Fernando Sanford (1854-1948): Townsend's inspiration

Long-time Townsend Brown inquirer Jan Lundquist – aka 'Rose' in The Before Times – has her own substantial archive to share with readers and visitors to this site. This forum is dedicated to the wealth of material she has compiled: her research, her findings, and her speculations.
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natecull
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Fernando Sanford (1854-1948): Townsend's inspiration

Post by natecull »

I hope it's okay to use Rose's area to post new threads. I thought this might be more on-topic than commenting directly.

Townsend Brown in some of his letters described his proposed electro-gravitic interaction for communication purposes in terms of "the Fernando Sanford effect", though he also said that he disagreed slightly with Sanford's explanation of the changes in electrical charge that he measured.

This is who Fernando Sanford was:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Sanford
Fernando Sanford (February 12, 1854 – May 21, 1948) was an American physicist and university professor. He was one of the 22 "pioneer professors" (founding faculty) for Stanford University.[2]

Sanford was born on a farm near Franklin Grove in Lee County, Illinois on February 12, 1854. He was the son of Faxton and Maria Mariah (Bly) Sanford. He attended Carthage College, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in 1879. He taught school until the mid-1880s, then studied physics in Germany under Hermann von Helmholtz for two years.

Returning to the United States, he became a Professor of Physical Science at Lake Forest College. David Starr Jordan, president of Stanford University, chose him as one of the founding professors for Stanford, where he remained until his retirement in 1919.[3] At Stanford he was the founder and first president of the Science Association. He was an early promoter of the use of laboratory instruction for undergraduates. He also helped to formulate the entrance requirements for Stanford.[2]

His book Elements of Physics (published in 1902, digitized in 2007) was an important textbook in the field.[4] Other books and monographs included The Scientific Method And Its Limitations (1899), The Electrical Charges of Atoms and Ions (1919), A Physical Theory of Electrification, and How To Study; Illustrated Through Physics.[5]

His interest in electricity led to his construction of a "terrestrial electric observatory," whose results were published over many years in his Bulletin of the Terrestrial Electric Observatory of Fernando Sanford.[6] His research included an early type of electric photography.[7]

His former residence is now one of the most important structures in the historic district of Professorville in Palo Alto, California.

He died May 21, 1948 in Santa Clara, California.
Volumes 1 through 6 of Sanford's "Bulletin of the Terrestrial Electric Observatory" are available on the Internet Archive here:

https://archive.org/search?query=creato ... Sanford%22

Sanford used a "quadrant electrometer", a very old-school electrical field measuring instrument, which doesn't need to be connected to an electrical circuit (but I think does require a locally attached battery).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrome ... ectrometer
Developed by Lord Kelvin, this is the most sensitive and accurate of all the mechanical electrometers. The original design uses a light aluminum sector suspended inside a drum cut into four segments. The segments are insulated and connected diagonally in pairs. The charged aluminum sector is attracted to one pair of segments and repelled from the other. The deflection is observed by a beam of light reflected from a small mirror attached to the sector, just as in a galvanometer. The engraving on the right shows a slightly different form of this electrometer, using four flat plates rather than closed segments. The plates can be connected externally in the conventional diagonal way (as shown), or in a different order for specific applications.
This paragraph in the Wikipedia description seems odd and potentially relevant to things happening in WW2, though it might be a very stale red herring:
A more sensitive form of quadrant electrometer was developed by Frederick Lindemann. It employs a metal-coated quartz fiber instead of an aluminum sector. The deflection is measured by observing the movement of the fiber under a microscope. Initially used for measuring star light,[citation needed] it was employed for the infrared detection[citation needed] of airplanes in the early stages of World War II.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick ... t_Cherwell
Frederick Alexander Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell, CH, PC, FRS (/ˈtʃɑːrwɛl/ CHAR-wel; 5 April 1886 – 3 July 1957) was a British physicist who was prime scientific adviser to Winston Churchill in World War II. .. He was involved in the development of radar and infra-red guidance systems. He was skeptical of the first reports of the enemy's V-weapons programme. He pressed the case for the strategic area bombing of cities.
In 1919, Lindemann was appointed professor of experimental philosophy (physics) at the University of Oxford and director of the Clarendon Laboratory, largely on the recommendation of Henry Tizard, who had been a colleague in Berlin.[3] Also in 1919, he was one of the first to suggest that an electrically neutral wind of positively charged protons and electrons is emitted from the Sun.[12] He may have been unaware that Kristian Birkeland had speculated three years earlier that the solar wind might be a mixture of positively and negatively charged particles.[13] At the same time he worked on the theory of specific heats and on temperature inversion in the stratosphere, and began to bring the two scientific disciplines together.
Churchill got Lindemann onto the "Committee for the Study of Aerial Defence" which under Sir Henry Tizard was putting its resources behind the development of radar. Lindemann's presence was disruptive, insisting instead that his own ideas of aerial mines and infra-red beams be given priority over radar. To resolve the situation, the committee dissolved itself to reform as a new body without him.
Not especially helpful given that Linedemann was an opponent of radar, except that it's interesting glimpse on scientific alternatives on electricity and radiation at a time when Townsend was also working some very "alternative" ideas of his own, and I'm also wondering just how an electrometer could be expected to detect either starlight or infra-red rays. Through the photo-electric effect, I suppose, making Linemann's electrometer maybe a very primitive WW2 photocell? Also, a link between electric wind from the sun and "specific heat" sounds vaguely like Charles Brush's ideas about a link between electricity, gravity and heat. But perhaps Lindemann was thinking about those two problems (solar wind, and temperature inversion in the stratosphere) separately and not together.

Nate
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We'll find the time to show you, wonders never cease
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Jan Lundquist
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Re: Townsend's inspiration and earthquake waves

Post by Jan Lundquist »

So, Sanford did not discover that earthquake waves travel faster when they hit a certain earth layer? Where did I read that? Was it in Townsend's letter to Hull?

I think Morgan once told Linda that we have everything we need to tell the story, but I couldn't see the pattern then. As it has become more clear to me, I now tend look at every scrap of Townsend's extant records as an intentional clue.

Among them is a photo of a seismograph machine on the Gulf of Mexico in WWII. Among his travels while at the Atlantic Coast Radar School, was one to Texas, where he met with a seismograph manufacturer. For now, this goes in the missing sock pile. If you see a mate, toss it over.
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