Correction: GLenn Martin was NOT chasing anti-gravity as early as 1951

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Jan Lundquist
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Correction: GLenn Martin was NOT chasing anti-gravity as early as 1951

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Please scroll down to Part 2 of THE SKY IS FALLING: a Walk on the Wild Side with DARPA and the Air Force, by Michael Swords, past "Uncle Albert's" picture, and look for the image in the sidebar hat says Martin Team Pursues Anti-gravity Study from Aviation Week, October 18, 1951?

https://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/se ... send+Brown. (I would upload it here, but I have used up my C&P space allotment.)

If the date is 1951 then it adds an interesting facet or two to the anti-gravity research development narrative, and a possible hook back to the TTB story. The most interesting facet is that, apparently AG research was well on the rise (groan) by the time R.I.A.S. and Louis Witten came into the picture. Martin had been chasing it for 4 years

The second point of interest, to me, at least, is that this article was published 5 days after Townsend's Barbers' Point demonstration for Truman and the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Dan Kimball. Townsend returned to the States (Hawaii was still a US territory) shortly thereafter. We call the period of time that followed his "prairie chicken" years, but it we look deeper, we can see that his career took off after that.


ETA: I finally managed to get to the actual source article in Aviation Week, and find, now (darn it) that the publication date was indeed, 1954. Therefore, there is no connection between the article and Townsend's post Hawaii travels. However.that does not change how I see his trail. TLDR: After luring the USAF into the project, and conducting further demonstration testing, he was headed for Brush Co, Cleveland to refine his findings, while drafting what would become the Winterhaven Proposal, the "talking proposal" that formed the basis for discussions of how to gp about parceling out the foundational research work that would be needed for an eventual US space program.


But first, Brown had to woo Josephine once again, as she planned to stay in Honolulu, where she was being courted by Red, the single dad of Joe's best friend. Though (per Linda) Townsend dutifully warned her that the next five years were going to be difficult, he must have found the words to win her over, as the whole family returned to the states.

Linda and Jo were met at the train by Elizabeth Barnett (AKA "Ruby" for the birthmark on her face) and whisked away to Zanesville. Townsend headed for LA, to flaunt himself as a flying saucer kook.

However, I believe that Townsend had a clear plan for where he was taking the work in the next 5 years, Though his research had the support of the Secretary of the Navy, future development would be enormously expensive, beyond the budget of a single service. Consequently, it would be politic to invite/involve/inform the Air Force of what was happening. Their support would be imperative for the requisite funding that would be needed for the next (5 year) budget cycle)

Unfortunately, the USAF had already rejected two direct proposals for joint Navy and Air Force space programs, so they would have to be wooed in other ways. Townsend was a master at playing the press to his advantage and a couple of the well-planted articles in the local press garnered the attention of AF General Bertrandia.

He requested and received a first hand "flying saucer" demonstration and was sufficiently impressed by what he saw, that he requested that ONI investigate Brown's legitimacy. This resulted in the famous, or infamous Cady Report, of September, 1952. What we know about the circumstances around this report we know from Jaques Cornillion, who heard it from Bradford Shank, likely Foundation employee whose name is censored from the report.

What Shank does not mention is that there is a high probability that Willoughby and Townsend were well acquainted with each other. Walter, the senior, more famous Cady, had produced one of the first crystal transducers for the Navy during WWII, most certainly to be used for underwater torpedo radar guidance and detonation. By the time of this report, son Willoughby had become the head of the fundamental development group of North American Aviation (Northrop, today, parent corporation of the B-2 bomber). Young Cady would pass away of cancer, in Huntington Beach, the next year.

Meanwhile, no longer needing Shank and Mason Rose to play their supporting roles in his charade, Brown began wending his way toward Washington DC. He would make a couple of stops, first, in Northern Arizona, to meet with "Prescott" and "Williams," and then in Cleveland, to do some further development work at Clevite Brush Co. According to the memos in the files of the top executive of the time, Townsend (who was there as a consultant, not an employee) gathered up Brush's research and carried it away with him. Years later, he would offer to return it in person and and bring some exciting news with it.

From Cleveland, he made a call upon GE in Philadelphia, and wrote to Jo that, in essence, the company was all in on the plan.. By 1953, he had leased an office in the Bowen Building, described as "just a few steps from the White House," and was putting the finishing touches on his Winterhaven Proposal.

The version of the proposal that we see today is not marked classified, meaning it was circulated as a "talking proposal" to present and future stakeholders, to solicit their input. Talking proposals are never the final version of any successful proposal.

It is clear from this draft, however that Townsend intended to be working closely with W. F. G. Swann, who is presented as a director of the Franklin Labs. Present history, however, identifies Swann as a director of the Bartol Research Foundation during this time:
Shortly after his appointment as Director of the Bartol Research Foundation, Dr. Swann secured an agreement with Swarthmore College to move the Foundation from its temporary lodgings in Philadelphia to the home campus of the college where it was able to enjoy the benefits of a college atmosphere. During the early 30's Dr. K. T. Bainbridge, then a Bartol scientist, developed a magnetic spectrograph with which he was able to make accurate mass determinations of low Z elements including 6Li using their accelerator. At about the same time Cockroft and Walton performed measurements on the 7Li + p = 2 reaction using their accelerator. Bainbridge was then able to verify Einstein's famous principle of mass- energy equivalence using the established masses for the proton and 7Li.

Several "high" altitude manned balloon flights were made in 1934 and '35 for the purpose of studying cosmic rays. Two of these, one of which crashed on descent, were sponsored by the National Geographic Society and the Army Air Corps and were flown by Air Corps personnel; fortunately the men on the crashed flight were able to eject and come down on parachute. Three other flights were flown by Dr. Jean Piccard and his wife. All of these flights contained a significant amount of Bartol equipment for the study of cosmic rays. Related investigations of cosmic rays were pursued from mountain tops, airplanes and ships, underwater, and in unmanned balloons.

Bartol became further involved in nuclear physics research with the construction of a 2.5 MV Van de Graaff accelerator under the guidance of Dr. W. E. Danforth. Bartol personnel also constructed a cyclotron in the late 1930's, the first cyclotron outside of Berkeley. This machine was actually built for The Franklin Institute's Biochemical Foundation, which was housed in the present Penny Hall of the University of Delaware. An extensive nuclear physics program did not develop until after World War II, with the completion of the 2.5 MV Van de Graaff and the construction of a second Van de Graaff with a potential of 5 MV. The principal research interests during the war, conducted in close collaboration with the Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, involved the development of magnetron cathodes. Basic research in solid state and surface physics continued after the war, in parallel with the resumption of cosmic ray investigations. Bartol's scope was further expanded in the 1960's with the initiation of research programs in astronomy and astrophysics.
https://www.bartol.udel.edu/wwwroot/history.html

To be continued
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Re: Correction: GLenn Martin was NOT chasing anti-gravity as early as 1951

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By the time of this report, son Willoughby had become the head of the fundamental development group of North American Aviation (Northrop, today, parent corporation of the B-2 bomber). Young Cady would pass away of cancer, in Huntington Beach, the next year.
That's interesting! I didn't know or had forgotten that link. Also ouch, sudden cancer just after heading up development of advanced aircraft. On that note: NEPA (Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft) had started in 1946, and become ANP (Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion) in 1951. (per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft ) So, a definite workplace hazard possibility there.
and then in Cleveland, to do some further development work at Clevite Brush Co. According to the memos in the files of the top executive of the time, Townsend (who was there as a consultant, not an employee) gathered up Brush's research and carried it away with him. Years later, he would offer to return it in person and and bring some exciting news with it.
There seems to have been a complicated chain of companies spiralling out from Charles Francis Brush: eg https://www.brushindustries.com/about-u ... px?id=1396 and https://case.edu/ech/articles/b/brush-development-corp
The BRUSH DEVELOPMENT CORP., which became the world's largest producer of artificially grown piezo electric crystals, was organized in 1930 to market electronic devices utilizing the crystals, which had been developed in the Brush Laboratories. Located at E. 40th St. and Perkins Ave., the company, under the direction of president Alfred L. Williams, sold a wide range of products, including high-fidelity microphones and speakers, a practical application of the piezo electric principle. Brush transmission equipment found a ready market in the rapidly growing radio broadcast industry, and was used by Admiral Richard E. Byrd on his second Antarctic expedition in 1934.
Brush Industries has a rich history in the world of machine-readable devices. Originally founded in 1919 by Charles Francis Brush as Brush Labs, a research company based in Cleveland, Ohio, the company was started with the intention to develop phonographic products that utilized piezoelectric crystals. Mr. Brush died prematurely in 1929 but his backers founded the Brush Development Company in 1930 to commercialize the inventions of Brush Labs. The newly formed company became the USA's biggest manufacturer of instrument recorders and other test and measurement instrumentation in the latter half of the 1930s. Brush's main business in 1943 was the production of piezoelectric phonograph pickups.

The firm also offered several products in the magnetic recording field. It was the sole producer of the piezo electric hearing-aid receiver and marketed a sound mirror to aid in voice training. The Brush BK 401 Sound Mirror (1946) was the first tape recorder to be designed and built in the United States.
That Brush tape recorder, I believe, involved post-WW2 German technology.


Selected excerpts from: https://www.gustogen.eu/history , which focuses on the British branch of the Brush family of companies, but includes the American and French branches.
(1849) Charles Francis Brush, born on March 17th in Ohio and raised on his family’s Walnut Hills Farm. He demonstrated an interest and aptitude with engineering from a young age – so much so that his indulgent parents allowing him space to build a workshop in their home. At the age of 12 he built a static electricity machine, using a bottle, a piece of leather and amalgam from an old mirror. He made batteries, electromagnets, induction coils and small motors. The coils were made with rusty wire, with the rust and some shellacked paper acting as insulation. During this time he learnt of Humphrey Davy’s 1808 experiment with an arc light and while at Cleveland Central High School had access to electrical apparatus at the physical laboratory and was able to build his first arc light before he left his High School with honours.
George Westinghouse Jr, was born in 1846 in Pennsylvania... Thomas Alva Edison was born in 1847 in Ohio, the same state as Brush.
1856 – Nicola Tesla was born on 10 July 1856 in modern day Croatia. He was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist who is best known for his contributions to the design of modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. He later worked with Continental Edison in Paris, then in Edison Manufacturing in New York and later with Westinghouse, who licensed his AC induction motor.
1869 – Charles’ education culminates in a graduation from the University of Michigan in 1869 with a degree in Mining Engineering, as academic qualifications in electrical engineering did not exist at the time.
1869 - George Westinghouse creates Westinghouse Air Brake Co (WABCO) producing air brakes for trains, which would bring him fortune and the start of a long string of Westinghouse companies. WABCO itself would later become WABTEC.
1870’s - Brush’s early work revolves around optimising the design of the arc lamp – first used in this decade for street illumination and a safer alternative to gas lighting.
1873 – Brush set up a small laboratory to continue his experiments with electricity and thought about the Arc light being powered by a dynamo. He reacquainted with George Stockly, a boyhood friend, who was vice president of the Telegraph Supply Company of Cleveland, and who, impressed with Brush’s findings, supported the development of Brush’s arc lamp and dynamo.
1878 - The Franklin Institute of Philadelphia launched an evaluation of dynamos and tested various models including the Gramme model from Europe.

The Brush dynamos were found to produce strong currents and to be easier to maintain due to the simplicity of their design and in the end the Franklin Institute purchased a Brush dynamo, which effectively endorsed it as the machine of choice for producing electricity.

The testing committee included the prominent electrical scientist, Elihu Thompson, who would later form his own company to produce arc lighting in competition with Brush, until the two merged in 1889.
1879 – John Wanamaker hired Brush to install lights in his Philadelphia department store. The lights were described by one observer as “twenty miniature moons on carbon points held captive in glass globes”. The age of electrical lighting had been born. Dynamo sales were meagre until Brush perfected and successfully demonstrated his new arc light system on Cleveland's Public Square on April 29, 1879, with twelve lamps around the park, powered in series by a dynamo housed in the Telegraph Supply Company of his friend George Stocky.
1879 - Both Edison in the US and Sir Joseph Wilson Swan in UK were working to produce a suitable filament for a lightbulb, it was Swan who demonstrated a working incandescent lightbulb using a carbon filament on 3 February 1879 at a meeting of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne, several months ahead of Edison.

After many experiments, Edison developed later that year an incandescent lamp that lasted 13.5 hours, and on November 4, 1879, filed for U.S. patent 223,898 for an electric lamp using "a carbon filament or strip coiled and connected to platina contact wires".
1880 – Over 5000 Brush arc lamps are in operation representing 80% of all arc lamps used at the time. In order to keep pace with the demand for Brush lighting systems, the Telegraph Supply Company of Cleveland underwent significant restructuring giving birth to the The Brush Electrical Company which capitalized at $3 million, with the aim of manufacturing and selling Brush street lighting systems. The company built a factory of 200,000 sqf. on Mason St., which employed 400 people.
The Anglo-American Electric Light Company recognised the superiority of the Brush arc-lamp and dynamo and bought the world-wide rights to the Brush system outside North America. It was reconstituted on 4th December 1880 as the Anglo-American Brush Electric Light Corporation Ltd and a larger factory, the Victoria Works, was set up at 112 Belvedere Road in Lambeth, near Waterloo Station.
1889 – By this time the Brush company lost its dominance by failing to develop a large-scale research facility or expand the firm. Competitors adopted and copied the basic process of arc lighting to design and build more and better improvements to the system. Brush launches legal action against Thompson-Houston Electric, accusing them of patent infringement. Rather than fighting a legal battle, Charles A. Coffin from Thomson offered to buy Brush at $40 per share. Brush suggested $75 per share, an asking price of $3 million. Thomson-Houston accepted the next day. This merger did not affect The Anglo-American Brush Electric Light Corporation based in London which had other investors.

Charles F. Brush now semi-officially retires from the world of the electric industry – continuing to produce research covering the kinetic theory of gravitation and selling the world’s first piezo-electric featherweight stylus.
On the 10th August 1889, Anglo-American Brush and Falcon Works become the Brush Electrical Engineering Company Limited
1891 - In Britain, Emile Garcke became Managing Director of Brush Electrical Engineering Co. He would hold that position and steer the fortunes of the company for the next 40 years.
1893 – Westinghouse gets a huge boost winning the contract to GE to light the World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago, Illinois) with their AC system and using the Sawyer-Man design incandescent lamps.

The Compagnie Française Thomson-Houston (CFTH) was formed in Paris, a sister company to GE in the United States. It is from this company that the modern Thomson Group would evolve; demerged in 1999 to form Thomson Multimedia and Thomson-CSF (now Thales Group).
1895 – Charles F. Brush discovered the presence of the element Helium in the earth’s atmosphere.
1896 – British Thomson-Houston (BTH) was created as a subsidiary of (American) General Electric in May 1896. It used the name BTH as GEC had the rights to the General Electric Company trademark in UK
1903 – Emile Garke’s led British Electric Traction Co (B.E.T.) becomes the principal shareholder in the Brush Electrical Engineering Co.
1905 – Charles F. Brush founded the Linde Air Products Company after becoming interested in the invention of Dr Carl Linde for the production of oxygen from liquid air.
1907 – Emile Garcke becomes Chairman of Brush remaining in that position until his death in 1930. Garcke had founded the British Electric Traction Company (BET) in 1895 as an organisation to promote electric tramways as a means of public transport, and more than 80 companies became affiliated to it
1910 – Charles F Brush developed his Kinetic Theory of Gravitation read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where he demonstrated that certain materials of the same shape and mass can fall faster than others. It also postulated that the energy of the ether of space exists in the form of isotropic ether waves of very short wave lengths.
1913 – The American Institute of Electrical Engineers awards Brush the Edison Medal
1915 - Brush Electrical and Engineering is chosen to support the Royal Navy in the provision of aircraft – producing 650 planes by 1919.
1921 – Brush Laboratories was started in by Charles Brush, Jr. with the support of his father Charles F. Brush and Dr. Baldwin Sawyer, who pioneered work in the extraction of beryllium from ore and the production of beryllium metal, oxide and master alloy. After the death of Brush Jr in 1927 it would be renamed Brush Beryllium Company, the predecessor to the present Materion Corporation.
1925 – Charles F Brush developed the theory that certain minerals could generate heat due to absorption, by matter, of isotropic ether waves.
1928 – Brush was awarded the Franklin Medal by the Franklin Institute

British Thomson Houston (BTH) became part of Associated Electrical Industries (AEI), which saw BTH merged with its rival Metropolitan-Vickers. This deal made the GE controlled AEI the largest military contractor of the British Empire during the ‘30s and the ‘40s during World War II.

In France, Alstom (originally as Als-Thom) was formed from a merger between Compagnie Française Thomson Houston and the electric engineering division of Société Alsacienne de Constructions Mécaniques.
1929 – In April of that year Brush presented before the Franklin Institute his updated “Kinetic Theory of Gravitation”

Charles F. Brush dies on June 15th, shortly after reaching the age of 80, after complications with pneumonia. His Mansion of Euclid Avenue would be soon dismantled as those were his wishes once no one in the Brush family occupied it.
1939 – The world’s first gas turbine for electricity production is created. Located in Neuchatel, Switzerland, and designed by Brown Boveri & Cie.

Frank Whittle successfully runs in April, the first turbojet engine – the WU. His company Power Jets Ltd was supported by British Thompson Houston and the engine developed at one of their facilities
1943 – Brush Electric once again contributes to the war effort by taking over the production of military aircraft from de Havilland - producing DeHavilland Dragon Rapides/Dominies for WW2. This sees the company eventually build 346 aircraft before winding down production in 1945 in the wake of VE day.
The British side gets complicated after WW2, as is the style of the time (with similar shell games happening in the USA no doubt):
1957 –The company becomes part of the Hawker Siddeley Group...1971 – The former Rotating Machines division was formed into Brush Electrical Machines Ltd, (abbreviated to BEM Ltd), which continued to produce electric motors and generators over a wide power range. Concurrently the other two main product divisions were converted into Brush Transformers Ltd and Brush Switchgear Ltd. The traction Division was converted into Brush Traction Ltd... 1988 - ASEA AB of Sweden merge with BBC Brown Boveri Ltd forming ABB (ASEA-Brown Boveri) 1992 – Brush Traction formed with ABB the Eurotunnel Locomotive Consortium and won the contract to supply the “Shuttle” locomotives. 1996 - FKI Group acquired the Hawker Siddeley Electric Power Group from BTR for a price of £182 million. Brush becomes part of FKI Energy Technologies. 2000 – In view of the worldwide demand for generators, FKI sees the opportunity to acquire HMA Power Systems - a mainstay of the electrical industry in the Netherlands since its founding in 1892. It would be rebranded as Brush HMA. 2008 – The company was acquired again by Melrose PLC – leading to a redesign and modernisation for the older Loughborough offices in a drive to eventually make the business “smaller and more profitable”. Melrose finalise the acquisition of FKI for £480m, bringing with it Brush SEM – integrating the different wings of the company into ‘one brush’, made up from Brush UK, Brush CZ, Brush NL, and Brush Americas in Houston. 2010 – Under the new Melrose management, the Generator and Motor Services of Pennsylvania (GMS) is acquired by the Brush Group. First formed in 1987 by former Westinghouse technicians, GMS had a large and well equipped workshop in Pittsburgh and provided generator repair services. 2011 – Melrose PLC sells Brush Traction to the WABTEC group, an American company formed by the merger of the Westinghouse Air Brake Company (WABCO) and MotivePower Industries Corporation
1989 – Brush Celebrates 100 years with the visit of the founder’s grandson, Charles F. Brush III an archaeologist and an adventurer himself who was also the president of the famous Explorers Club of New York, which counts among its members some of the greatest adventurers of all time.
Anyway. My takeaways from this are:

1) Clevite/Brush were SUPER SUPER into the defense contracting scene, on both sides of the Atlantic, so no wonder Townsend, who had an unerring nose for both money and high-end military, was all over that scene

2) Both Cleveland and Philadelphia seem to have been hotbeds of electrical research, and the Franklin Institute, which I believe turns up in Winterhaven, seems to be especially deeply linked to Brush.

3) If it was specifically CF Brush's personal research that Townsend was interested in, and not the less exotic but more strategic tape recorder and semiconductors stuff (what became early data-recording and computing), then I imagine it was his evaluations of "gravity absorbing materials", "thermogravity" and "pushing gravity" from the 1920s, since Townsend referred specifically later in the 1950s and 1970s to all these theories of Brush. And Roger Babsons's Gravity Research Foundation was (before the academics took over) specifically looking for a "gravity absorber" - this doesn't seem a coincidence.

4) Charles F Brush III - sounds kind of "Nassau", was he doing spy stuff with all that "adventuring"?

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/nyre ... brush.html
Charles F. Brush, Archaeologist Who Piled Adventure Upon Adventure, Dies at 83
June 11, 2006
Charles F. Brush III, an archaeologist who as president of the Explorers Club persuaded his brethren to take on a singular adventure — admitting women to their den of stuffed polar bears, tarantula appetizers and overstuffed armchairs — died on June 1 in Manhattan. He was 83.

The cause was congestive heart failure, his son, Charles IV, said.

Dr. Brush, who lived in Shelter Island, N.Y., took up mountain climbing at 49, ran his first marathon at 54, and climbed the sheer Devil's Tower in Wyoming at 70, two days after taking up rock climbing. One of the legendary parties he had at his Park Avenue penthouse had Allen Ginsberg sitting in the nude chanting in front of a Buddha sculpture in the living room, The New York Times reported in 1993.

Dr. Brush was an eccentric, even in the eccentric Explorers Club — and he could afford to be. His grandfather, Charles Francis Brush, perfected the arc light and was making money from illuminating city streets while Thomas Edison was still working on his first bulb. Dr. Brush III's father, with some help from his own father, started what is now Brush Engineered Materials, a leading producer of beryllium metal.

Dr. Brush III, who was never bothered by a 9-to-5 job, was a director of this family company, now publicly traded, for 45 years until 2003. He explained to The Plain Dealer newspaper of Cleveland that he served because as an anthropologist, he was fascinated with boardroom dynamics.
Charles Francis Brush III was born in Cleveland on April 3, 1923, and in later years collected wines from that year, though hardly exclusively. His father died when he was 3. Then his only sibling, a sister, died, and he and his mother moved to Riverdale in the Bronx. The two traveled around the world when he was 17.

He graduated from the Fountain Valley School of Colorado and from Yale. His college education was interrupted by service in the Army Signal Corps during World War II. After living on a plantation in Jamaica, where he owned a restaurant, he began doctoral studies at Columbia.

He met another graduate student, Ellen K. Sperry, in the anthropology department's "bone room." She became his third wife in 1958.

She survives him, along with his son, Charles IV, of Manhattan; his daughters Karen, of Manhattan, Barbara Brush Wright of Shelter Island, and Danielle Brush Schmid of Huntington Beach, Calif.; seven grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter.

After climbing three Mexican volcanoes at 49, his first year of climbing, he soon made up for lost time by scaling the highest summits in North America, South America, Europe and Africa. He switched to running marathons at 54 because he was disenchanted with the downscale crowd of climbers who greeted him at the top of Mount McKinley in Alaska on July 6, 1976; he was two days late for a Bicentennial celebration because of the death of a fellow climber.

At the Explorers Club, of which Dr. Brush was president from 1978 to 1981, he did little to belie his swashbuckling reputation. His dinner jacket was lined with fabric showing the club's flag, which has accompanied polar pioneers and astronauts. Members long remarked on the mountain climbers he sent rappelling from a balcony at a banquet at the Waldorf.
Correction: June 14, 2006

An obituary on Sunday about Charles F. Brush III, an archaeologist and former president of the Explorers Club, incorrectly listed his third wife, Ellen Sperry Brush, as a survivor. She died in 1999.
Oh, and there's another bit of a Nassau flavour: Institute of Noetic Sciences.

https://www.celestis.com/participants-t ... brush-iii/
Dr. Brush was a director of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, Trustee of the Sierra Club Foundation from 1981-1987, and President of the American Scandinavian Society from 1983-1985. He was a competitive racewalker and competed in numerous marathons, and was a member of the Century Association.
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Re: Correction: GLenn Martin was NOT chasing anti-gravity as early as 1951

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Nate, I'll have whatever you're having! lol That is a neat a summary of the people and events that shaped the early American electronics engineering industry. I appreciate that you took the time to pull it together. I had forgotten that CF Brush had discovered helium on earth in 1895.

I took some time to look at the tasks laid out in the Winterhaven org chart, with the idea that Townsend did not pull those people and organizations in randomly. He had conferred, however lightly, with someone of each location who had sufficient status to say '"yeah, we could do that and we want to do that".

This is the half of the org chart that I call the point "where the rubber meets the road." It seems the most task specific. One has the sense that the work here is more application ready than that in the other half, which appears to be to be geared more toward communications than propulsion.

download/file.php?id=85&mode=view

The work designated for the University of Chicago was probably meant to be done the present day DOE Argonne Las, previously the Mettalurgical (MET) lab for the Manhattan Engineering Project.

Brush will be responsible for solid dialetrics, informed by theoretical work from Chicago and supported by with the contributions of Franklin Institute. One of the institute's particular interests appears to be in the development of supercondcutive materials, presumably grown in the Liquid helium cryostat they hope to receive. The proposal also includes an appendix, authored by Swann himself, which goes into greater detail about the work of the Institute.

The proposal identifies Hancock Manufacturing as a development subcontractor. There was a Hancock-Gross in Philadelphia, which manufactured plumbing supplies, and a Hancock in Lubbock, Texas, which manufactured earth moving equipment. I am going with the Philadelphia firm as the probably designee. Townsend would have them working on "reactive forces" in fluid dialectrics, demonstrating saucer levitation (in the MetLab Vacuum chamber) as well as constructing flame jet generators (to serve as voltage multipliers?)

The company name that is blank in this org chart is that of the Prime Contractor. It would be GE for the Corona Keyhole project, and Martin Marietta for the Vanguard missiles that were to be the Navy's launch vehicles, but much of this proposed work plan ever made it into the final 'going to space project plan" we can't know.

But since we made it to space, 5 years later, we can be sure that project planning was underway at the time Winterhaven was being circulated.

As for Willoughby's cancer, given his work record, I had the same thought about the possible cause.

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Re: Correction: GLenn Martin was NOT chasing anti-gravity as early as 1951

Post by natecull »

Nate, I'll have whatever you're having! lol
Heh. Yes, I was a little hyper, but honestly, it was just the top three hits on a Google search. I trimmed the "Gusto" one a bit. Those guys are really passionate about the Brush legacy!

The proposal identifies Hancock Manufacturing as a development subcontractor. There was a Hancock-Gross in Philadelphia, which manufactured plumbing supplies, and a Hancock in Lubbock, Texas, which manufactured earth moving equipment. I am going with the Philadelphia firm as the probably designee.
Could be. There are several other Hancocks:

One in Toronto, Ohio, which made oil filter casings and refrigerator components from 1945-1979:

https://dam.assets.ohio.gov/image/uploa ... 6%20DD.pdf

One in Jackson, Michigan, metal fabricators for the car industry:

https://www.vallejogallery.com/2022/item.php?id=3133
... Harry W. Hancock of Coral Gables, Florida (1871-1948). Hancock was the president and founder of the Hancock Manufacturing Co. of Chicago, makers of auto parts for Ford Motors. The company moved to Michigan in the 1920's where Hancock would own a series of yachts with the home port of Detroit.

Hancock was a member of the Detroit Yacht Club and each of the vessels pictured has the DYC club burgee on the bow as well as Hancock's personal burgee flying amidships. Given the date of these paintings 1938-1940, it's likely Harry had already retired to the Miami area where he met Joe Selby, whom he commission to create these paintings of his yachts. Clearly a passionate yachtsman, records show Hancock owned at least two other yachts by the late 1940's, the HARZEL and SOLANA. His son Richard succeeded him in the family business, later creating the Hancock foundation, a charitable organization benefiting the Jackson, Michigan community where the company was based.
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Re: Cady. NWC. and Smythe on Static and Dynamic Electricity

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Thanks, Nate. I'm going through your posts again, and wanted to respond to a few items, specifically.

At the end of the war, Willoughby Cady was head physicist at the Naval Weapons Center, China Lake. I suspect that his cancer may have been seeded there, since we know that after the NRL was "hosed," the Navy had taken their "Admiral's Agenda" to China Lake, about as far from V. Bush's sight as they could get.

Half of the CalTech physicists left academia, moved 180 miles out to the desert, and became civil service employees at the test center.
When the split happened, the rocket work fell into a natural division of big and little rockets. JPL took the big ones and China Lake, the small ones. Really small, like 6 inches or less. Bush had no problem funding the Navy to work on (what he thought) were simple barrage bombs, as they would probably soon become an obsolete tool of warfare.

One oral history says most of the former professors were working on proximity fuses, the third great secret of the war, after atom bombs and radar). Apparently, the designs were so sophisticated that only physicists were able to craft them.

Smythe was among the faculty that remained at CalTech. From time to time, he sent down some special projects of a different nature, that were said to be much more interesting and challenging, and physicists vied for the opportunity to work on them.

Anyone who graduated with a degree in engineering or physics between 1923 and the time he retired would have taken his mandatory course in Static and Dynamic electricity. Smythe' s book on the topic was also used as a reference in the Cady Report. Judging by the universal 5 stars it has on Amazon, It is still read and treasured today. From "Andrew", who reviews some very interesting books:
I have the third edition and received the 2nd edition today. The second edition is in some respects even better than the third edition in that Smythe was able to have each 2nd edition problem vetted by over 375 Caltech students.

The selection of problems is a must have reference for experimentalists who have instrumentation issues to analyze*, and Smythe goes into a wealth of detail which puts Jackson, E and M to shame.

I am glad I have both Smythe references, and as a PhD in physics, I rank this right up with Morse and Feshbach's two volume set in advanced mathematical physics as essential reading. An eternal stand out, Smythe, and I rate this as the best experimentally relevant physics book I have ever read, bar none
https://www.amazon.com/Static-Dynamic-E ... ll_reviews

If any future reader-students are interested, one reviewer recommends picking up a pdf of the problem sets with answers, which is or was available on the net at the time.

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Re: Brown-Bovieri, Brush, the Franklin Institute, Brits, Swann, Bartol Labs

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Nate, your Brush Co history reminds me of those "dinosaur pills" that kids drop into water and watch as they expand and expand. The company balloned in all directions.

I think Brown-Bovieri may be the Swiss firm that operated\ a top secret engine manufacturing facility in South America after the war. A hint has been dropped that their products were used in dual engine craft tested in the far north of Canada. Timeframe? Fifties -seventies would be my guess. It is probably safe to conclude that if Townsend were the Brown in this BB partnership, he would have dies a lot richer.

****

But he loved his petrovoltaics, all of his life. Though he certainly would have been following Walter Cady's developments in petrovoltaids, and keeping up with Hans Alfven's developing theories of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), on his way to EMHD, it was always the work of C. F. Brush that he would mention in his later letters. Young Townsend would have been such a fanboy of the elderly man, that I can't imagine that he would not have corresponded with him at least once.

In 1932, when the Navy Bureau of Engineering was fighting the Bureau of Ships, to keep seaman Townsend Brown beyond his enlisted term, one of the letters written on his behalf came from a Pennsylvania Congressman.In my memory, the letter was quite strongly worded. I always wondered how it was that s sailor from Ohio earned such a reputation from an important man in another state..

But then, I had always thought that Brush Co was an "just" an Ohio based company, too, as Brush lived his whole life in Euclid, Ohio. But now I see that the firm was internationally successful, even before CF discovered helium. And, as you showed, CF was a twice invited speaker for the Franklin institute of Philadelphia and had been honored with both the Edison and the Franklin medals.

Their British Electrical Engineering division had been put in place in 1903.

I am not saying there is a connection, but the Dr. Swann who partnered with Townsend in crafting the Franklin Institute's section of the Winterhaven proposal, was an Englishman. And that end of the proposed org chart is undeniably Brush and Franklin heavy.

Of course, we now have reason to think that the entire Franklin Institute section was a front facing ruse for Bartol Labs, which was Swann's real employer. They were doing all sorts of interesting dark things in those days.

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Re: Correction: GLenn Martin was NOT chasing anti-gravity as early as 1951

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I am not saying there is a connection, but the Dr. Swann who partnered with Townsend in crafting the Franklin Institute's section of the Winterhaven proposal, was an Englishman. And that end of the proposed org chart is undeniably Brush and Franklin heavy.

Of course, we now have reason to think that the entire Franklin Institute section was a front facing ruse for Bartol Labs, which was Swann's real employer. They were doing all sorts of interesting dark things in those days.
Hmm! I admit that Bartol has completely slipped my mind, if I knew anything about it. There's a nice history of the Bartol Research Institute on their website: https://www.bartol.udel.edu/wwwroot/history.html

Sorry for the spamming, but they were doing such fun stuff that I'm going to quote the whole thing here (the Web being what it is, and the Internet Archive being extremely flaky right now).
Mr. Henry W. Bartol, a member of The Franklin Institute, died on the 19th of December, 1918, leaving behind a will and codicil that provided for the establishment of the Bartol Research Institute. In that will Mr. Bartol designated as residuary legatee the Franklin Institute of the State of Pennsylvania. He stipulated: "All the rest, residue and remainder of my estate, except such as is situated in France, I give, devise, and bequeath to the Franklin Institute... to be applied to the establishment and maintenance of a department of practical Electrical Engineering..." The codicil subsequently changed this to "...the founding and maintenance of an institute... the preference however, being given to workers or those making researches into electrical science."

Mr. Bartol was a prominent Philadelphia industrialist. Although his gift in 1918 was sufficient to fund an institute of scientific study, the birth of the Bartol Research Institute (then called the Bartol Research Foundation) was slow and difficult. It was not until the end of 1925 that the first Bartol Fellow, Dr. Arthur Bramley, was appointed. The first publication of research supported by the Bartol Research Foundation, and performed by Dr. Bramley, appeared in the January, 1926 issue of the Journal of the Franklin Institute. This report discussed the multiplet structure in the Zeeman effect. The number of Bartol Fellows rose to five and on February 3, 1927, Dr. W. F. G. Swann was elected by the Board of Managers to be the first director of the Bartol Research Foundation.

W. F. G. Swann was appointed the Director of the Bartol Research Foundation at the age of 43. Born in England, he was educated at Brighton Technical College, the Royal College of Science, University College, Kings College and the City Guilds of London Institute. Dr. Swann came to this country in 1913 as head of the Physical Division of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institute in Washington. Later he was Professor of Physics at the University of Minnesota, the University of Chicago and Yale, where he became Director of the Sloane Laboratory. A man of many talents, Dr. Swann was an accomplished cellist, founder of the Swarthmore Symphony Orchestra, a former assistant conductor of the Main Line Orchestra and former director of the Philadelphia Academy of Music.

By the time of his appointment, Professor Swann had already distinguished himself as an excellent teacher, an outstanding researcher, and an emerging leader of the scientific community. Although Dr. Swann is perhaps best known for his experimental and theoretical efforts in the area of cosmic ray physics, his research interests touched on many other disciplines such as condensed matter physics, relativity, and charged particle acceleration. In the last seven years of his life he had 22 publications on such diverse subjects as atmospheric electricity, thermal conductivity of solids, the restricted theory of relativity, matter, antimatter and gravitation, and charged particle acceleration to cosmic ray energies. His grasp of electromagnetism was far reaching and entered into most of his research. In his capacity as a professor he is perhaps best known as the advisor of Dr. E. O. Lawrence who subsequently was awarded the Nobel Prize for developing the cyclotron. Lawrence followed Dr. Swann from Minnesota, to Chicago, and then to Yale where he received his Ph.D. Altogether Dr. Swann had over 250 publications including a well known book "The Architecture of the Universe". In 1967 the International Astronomical Union honored Professor Swann when it gave his name to a crater on the lunar surface at 52 º north latitude and 112 º east longitude.

Shortly after his appointment as Director of the Bartol Research Foundation, Dr. Swann secured an agreement with Swarthmore College to move the Foundation from its temporary lodgings in Philadelphia to the home campus of the college where it was able to enjoy the benefits of a college atmosphere. During the early 30's Dr. K. T. Bainbridge, then a Bartol scientist, developed a magnetic spectrograph with which he was able to make accurate mass determinations of low Z elements including 6Li using their accelerator. At about the same time Cockroft and Walton performed measurements on the 7Li + p = 2 reaction using their accelerator. Bainbridge was then able to verify Einstein's famous principle of mass- energy equivalence using the established masses for the proton and 7Li.

Several "high" altitude manned balloon flights were made in 1934 and '35 for the purpose of studying cosmic rays. Two of these, one of which crashed on descent, were sponsored by the National Geographic Society and the Army Air Corps and were flown by Air Corps personnel; fortunately the men on the crashed flight were able to eject and come down on parachute. Three other flights were flown by Dr. Jean Piccard and his wife. All of these flights contained a significant amount of Bartol equipment for the study of cosmic rays. Related investigations of cosmic rays were pursued from mountain tops, airplanes and ships, underwater, and in unmanned balloons.

Bartol became further involved in nuclear physics research with the construction of a 2.5 MV Van de Graaff accelerator under the guidance of Dr. W. E. Danforth. Bartol personnel also constructed a cyclotron in the late 1930's, the first cyclotron outside of Berkeley. This machine was actually built for The Franklin Institute's Biochemical Foundation, which was housed in the present Penny Hall of the University of Delaware. An extensive nuclear physics program did not develop until after World War II, with the completion of the 2.5 MV Van de Graaff and the construction of a second Van de Graaff with a potential of 5 MV. The principal research interests during the war, conducted in close collaboration with the Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, involved the development of magnetron cathodes. Basic research in solid state and surface physics continued after the war, in parallel with the resumption of cosmic ray investigations. Bartol's scope was further expanded in the 1960's with the initiation of research programs in astronomy and astrophysics.

Dr. Martin A. Pomerantz succeeded Prof. Swann as Director of the Bartol Research Foundation in 1959. In 1977, while under his direction, the Bartol Research Foundation moved to its present location in the H. Rodney Sharp Laboratory at the University of Delaware. The Bartol shares this main campus building with the Department of Physics and Astronomy, participating fully in the University's Joint Graduate Program in Physics and Astronomy.

Dr. Pomerantz is best known for his pioneering use of the South Pole as a laboratory for studies in astronomy and astrophysics. Although the Antarctic continent is a hostile environment that provides unique challenges for both man and machine, it also provides unique opportunities for the study of extraterrestrial physics. The dipolar nature of the Earth's magnetic field allows for the entry of cosmic rays at the poles without the impediment of the magnetic field common to other regions of the Earth. The extreme cold of the Antarctic winter reduces the atmospheric water vapor to values comparable to desert climates, allowing for high resolution optical observations of the stars. Solar observations near the Earth's rotational axis provide for long duration runs, interrupted only by occasional summer storms. Using such unique features of Antarctica to greatest advantage, Dr. Pomerantz has directed the Bartol Research Institute's Antarctic research program for thirty years, initiating the cosmic ray and solar oscillation studies now performed there. In recognition of his pioneering efforts in Antarctic research, a highland plain at 70 º south latitude and 160 º east longitude now bears the name Pomerantz Tableland, and a lab building at South Pole is named after him as the Martin A. Pomerantz Observatory.

As the new Director, Dr. Pomerantz continued to build on the traditional strengths of the Bartol Research Institute. Efforts to study the rapidly growing area of cosmic ray physics were increased and much of the pioneering research in this field has been conducted by members of Bartol's scientific staff over the years. New research programs in particle theory and cosmology were a natural outgrowth of the existing programs in nuclear physics and astrophysics.

Dr. Norman F. Ness succeeded Dr. Pomerantz as the Director (retitled President of the University of Delaware-Bartol Research Institute) in 1987. Previously, Dr. Ness was the Director of the Laboratory for Extraterrestrial Physics at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, where he earned an international reputation in the study of magnetic fields in interplanetary space and the physics of planetary magnetospheres. He has pioneered the construction of spacecraft-borne magnetometers and has been the Principal Investigator on magnetic field experiments flown on numerous Mariner, Pioneer, and IMP missions and on the Voyager spacecraft. His work has been central to the in situ study of the solar wind and the plasma environments and magnetic fields of Mercury, Earth, the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

In July 2000, Bartol was integrated into the University of Delaware, becoming a unit within the College of Arts and Science. Dr. Stuart Pittel, a long-time member of the Bartol faculty, was named Acting Director of the Institute in September 2000 and a year later was appointed Director.Dr. Pittel is best known scientifically for his pioneering research on the origin of collective motion in atomic nuclei.

In July 2005, the Institute merged with the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University, becoming a research center within the Department. Its mission is to foster excellence in research in physics and astronomy at the University.
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Re: Correction: GLenn Martin was NOT chasing anti-gravity as early as 1951

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I, too, have had a block against remembering or even recognizing Bartol Labs. Someone must have cast memorus dispellaramus over them. :D I also have a very faint memory of a discussion of something happening off the Delaware coast that appeared to be a Townsend related event, but that is probably buried too deep to hope for retriefal.

But now that I Bartol and the Fuller Brush men more clearly, I think they deserve serious attention.

Swann's appointment to Bartol was soon followed with the Institute's recognition and honoring. of Fuller, Sr. more than once over the next two years. C. F. died in 1929, just as Townsend was publishing The Minor Quanta.

When Townsend wrote to the Brush Co, CEO, promising to bring the Brush research material back he also stated that he was bringing a monograph by Enos Whitmer. Whitmer is another one of those characters with gaps in his career path.

viewtopic.php?p=21940&hilit=Brush#p21940.


I've been fangirling over instrumentation, lately. Once Millikan measured the electron volt, there was no end to what could be measured and tested. Townsend would write to a later in life correspondent that he, himself, had built 19 electrometers over the years.

Among the earliest, perhaps, was the portable one that Ross Gunn patented shortly after Townsend joined the NRL. But Townsend's meters were never meant to be portable. They built for the purpose of collecting records of variance over time in one location only.

Add ninety years of technological advancement and refinements and I think we are looking at the Bartol's network of 11 neutron detectors capturing our spinning Earth, orbiting the sun in a bath of anistropic cosmic rays. Their South Pole station, one of their early placements,has been plotting moving averages for incoming neutrons over a 27 day (sidereal month) cycle since 1960.

Alfven, the Swedish electrical engineer who would go on to win the Nobel Prize for MHD, had long ago concluded that sidereal time variance would certainly modify the effect of a stream of particles arriving from a direction counter to to the rotation of a field. (my simplified interpretation, your own is invited). I can't help but why was this question being asked in 1938? What was furthered by having that knowledge solidified?



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Re: Correction: GLenn Martin was NOT chasing anti-gravity as early as 1951

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Alfven, the Swedish electrical engineer who would go on to win the Nobel Prize for MHD, had long ago concluded that sidereal time variance would certainly modify the effect of a stream of particles arriving from a direction counter to to the rotation of a field. (my simplified interpretation, your own is invited). I can't help but why was this question being asked in 1938? What was furthered by having that knowledge solidified?
Hannes Alfvén is of course famous not just for being a big name in plasma physics, but for having weird ideas, and might be one reason why the plasma physics scene seemed to attract interestingly weird people (eg Robert Jahn at Princeton and his lifelong interest in telekinesis). I'm not sure if the weirdness attached to the scene is actually Alfvén's influence, or something else. (UFO "orbs" that often look like glowing plasma would be one candidate for the "something else"; "ball lightning" another; the Spiritualist scene's experience of "ectoplasm" also sounds a little like a kind of cold or room-temperature plasma, although there's weirder things going on there, including the "plasma" being able to be touched or generate sounds.)

But as for Alfvén's 1938 question, I assume this paper: https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10 ... sRev.54.97
On the Sidereal Time Variation of the Cosmic Radiation
Hannes Alfvén
Phys. Rev. 54, 97 – Published 15 July 1938

If it is supposed that the positive and negative cosmic-ray particles are not equal in number, the resulting space charge will be neutralized by slowly moving ions which should follow the motion of the stars. If the cosmic-ray particles are not isotropic relative to the stellar system, as for example if they do not share the motion of galactic rotation, the relative motion of the slow ions and the cosmic-ray particles of opposite sign produces in effect an electric current. Calculation shows that the resulting magnetic field may become as great as 10−1 gauss if there is a considerable difference between the number of positive and negative particles. It is shown that the anisotropy corresponding to even a small sidereal time variation of the cosmic radiation would imply such great magnetic fields as to bend the paths of cosmic-ray particles in curves of radii small compared with interstellar distances. Therefore, the high degree of isotropy of the cosmic radiation is a necessary consequence of the fact that it consists mainly of charged particles and does not tell us anything about the place of origin of the radiation.
My guess, which I think I've mentioned before, is that Alfvén is trying to work the problem of where cosmic rays come from. "Sidereal time variation", I think, probably just means "source direction in space relative to the fixed stars", since if we have a detector on Earth that's not particularly direction-sensitive, all we can really measure is the time of events, and things like cosmic ray detections are very bursty, so we'd average them out over many months (as Townsend did with his electrometer). The averaged graph we then compare with "sidereal time", ie the Earth's position in its rotational cycle (either day or year, or both) compared with the stars as opposed to the Sun or Moon. If there's a strong correlation with the Sun then it's coming from the Sun; but if it's a strong correlation with the stars, then it's coming from a fixed point in space outside our solar system, maybe in our galaxy or beyond. If we have enough data we can guess at where (in the 2D plane of the Earth's rotation) in the universe the source is. If there's a strong correlation with a specific source, then it's "isotropic", otherwise (if it seems to be coming from everywhere in the circle of the Earth's rotation) it's "anisotropic".

And Alfvén appears to be fond of the idea that cosmic rays are coming from one specific place in space: he's arguing that even if it looks like cosmic radiation is isotropic, that still doesn't mean it really is, because (an electromagnetic argument) might bend the path of the rays.

Edit: Ok, here's more on that circa 1938 conversation. Arthur Compton, Journal of the Franklin Institute, Volume 227, Issue 5, May 1939, Pages 607-620.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 3239905880 abd https://www.sciencedirect.com/sdfe/pdf/ ... t-page-pdf
TIME VARIATIONS OF COSMIC RAYS.*
* Based upon a paper read at the Chicago Cosmic Ray Symposium, June,I938

BY ARTHUR H COMPTON, University of Chicago.

One of the characteristic features of cosmic rays is their approximate constancy. Day and night, year after year, the rays come flowing into the earth with almost uniform strength. Similarly we find that the cosmic rays are distributed uniformly over the earth, except as their intensity is affected by
the earth's magnetic field. Because of this uniformity, the hypothesis has arisen that the rays come equally from all parts of space. Alternative hypotheses, however, would place the origin of these rays in certain definite locations, such as novae, or in the galactic plane. One of the major reasons
for studying the time variations of cosmic rays is thus to distinguish between such theories regarding their place of origin.

Refined observations show various types of minor time variations of cosmic rays. With the gradual development of instrumental technique, we may suppose that of the recent measurements few are appreciably affected by instrumental error. Much more disturbing in modern work are the statistical fluctuations of the cosmic rays themselves. These arise from the fact that the number of the cosmic rays observable in a short interval is limited, so that in a given time interval more or less cosmic rays than normal may enter the measuring instrument. There are also such phenomena as showers and
bursts of rays giving great effects over short intervals of time, and producing changes of a surprisingly large order of magnitude. By continuing the readings, however, over a sufficiently long period, deviations of this type may be averaged over to such an extent that they do not seriously affect the
data.
And the first page of an article by PMS Blackett (also a gentleman of weird ideas) in Scientific American November, 1938 about the problem of cosmic ray origin.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24979604
The study of cosmic radiation is rather a curious one. It is related ultimately to astronomy as well as to geophysics and to physics. The subject started about 1900 with the discovery by C.T.R. Wilson, and by Elster and Geitel, that the air in a closed vessel had a slight residual conductivity. The apparatus used for these early experiments consisted of an ionization chamber. A simple form of this apparatus consists of a metal box in which is suspended an insulated wire carrying a gold leaf; when charged electrically, the movement of this leaf records the electrical conductivity of the gas in the box. With such a simple apparatus as this it was found that there was a residual conductivity in the air, which could not be explained by the effects of the known radioactivity of the earth's crust, and which was probably due to the presence of some very penetrating radiation. In fact, C.T.R. Wilson himself, in 1901, speculated as to whether this residual ionization might not be due to some radiation coming from sources outside the atmosphere, either electromagnetic radiation, like X rays, or corpuscular rays like cathode rays, but of enormously greater penetrating power. Since that time at least 1000 researches have been made on the subject of cosmic rays and a great many facts have been found out. We know now that this residual ionization is, in fact, due to atomic particles of enormous penetrating power coming into the earth's atmosphere from some sources outside the solar system, but exactly what these particles are, or where they come from, or how they were formed, or when, we still do not know.

Soon after the earliest experiments, ionization chambers were taken to different places on the earth to find out whether this residual ionization varied from place to place. Then a great series of experiments began in which ionization chambers were taken up mountains, in balloons, lowered down to the depths of the sea and carried in airplanes. The crucial experiments, which showed the cosmic nature of the rays, were those of Hess in 1911 and 1912, who took ionization chambers to a height of 5000 meters in balloons. Hess found that the ionization due to the rays was larger at a great height than at sea level. This showed conclusively that the rays causing the ionization must have come downward from the top of the atmosphere, and not upward from the earth; for if they had come upward from the earth, they would decrease in intensity by absorption as one went up. Hess also found that the rays were equally intense both during the day and at night, and also during an eclipse of the sun...
Very frustrating that all of this old stuff is still paywalled. The electrical nature of the early detectors gives a lot of background to Townsend Brown's "electrometer" readings. A big question for him would have been, were his detectors picking up the ordinary kind of cosmic rays, or something else? And were cosmic rays truly "cosmic", ie from the universe itself, perhaps giving some hint into spacetime and gravity - or just (as we now figure, decades later) random not-particularly-meaningful junk spat out by supernovae?

This early-20th-century public fascination with cosmic rays (almost the "dark matter" of the period, I think) also suggests a lot about why the Theosophical Society around the same time fixated on the name of "Rays" to describe its concept of what in earlier ages were called the "Seven Spirits of God". (And that appear in Vedic, Persian and Jewish thought). An entirely different idea, from entirely different sources - but tantalisingly similar on some levels, and easy to package in the name of the scientific mystery of the day.

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Re: Correction: GLenn Martin was NOT chasing anti-gravity as early as 1951

Post by Paul Schatzkin »

Urgh.

I see you guys have been pretty busy here and here I've been thinking the forums have been kinda dead.

Turns out anything but. Jan, the work you do never ceases to amaze.

What I've just figured out is that I can subscribe to all the FORUMS - not just those threads that I've contributed to - by scrolling to the bottom of each one and clicking "Subscribe forum"

The link is kinda counter-intuitive - at first it shows the box checked, but you're not really subscribed until you do click on it, and then it becomes UNchecked - you but, I surmise, then you are subscribed.

All the messages from these fora still go into one of my Junk folders, though I have instructed my email client several times to treat these messages as "VIP" or whatever takes to put them in my actual inbox. As it is, I check my junk folders at least once a day.

Also and FWIW, I've been focused on a couple of other initiatives over the past couple of months. For starters, I have finally created a 501c3 non-profit The Waterstar Foundation.

The ostensible purpose for forming the non-profit was to have a vehicle that could continue to host fusor.net well past my own life expectancy. Now that that is done, though, there is really no limit to what the Foundation can do.

The first sidebar initiative that I have also been working on is the Video Centennial in 2027. There is also some very preliminary discussion about acquiring - or at least doing something with - the building where video arrived on the planet in 1927 at 202 Green Street in San Francisco.

So that's why I've been quiet, but now that I see that the discussion continues without me I have subscribed to all the fora so that I'll know when something new gets posted.

Then all I have to figure out is this blasted junk mailbox prob.

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Re: Correction: GLenn Martin was NOT chasing anti-gravity as early as 1951

Post by Jan Lundquist »

Paul, your latest ventures sound both challenging and fun. We would definitely make a trip to SF for a Video exhibit! Keep us posted.

My way of keeping up is to look at the Icon to the left of a topic line. Red tells me something in that topic is unread.

Nate, from your link above.
Much more disturbing in modern work are the statistical fluctuations of the cosmic rays themselves. These arise from the fact that the number of the cosmic rays observable in a short interval is limited, so that in a given time interval more or less cosmic rays than normal may enter the measuring instrument. There are also such phenomena as showers and bursts of rays giving great effects over short intervals of time, and producing changes of a surprisingly large order of magnitude.
The effects come from the interaction in a field or at some sort of boundary. But why does he says that the "modern work in statistical flucutaions " is disturbing?

I am not sure what he means by this line, either. Is he complaining that fluctuations are statistically predictable over a measured cycle of time, or that, given a sufficient length of time, anomalous results are erased by the average?.
By continuing the readings, however, over a sufficiently long period, deviations of this type may be averaged over to such an extent that they do not seriously affect the data.
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Re: Correction: GLenn Martin was NOT chasing anti-gravity as early as 1951

Post by natecull »

Paul, your foundation and other work definitely sounds intriguing!

Jan, on Arthur Compton's 1938 lecture:
But why does he says that the "modern work in statistical flucutaions " is disturbing?
By "disturbing" I think Compton just meant "unexpected, not predicted by theory". And by "in modern work", I think he meant that the quality of cosmic ray detectors was improving in the 1930s enough to show these fluctuations. The expectation at that time was that matter was spread out pretty evenly throughout the universe, and therefore the readings should have been fairly smooth. Instead, as detectors improved, the readings showed random bursts uncorrelated with obvious sky events. I think that cosmic ray detections even today remain fairly bursty, not smooth, and that's one piece of evidence that has led to the speculation that they come from supernovas and other rare events.

I believe Townsend's electrical detectors, including his simple extremely low voltage rocks in the 1970s, also showed a similar burstiness in their distribution. Not sure whether or not Townsend ever managed to correlate his with either cosmic ray detections or the radio astronomy that, eg, Karl Jansky began (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Guthe_Jansky).

Karl Jansky tragically died young (44) in 1950, and the field of radio telescopy went on without him - and without Townsend's input. However, his brother's name - Cyril Jansky, of Jansky and Bailey - appears as a consultant in one of the Winterhaven documents. Both Janskys were radio pioneers in their own right. That makes me wonder just what connection Townsend and the two Janskys might have had with the problem of "Extraterrestrial Radio Sources", and what conversations they might have had.

Confirming the relationship between Karl and Cyril Jansky, which I think only realised now (the "Jansky and Bailey" mention in Winterhaven appears once, but with no elaboration, in Defying Gravity; I wrote something about Karl on Linda's forum around 2015 but forget if I drew the link at that time between the two brothers):

https://www.aps.org/archives/publicatio ... istory.cfm
Born in 1905, Jansky was one of six children. His father, Cyril, an electrical engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin, instilled a strong love of physics in his three sons. Karl’s older brother, Cyril Jansky Jr., insisted that his younger sibling “was no bookworm,” citing his skill at tennis and hockey, and later status as a Monmouth County table tennis champion in New Jersey, as evidence.

Karl Jansky earned his degree in physics from the University of Wisconsin, and spent an extra year as a graduate student, although he never completed his thesis. Instead, he joined the research staff of Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1928. He had been diagnosed with chronic kidney disease in college, so Bell Labs was initially reluctant to hire him, but relented when big brother Cyril — an electrical engineer, like his father, and a former Bell Labs staff member who helped build some of the earliest radio transmitters in the U.S. — interceded on his behalf.

Jansky’s first assignment was to study intermittent static sources that might be interfering with radio waves used for transatlantic telephone transmissions. It was a challenging assignment; Jansky had to design and build special instruments for that purpose, most notably a large directional antenna system mounted on a motor-driven turntable that rotated through 360° about a central vertical axis, riding on a circular track on the wheels of a Model-T Ford. It was dubbed “Jansky’s merry-go-round.”

Once he analyzed all that data — collected over many tedious months — Jansky identified three basic types of static: local thunderstorms, distant thunderstorms, and a third he described as being “composed of very steady hiss static the origin of which is not yet known.” His careful wording came at the advice of his supervisor, who cautioned him against making over-bold claims, lest his finding not hold up to further investigation. But Jansky suspected that the signal originated in the center of the Milky Way galaxy, making it the first known detection of extraterrestrial radio signals.
The result was not one, but three published papers, including “Electrical disturbances apparently of extraterrestrial origin,” which he presented at a meeting of the International Scientific Radio Union in April 1933. This, in turn, led to a high-profile news story in The New York Times on May 5, 1933, trumpeting his discovery, and the University of Wisconsin finally awarded him his master’s degree based on the three papers. Jansky was keen to continue investigating these mysterious cosmic signals and wanted to build a 30-meter dish antenna for that purpose. But Bell Labs was more interested in applied research at the time — the height of the Great Depression. Since Jansky’s work showed the hissing static should not be problematic for transatlantic communications, they judged the project complete. Jansky was assigned to other projects. He remained at Bell Labs for the rest of his career, toiling in relative obscurity despite pioneering a new field of science, although he was elected as a fellow of the Institute of Radio Engineers in 1948.
Townsend definitely would have known about this 1933 event, being plugged in as he was to the radio world.

Cyril: https://ethw.org/Cyril_M._Jansky,_Jr.
Cyril Moreau Jansky, Jr. was born in Michigan on 28 June 1895. He moved frequently in his youth as his professor father traveled from one job to another. He did his undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Wisconsin, where his father had settled as a professor of electrical engineering. He earned his B.A. in physics in 1917 and a master’s degree in 1919. While a student, Jansky helped start radio station 9XM. He began teaching in 1920 at the University of Minnesota.

Jansky played a critical role in shaping the nation’s use of radio. From 1922 to 1925, he was a member of four conferences that helped establish government radio regulation and laid the groundwork for the 1927 Radio Act. Jansky also helped establish the National Association of Broadcasters. In 1930, he and Stuart Bailey, a former student, formed Jansky and Bailey Company which helped further radio technology and utility. The firm built- and then operated—W3XO, the first FM radio station in Washington and only third in the U.S. Jansky’s radio expertise was well recognized. During World War II, Jansky traveled to Britain to help find ways that radio technology could overcome operational challenges.

After the war, Jansky became intrigued by maritime communication. He helped develop ways to use radio for ship navigation in a project on the Great Lakes. This work would lead to international invitation as others became interested in seeing how radio could be better used in radio communication and navigation.

Jansky retired from Atlantic Research Corporation, which had merged with his company, in 1965. He was given an honorary doctorate from the University of Wisconsin in 1970. He was IRE president in 1934. Jansky was married to Marguerite Summis and had two children. He died in 1975.
Radio astronomy as it developed after Karl doesn't seem to have been particularly anomalous (apart from the recurring SETI focus, which seems to not get much dish time compared to cosmology and military over-the-horizon radar). One wonders what ongoing conversations Townsend might have had with Cyril after the Winterhaven years, though.

Nate
Going on a journey, somewhere far out east
We'll find the time to show you, wonders never cease
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