadly it means that Linda was well used to "sockpuppeting". I liked her as a person, but her ease of adopting alter personas does drop her reliability quite a bit.

Yes, well.... just how many socks do you think that puppet wore?



--PS

[Mark D Moody]

I once read …somewhere ….that James Bassett was a named used by Mr. Brown as an alias.
Can’t remember where, wish I could.
I too saw this patent many years ago.
Mark

[Paul Schatzkin]

Well, there was a "J.D. Barrett" (I think?) that chimed into the forums, or maybe it was Linda's forum, back when.

I've never seen "James Bassett."

--PS