Thomas Townsend Brown – Artigo WikipeiA

Por dois anos, em 1922 e 1923, Brown frequentou a Doane Academy, uma escola preparatória associada à Denison University de Granville, Ohio, graduando-se em junho de 1923. No outono de 1923, ele entrou no Instituto de Tecnologia da Califórnia. Brown lutou com o currículo exigido de um aluno do primeiro ^{ano e,} para ajudar Thomas em seu trabalho escolar, seus pais montaram um laboratório particular totalmente provisionado na casa da família em Pasadena, Califórnia. Ele demonstrou suas idéias sobre eletricidade e gravidade para convidados como o físico e ganhador do Prêmio Nobel, Robert A. Millikan. Millikan disse ao aluno do primeiro ano que suas ideias eram impossíveis e o aconselhou a concluir sua educação universitária antes de tentar desenvolver tais teorias. Brown deixou a Caltech após seu primeiro ano. Em 1924, ele frequentou a Denison University, mas saiu de lá depois de um ano.

Em setembro de 1928, Brown casou-se com Josephine Beale, filha do residente de Zanesville, Ohio, Clifford Beale.

Em 1930, Brown se alistou na Marinha dos Estados Unidos como aprendiz de marinheiro. Depois de completar o treinamento básico, com base em sua experiência em pesquisa elétrica experimental, ele foi ordenado a se apresentar ao serviço no Laboratório de Pesquisa Naval dos Estados Unidos em 16 de março de 1931. Ele desempenhou os papéis duplos de marinheiro comum e assistente de pesquisa no submarino da Marinha S-48 na expedição de gravidade da Marinha-Princeton de 1932 às Índias Ocidentais. Em 1933, ele foi designado para o iate Caroline (emprestado ao Smithsonian Institution para trabalho científico por Eldridge R. Johnson) para operar um dispositivo de som sônico durante a Expedição Johnson-Smithsonian Deep Sea à Fossa de Porto Rico em 1933. ^[3] [4] Brown foi designado do Laboratório de Pesquisa Naval com as funções primárias de sonar e operador de rádio e teve pouco envolvimento no trabalho científico. ^{[ citação necessária ]} Em 1933, Brown perdeu o emprego no Laboratório de Pesquisa Naval devido aos cortes orçamentários da era da Depressão, então ele se juntou à Reserva Naval dos EUA.

Durante a década de 1930, Brown trabalhou como engenheiro de solo para a Federal Emergency Relief Administration e depois como administrador do Ohio Civilian Conservation Corps. Brown e Josephine se divorciaram brevemente em 1937, casando-se novamente em setembro de 1940. Também em 1937, Brown se alistou novamente na Marinha dos EUA.

Em 1938, Brown foi promovido a tenente; em 1939, ele foi designado por alguns meses como engenheiro de materiais para os barcos voadores da Marinha construídos na Glenn L. Martin Company em Maryland. Ele esteve envolvido em pesquisa e desenvolvimento de varredura de minas magnéticas e acústicas sob o Bureau of Ships em Washington, D.C., de outubro de 1940 a março de 1941. Após o ataque a Pearl Harbor em 1941, ele foi transferido para a Atlantic Fleet Radar School em Norfolk, Virgínia, em maio de 1942. Em outubro de 1942, Brown foi dispensado do serviço da Marinha com Brown solicitando a renúncia “para o bem do serviço naval para escapar do julgamento pela Corte Marcial Geral” e com seu exame oficial de dispensa listando “nenhum comentário” quanto aos motivos. ^[5] Depois de 1944, Brown trabalhou como consultor de radar para a Lockheed-Vega Aircraft Corporation. ^[5]

Depois de deixar a Lockheed, Brown mudou-se para o Havaí, onde foi temporariamente consultor do Pearl Harbor Navy Yard devido ao interesse do Comandante-em-Chefe da Frota do Pacífico dos EUA, almirante Arthur W. Radford, nas idéias de Brown sobre dispositivos Gravitor. No entanto, o trabalho foi visto mais como uma curiosidade do que qualquer dispositivo viável. Em 1952, Brown mudou-se para Cleveland, na esperança de vender seu dispositivo Gravitor para o estabelecimento militar, mas pouco interesse havia nele. Em 1955, Brown foi para a Inglaterra e depois para a França. Em testes de pesquisa para a Société nationale des constructions aéronautiques du Sud-Ouest (SNCASO), Brown demonstrou o que ele pensava ser um efeito antigravidade no vácuo com seu dispositivo. O financiamento foi cortado quando o SNCASO foi fundido com o SNCASE, forçando Brown a retornar aos Estados Unidos em 1956.

Brown became involved in the subject of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and, in 1956, helped found the National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), although he was forced out as director in 1957 with allegations that Brown was using funds to further anti-gravity research.^{[citation needed]}

In 1958, Brown worked as a research and development consultant for Agnew Bahnson’s Whitehall Rand Project, an anti-gravity venture at the Bahnson Company of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. That same year, Brown set up an anti-gravity corporation, Rand International Limited. He filed several patents, but his ideas were met with little success. In the early 1960s, he worked as a physicist for Electrokinetics Inc., of Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. He then went into semi-retirement, living in California. Brown died on October 27, 1985.^[6]

In 1921, while experimenting in the lab his parents had set up for him while he was still in high school, Brown discovered an unusual effect while experimenting with a Coolidge tube (hot cathode tube), a type of X-ray vacuum tube with two asymmetrical electrodes. Placing it on a balance scale with the tube’s positive electrode facing up, the tube’s mass seemed to decrease when the power was on. When the tube’s electrode was facing down, the tube’s mass seemed to increase.^[7] Brown was convinced that he had managed to influence gravity electrically. At Caltech in 1923, Brown tried to convince his instructors about his theories by inviting them to his home laboratory, but they showed little interest. He also invited the press, and the May 26, 1924 edition Los Angeles Evening Express ran a story on Brown titled “Claims Gravity is a Push, not a Pull.”^[8] After quitting Caltech, Brown studied one year at Denison University, where he claimed that he did a series of experiments with professor of astronomy Paul Alfred Biefeld although the present day Denison University claims they have no record of such experiments being carried out, or of any association between Brown and Biefeld.^[9]

Working in his home lab, Brown developed an electrical device he called a “gravitor” or “gravitator”, consisting of a block of insulating or dielectric material with electrodes at either end. He received a British patent for it in November 1928. In demonstrations, Brown would mount the unit as a pendulum and apply electrical power, causing the unit to move in one direction. In 1929, Brown published How I Control Gravitation in Science and Invention, claiming these devices produced a mysterious force that interacted with the pull of gravity.^[10] He envisioned a future where, if his device could be scaled up, “Multi-impulse gravitators weighing hundreds of tons may propel the ocean liners of the future” or even “fantastic ‘space cars'” to Mars.^[11]

Brown spent the rest of his life working in his spare time and sometimes on funded projects, trying to prove his ideas on electricity’s effect on gravity. He proposed his gravitator as propulsion to General Motors executives in 1930 and as ship propulsion while he was at the Naval Research Laboratory in 1932. After World War II, Brown sought to develop and sell his inventions as a means of propulsion for aircraft and spacecraft. At some point, the phenomenon was given the name “Electrogravitics” based on his belief this was an electricity/gravity phenomenon.^[12] At some point, it also gained the moniker “Biefeld–Brown effect“, probably coined by Brown to claim Biefeld as his mentor and co-experimenter. ^[13][14]

Brown refined his invention over the years and eventually devised designs consisting of metal plates or disks charged with 25,000 to 200,000 volts that would produce a propulsive force, which he continued to claim was an anti-gravity force.

Brown demonstrated a working apparatus to an audience of scientists and military officials in the US, England, and France. Research in the phenomenon was popular in the mid-1950s, at one point the Glenn L. Martin Company placed advertisements looking for scientists who were “interested in gravity”, but rapidly declined in popularity thereafter (see United States gravity control propulsion research).

A physicist invited to observe Brown’s disk device in the early 1950s noted during the demonstration that its motivation force was the well-known phenomenon of “electric wind” and not anti-gravity, saying, “I’m afraid these gentlemen played hooky from their high school physics classes….”^[15] Scientists who have since studied Brown’s devices have not found any anti-gravity effect, and have attributed the noticed motive force to the more well-understood phenomenon of ionic drift or “ion wind” from the air particles, some of which remained even when Brown put his device inside a vacuum chamber.^[16] More recent studies at NASA, held at high voltages and proper vacuum conditions, showed no generated force.^[11]

In 1979, the author Charles Berlitz and ufologist William L. Moore published The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility, which purported to be a factual account about the Philadelphia Experiment where a United States Navy experiment accidentally teleported the warship USS Eldridge. Chapter 10 of the book was titled “The Force Fields of Townsend Brown”, a retelling of Brown’s early work, claiming he was involved in the experiment and implying Brown’s electrogravitics was the propulsion used by UFOs. Electrogravitics is also popular with other conspiracy theorists with claims that it is powering the B-2 Stealth Bomber and UFOs and that it may have become a classified subject by 1957.^[11] There are further claims that it can be used to generate “free energy“.^[17]

Brown’s research and the “Biefeld–Brown effect” have since become popular pursuits around the world. Amateur experimenters replicate his early experiments in the form of “ionic propulsion lifters” powered by high voltage.

Sources for biography

• Farrell, Joseph P., “Covert Wars and the Clash of Civilizations” c.2013, Adventures Unlimited Press, Kempton, Illinois, Chapter 9, pages 221-245 ISBN 978-1-939149-04-6
• Paul Schatzkin, The Man Who Mastered Gravity www.ttbrown.com
• Len Kasten, The Secret History of Extraterrestrials: Advanced Technology and the Coming New Race, Inner Traditions / Bear & Co. – 2011, pages 143-147
• William L. Moore, “The Wizard of Electro-gravity” The man who discovered how UFOs are powered, Saga UFO Report, May 1978

Patentes

• GB300311 — Um método e um aparelho ou máquina para produzir força ou movimento (aceito em 15/11/1928)
• US 1.974.483 – Motor eletrostático (25/09/1934)
• US 2.949.550 – Aparelho eletrocinético (1960-08-16)
• US 3,018,394 — Transdutor eletrocinético (1962-01-23)
• US 3,022,430 — Gerador eletrocinético (20/02/1962)
• US 3,187,206 — Aparelhos eletromagnéticos (01/06/1965)
• US 3,196,296 — Gerador elétrico (20/07/1965)