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NICK COOK 23
the following year switched to Ohio's Denison University where he
came under the tutelage of physicist and astronomer Dr. Paul Alfred
Biefeld, a former classmate of Einstein's in Switzerland. In earlier experimentation,
Brown had made the startling discovery that a Coolidge
X-ray tube exhibited thrust when charged to high voltage. It took Brown
a while to realize that the motion was not caused by the X rays themselves,
but by the electricity coursing through the tube. Brown went on
to develop a device he called the "Gravitor," an electrical condenser
sealed in a Bakelite case, that would exhibit a one percent weight gain or
a one percent weight loss when connected to a 100-kilovolt power supply.
In 1929, Brown wrote up his discoveries in a paper entitled How I Control
Gravitation and speculated as to how his invention might one day be used:
"The Gravitor, in all reality, is a very efficient motor. Unlike other
forms of motor, it does not in any way involve the principles of electromagnetism,
but instead it utilizes the principles of electro-gravitation.
"A simple gravitor has no moving parts, but is apparently capable of
moving itself from within itself. It is highly efficient for the reason that it
uses no gears, shafts, propellers or wheels in creating its motive power. It
has no internal mechanical resistance and no observable rise in temperature.
Contrary to the common belief that gravitational motors must
necessarily be vertical-acting, the gravitor, it is found, acts equally well in
every conceivable direction."
This ability to manipulate the force in all axes opened up the
Gravitor's potential to aviation. Brown's research led him to the development
of a shape that was the most efficient in the production of electrogravitational
lift: that of a perfect disc or saucer.
The way he proposed to control the craft was by dividing the disc into
segments, each of which could be selectively charged. By moving the
charge around the rim of the saucer, it would, Brown said, be possible to
make it move in any direction.
I had to remind myself that this was the 1920s.
The aviation industry was still absorbing the technical lessons of the
First World War, the biplane was king and fighters, typified by the
Boeing Model ISA, a leading U.S. design of the mid-1920s, were
struggling to attain top speeds of 160 mph.
But although Brown's principles seemed to have been confirmed by
observation—something, after all, was causing his condenser plates to
move, however much the naysayers denigrated the possibility that it was
due to an electrogravitic reaction—he had no way of generating and
maintaining an electrical charge that would keep a small model craft in
the air, let alone to maneuver it. This force was calculated to be in the