The Thomas Townsend Brown Family Website

"Another Step Toward Anti-Gravity"
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by Gaston Burridge

American Mercury
June, 1958

One of the greatest energies on earth - even greater in the universe - is the Force of gravitation. As a power potential, it probably outstrips atomic energy many times, with no deadly gamma rays as its aftermath.

The force of gravity is one of the great mysteries confronting mankind today. If we Americans can straighten out the question mark behind this, until now mysterious force, and make it into an exclamation point, we need not care who will be first to reach the moon.

Sometime before 1923, Dr. Paul Alfred Biefield, Physics and Astronomy at Denison University, Granville, Ohio, and a former classmate of Albert Einstein, in Switzerland, noticed a phenomenon relative to the movement in an electrical condenser when charged. This observation was the actual birth of the so-called Biefield-Brown Effect (Ed. note: in some accounts, such as this, Biefield is credited with the initial discovery, even though Townsend Brown had been studying the effect for many years prior to meeting Biefield). The successful application of this Effect by Thomas Townsend brown during the last 30 years, appears now to have been accomplished; our first anti-gravity device seems within our grasp.

Townsend Brown, however, has been something of a scientific outcast in the United States, because his views have been at odds with orthodox "opinion." His recent and essential research has been conducted in France, under French Government sponsorship. Realizing how riddled France is with Communists, it may well be that the United States no longer possesses all the known pieces of this scientific puzzle.

Townsend Brown was a student at Denison University in the early 1920's. A quiet, retiring young man then - as he is a reticent, middle-aged scholar, today - he has always had a great interest in the strange, unexplained mysteries of the electrical field, but his keenest interest attached itself early to the strangest of electrical phenomena, the movement which Dr. Biefield had noted in electrical condensers when charged.

To capture the essentials of this phenomenon and to apply this movement toward an anti-gravity device became a passion in Brown's life, an unquenchable fire which has consumed his own considerable private fortune and most of his waking hours. If ever a man willed the application of an idea into reality it is Townsend Brown. He now has a new and very capable sponsor, one who long has been interested in the force of gravity.

As far as science has yet determined, everything in our universe is motivated by only three energies: electricity, magnetism and gravitation. From the greatest spiral star cluster down through the smallest atom known - hydrogen and its parts - only these three forces are active. Whether they are three distinct and separate energies, or separate phases of one force which we have not yet been able to recognize, appears to be a point of endless argument between physicists and metaphysicists. Nobody knows, yet.

Taken by itself, not one of the three forces amounts to much. A combination of electricity and magnetism, however, has boosted man to his present high standard of living. The potential of thiscombination is known to every high school physics student, and we are far from having researched its ultimate usefulness.

While the kinship of electricity and magnetism has been discovered and has become very applicable, as similar association between electricity and gravitation has remained most theoretical. American scientists do (unenthusiastically) acknowledge a very loose coupling effect between these two forces, but most of them deny that this coupling effect is at all applicable. This is where Mr. Brown and orthodox science part company, he believes the coupling force is strong and that it is applicable.

The connection between magnetism and gravitation remains still more nebulous. However, if there is a relationship between electricity and magnetism, and between electricity and gravitation, as Mr. Brown appears to have proven, then it would seem that an association between magnetism and gravitation also exists.

Mr. Brown maintains that, through the Biefield-Brown Effect, a tie between electricity and gravitation has been established, brought about and held by the simple means of an electrical means of an electrical condenser.

An electrical condenser is a device which will absorb electrical energy as an "elastic stress." In simplest form it can be two metal plates. Placed between them is a piece of material through which an electric current cannot ordinarily pass. This material, of such nature as to be able to absorb and hold electrical energy as an elastic stress, is known as a dielectric.

There are many different types of dielectrics - glass, hard and soft rubber, air, ceramics, paper, Bakelite and various other plastics, each possessing its own special advantage in a particular use.

Some dielectrics are capable of absorbing huge quantities of electrical energy if fed them slowly at low potentials. Others, like lead-free glass, can be charged and discharged hundreds of thousands of times a second at extremely high potentials!

How does an electrical condenser operate? Let us assume that we have a piece of sponge rubber four by six inches, two inches thick. It is the dielectric. We place this between our two hands (which are the condenser plates) and press - which is the charging potential or voltage. The plates (our hands) distribute this energy evenly over the rubber, forcing energy into a smaller space, where it remains until our arms cease to act; then the rubber springs back into its original shape. When the rubber is compressed it is similar to the condenser being charged. It is discharged when it "jumps" back into its original shape.

The Biefield-Brown Effect proves that an electrical condenser will move toward its positive pole, and remain so positioned until discharged; that this movement will occur, regardless of which plate of the condenser is made the positive pole, or which side of the dielectric receives the positive charge.

The movement does not nullify the scientific "law" that every action carries within it an equal reaction. A reaction is present, but, in the case of gravitation itself, the reaction is not obvious.

Discoid airfoils 24 inches in diameter, designed and built by Brown, have attained a speed of 17 feet per second, or about 11.8 miles per hour, in the Brown laboratories. These discs were a variation of the simple two-plate condenser, charges with 50 kilovolts, or about fifty thousand volts, of direct electrical current. Tethered to a mast, they spun in a circular 20 feet in diameter. The continuous energy input to keep them flying is reported to have been only 50 watts, or that required to light a small bulb.

Another set of experimental discs three feet in diameter, also tethered to a central pole, ran a 50 foot diameter course. These discs were placed under 50 kilovolts also, and their speeds were reported to be so impressive as to be highly classified.

There is a slight hum emanating from the discs as they fly. In the dark they glow with a weird lavender light. They whirl in free flight, their power being supplied to them through wires from the central mast.

Many scientists and engineers have witnessed these flying discs. Their opinion has been, generally, that the motive force propelling them was one which is often called "electric wind." Few, if any, up to now, have believed the Brown discs were propelled by the new principle Biefield or Brown had discovered.

Though brown did not agree, there was little he could do until he went to France. There he "sailed" some of his discs in a high vacuum with singular success. Not only did the discs fly more efficiently, but as there was no air present there could be no "electric wind."

The first empirical experiments which led to the present scientific flowering of the Biefield-Brown Effect are these: suspend a simple, two-plate electrical condenser by a cord to allow as complete freedom of movement in all directions as possible - except of course, downward. When this condenser is charged with the proper amount and pressure of direct electrical current, it will swing from its vertical, uncharged position, to an angular one and remain there, quite evidently "defying gravity." The new position is always toward the positive pole of the condenser.

When this condenser is discharged, and the positive and negative wires reversed relative to their former positions - and the condenser recharged - the entire condenser swings in the opposite direction from the one assumed during the first charge. In both cases the condenser maintains its angular position as long as the condenser is kept charged. This angular movement is equal in both directions, regardless of which side of the dielectric is positively charged.

By proper electrical switching arrangements, quickly changing the sides of the dielectric upon which the positive charge acts, it can be seen that a swinging motion, similar to that of pendulum, can be obtained. Further, it will be noted that if a proper series of condensers is attached to, and placed around, a movable axis - and the series of condensers is properly and rhythmically charged and discharged - a rotary motion of the axis will result.

Another experiment is by balancing a simple, two-plate condenser at one end of a beam. Place enough dead weight at the other end of the beam to balance and maintain the bar in a horizontal position, if suspended at its center. Now, charge the condenser. If the position of the positive pole faces "up" or toward the sky, the dead weight at the opposite end of the bar will drop downward. This indicates that the condenser has lost some of its "weight" on being charged.

If the positive pole of the condenser is placed on the bottom or facing downward, and charged, the condenser will appear to have gained weight and will raise the dead weight on the opposite end of the beam.

These two positions will be maintained as long as the condenser is charged, the original balance between them returning when the condenser is discharged. This is the application of the Biefield-Brown Effect which is of the most importance antigravitationally.

It would appear, therefore, that a definite relationship between electricity and gravitation exists; that this relation is as potent as the one long established between electricity and magnetism, and that it possesses definite scientific future applicability, perhaps when applied practically in aeronautic and astronautic space flight.

At present, detailed answers cannot be presented - for several reasons. Not all answers are yet known. Many of the known answers must await the granting of some 19 patent applications, now before the U.S. Patent Office.

It seems most probable, however, that a space vehicle using the Biefield-Brown Effect will be discoid, the shape which appears most efficient. The discoid probably will be surrounded by a flat rim, about one quarter as wide as the diameter of the disc, making the vehicle look as if a ladder had been bent completely around it at the edge of the disc. The forward and rear portions of this "ladder rim" will be left open - with just the "ladder rungs" or spokes connecting the outer and inner rims. The side portions will be closed in solid.

The leading and trailing edges of this ladder rim will determine the direction of the disc's flight, the spokes or ladder rungs for the most part, acting as the condenser plates, the air between them being the dielectric. When charged, these condensers produce a propulsive force, the front being positive, the rear, negative.

On reaching full charge, a condenser normally loses its propulsive force, but in this configuration the air between the spokes is also being charged; so, in principle, the charging force can be prolonged indefinitely, because it does not ever come into fulfillment while forward motion is desired. As the vehicle moves ahead, the charged air is left behind and the disc moves into new, uncharged air. Thus, the propulsion is continuous. Thus, also, we may create, someday, actual space "flying saucers."

Man's present use of power in jet and rocket propelled vehicles is called by some scientists a "sledge and hammer" approach to high-speed, high-altitude flight. In the turbo-jet aircraft, man has increased vehicle thrust some 20 times. But he has achieved only a little more than twice the speed of the original vehicles. Is brute rocket force the best way to reach the stars? Scientist in France now doubt it.

The anti-gravity and propulsion properties of the Biefield-Brown Effect should not be thought of as "perpetual motion." But as far as is known in our universe, nothing ever is totally gained or lost, just used while passing from a higher differential to a lower. Though in different forms, perhaps all that ever was, still is - countless transitions to the contrary!

The force of gravitation is part of and a force in the universe. It exists and operates under scientific laws as rigid and precise as those governing electricity and magnetism. Why should we believe that gravitational force is beyond man's scientific control?

If man at last, successfully opens this puzzle box, all other power for propulsion may fade into horse and buggy history. We shall have passed through jet and rocket age into America's Force of Gravity Era. We shall have achieved, at last, ultimate power.