Posted by Michael (199.60.107.1) on September 27, 2003 at 17:40:45:
copied again from same board.
The Incredible Genius
Of Eric Laithwaite
©2003 Richard Milton
www.alternativescience.com
9-22-3
The Royal Institution is Not Amused
Few people visit the Royal Institution, in London's Albemarle
Street, for amusement. There are not many laughs at Britain's second oldest
scientific institution, founded in 1799, where Sir Humphry Davy demonstrated
his discovery of the elements sodium and potassium and where Michael Faraday
discovered electromagnetic induction. It's true there have been some lighter
moments in the famous circular lecture theatre, especially since Sir William
Bragg introduced Christmas Lectures for Children in the 1920s. But, on the
whole, this is stuffed shirt territory.
One night in 1973 the stuffed shirts got a shock from which they
have still not recovered. It was an experience at which, like Queen
Victoria, they were not amused. Indeed it was so unamusing for them that it
is the only occasion in the Royal Institution's two hundred year history
that it has failed to publish a proceedings of a major lecture, or 'evening
discourse'. The cause of this unique case of scientific censorship was the
maverick professor of electrical engineering of Imperial College, London,
Eric Laithwaite.
Laithwaite was no stranger to controversy even before his shadow
fell across so distinguished an institutional threshold. In the 1960s,
Laithwaite invented the linear electric motor, a device that can power a
passenger train. In the 1970s, he and his colleagues combined the linear
motor with the latest hovercraft technology to create a British experimental
high speed train. This was a highly novel, but perfectly orthodox
technology.
The advantages of such a tracked hovercraft are obvious to anyone
who sees a hover-rail train running along,suspended in the air above the
track -- it is quiet, has no moving parts to wear out and is practically
maintenance-free. The significance of this last point quickly becomes clear
when you learn that more than 80 per cent of the annual running costs of any
railway system is spent on maintenance of track and rolling stock because of
daily wear. The British government at first invested in the development of
his device but later, after a series of budget cuts, pulled out pleading the
need for economy. Laithwaite, a blunt-speaking Lancashire man who did not
shrink from speaking unpopular truths, told the Government and its
scientific bureaucrats the mistake they were making in no uncertain terms,
but its decision to cancel was unchanged.
Laithwaite refused to be beaten and took his invention one step
further. He designed an even better kind of hover train -- one in which his
linear motor was levitated by electromagnetism giving a rapid transit system
that not only provides quiet, efficient magnetic suspension over a
maintenance-free track, but which generates the electricity to power the
magnetic lift of the track from the movement of the train.
Speaking in the early 1970s, Laithwaite said of his new 'Maglev'
system, 'We've designed a motor to propel [the train] that gives you the
lift and guidance for nothing -- literally for nothing: for no additional
equipment and no additional power input. This is beyond my wildest dreams --
that I should ever see that sort of thing.'
Laithwaite's Maglev design was not quite perpetual motion, but
certainly sounded enough like something-for-nothing to make the scientific
establishment turn its nose up in suspicion. But this project, too, was
cancelled by the government and further development was halted. Today,
Maglev trains are being built in Germany and Japan but Britain continues to
spend 80 per cent of its railway budget on maintenance of conventional
transport systems -- several hundred millions every year.
With the Maglev project cancelled, the technology Laithwaite had
devoted the previous twenty years to developing was put in mothballs. The
object
side to side. The
wooden box moved along the bench top on its wheels although there was no
drive to the wheels and no external thrust of any kind -- something that
shouldn't happen according to the laws of physics.
'When Alex switched his machine on,' recalled Laithwaite, 'it was
quite disturbing to one's upbringing. The gyroscope appeared to be producing
a force without a reaction. I thought I'd seen something that was
impossible.'
'Like everyone else I was brought up on Newton's laws of motion, and
the third law says that for every action there's an equal and opposite
reaction, therefore you cannot propel a body outside its own dimensions.
This thing apparently did.'
Laithwaite started some gyroscope experiments of his own, making
large spinning tops with most of the mass in the rim of the wheel, and he
found that, 'these very definitely did something that seemed impossible.'
It was at this critical point in his career that he was invited by
Sir George Porter, president of the august Royal Institution, to deliver a
Friday Evening Discourse.
In retrospect it might seem to be rather risky for Sir George to
have invited a blunt-speaking and controversial figure to address the
Institution. But, until then, Laithwaite's clashes with the government and
scientific bureaucrats over the development of his Maglev train had been a
conflict over money and over innovation: not over scientific principles. He
had fought the same kind of battle as most senior scientists in Britain for
scarce resources. He may have been the sort of outspoken individualist who
finds himself in the headlines, but he was still a distinguished
professional scientist, still a member of the club.
It was against this background that the Royal Institution invited
him to deliver the lecture. But the Friday Evening Discourse is no ordinary
lecture. It is a black tie affair, preceded by dinner amidst the polished
silver and mahogany of the Institution's elegant Georgian dining room, under
the intimidating gaze of portraits of the giants of science from the
eighteenth and nineteenth century, staring down from the panelled walls.
When you are invited to be thus feted by your fellow members of the
Royal Institution and to deliver a Discourse from the spot where Faraday and
Davy stood, it is usually the prelude to collecting the rewards of a
lifetime of distinguished public service: Fellowship of the Royal Society;
Gold Medals; perhaps even a Knighthood. In keeping with such a conservative
occasion, those invited to speak generally choose some worthy topic on which
to discourse -- the future of science, perhaps, or the glorious achievements
of the past.
But Laithwaite chose not to discourse on some worthy, painless topic
but instead to demonstrate to the assembled bigwigs that Newton's laws of
motion -- the very cornerstone of physics and the primary article of faith
of all the distinguished names gathered in that room -- were in doubt.
Standing in the circular well of the Institution's lecture theatre,
Laithwaite showed his audience a large gyroscope he had constructed -- an
apparatus resembling a motorcycle wheel on the end of a three foot pole
(which, is precisely what it was). The wheel could be spun up to high speed
on a low-friction bearing driven by a small but powerful electrical motor.
Laithwaite first demonstrated that the apparatus was very heavy --
in fact it weighed more than 50 pounds. It took all his strength and both
hands to raise the pole with its wheel much above waist level. When he
started to rotate the wheel at high speed, however, the apparatus suddenly
became so light that he could raise it easily over his head with just one
hand and with no obvious sign of effort.
What on earth was going on? Heavy objects cannot suddenly become
lighter just because they are rotating, can they? Such a mass can only be
propelled aloft if it is subjected to an external force or if it expels
mass, in
Institution lecture all hell broke loose, primarily
as a result of an article in the New Scientist, followed up by articles in
the daily press with headlines such as "Laithwaite defies Newton". The press
is always excited by the possibility of an anti-gravity machine, because of
space ships and science fiction, and the minute you say you can make
something rise against gravity, then you've "made an antigravity machine".
And then the flood gates are unleashed on you especially from the
establishment. You've brought science into disrepute or you're apparently
trying to because you've done something that is against the run of the
tide.'
The resounding silence of his audience continued long after that
fateful evening. There was to be no Fellowship of the Royal Society, no gold
medal, no 'Arise, Sir Eric'. And, for the first time in two hundred years,
there was to be no published 'proceedings' recording Laithwaite's
astonishing lecture. In an unprecedented act of academic Stalinism, the
Royal Institution simply banished the memory of Professor Laithwaite, his
gyroscopes that became lighter, his lecture, even his existence.
Newton's Laws were restored to their sacrosanct position on the
altar of science. Laithwaite was a non-person, and all was right with the
world once more.
For the next twenty years, Laithwaite carried on investigating the
anomalous behaviour of gyroscopes in the laboratory; at first in Imperial
College and later, after his retirement, wherever he could find a
sympathetic institution to provide bench space and laboratory apparatus.
By the mid-1980 -- what he called 'the most depressing time' --
Laithwaite had conducted enough empirical research to demonstrate that the
skeptics were right when they said that there were no forces to be had from
gyroscopes.
'The mathematics said there were no forces and that was correct',
Laithwaite recalled. 'The thing that wouldn't go away was: can I lift a 50
pound weight with one hand or can't I? Of all the critics that I showed
lifting the big wheel, none of them ever tried to explain it to me. So I
decided I had to follow Faraday's example and do the experiments.'
After retiring from Imperial College, laithwaite began a long series
of detailed experiments. Sussex University offered him a laboratory and he
formed a partnership with fellow engineer and inventor, Bill Dawson, who
also funded the research. Laithwaite and Dawson spent three years from 1991
to 1994, investigating in detail the strange phenomena that had unnerved the
Royal Institution.
'The first thing I wanted to find out was how I could lift a 50
pound wheel in one hand. So we set out to try to reproduce this as a
hands-off experiment. Then we tackled the problem of lack of centrifugal
force and the experiments were telling us that there was less centrifugal
force than there should be. Meanwhile I started to do the theory. We devised
more and more sophisticated experiments until, not long ago, we cracked it.'
The real breakthrough came, said Laithwaite, when they realised that
a precessing gyroscope could move mass through space. 'The spinning top
showed us that all the time, but we couldn't see it. If the gyroscope does
not produce the full amount of centrifugal force on its pivot in the centre
then indeed you have produced mass transfer.'
'It became more exciting than ever now because I could explain the
unexplainable. Gyroscopes became absolutely in accordance with Newton's
laws. We were now not challenging any sacred laws at all. We were sticking
strictly to the rules that everyone would approve of, but getting the same
result -- a force through space without a rocket.'
The research of Laithwaite and Dawson has now borne practical fruit.
Their commercial company, Gyron, filed a world patent for a reactionless
drive -- a device that most orthodox scientists say is impossible.
Sadly Eric Laithwaite died in 1997. His device remains in prototype
f
Griggs's Hydrosonic pump. There is no evidence at present that it
is an over-unity device -- merely a novel means of propulsion that proves
there are more things in heaven and earth than are currently dreamed of by
scientific rationalism.
But there are other Laithwaites, and there are other engines: some
even more extraordinary than the reactionless drive.
Laithwaite's patent filed for his gyroscopic 'propulsion and
positioning
system' for a vehicle.
Click Here for PDF
Townsend Brown And Gravity
Comment
From Hsing Lee
lee8798||s...
9-25-3
Over the last several years, I've made note of a number of claims in
various periodicals relating to the 'discovery' of anti-gravitic principles
using gyroscopes and high rpm devices, most of which are powered by
electromagnets. I've noted that people in the UFO and Area 51 watch
community have speculated that the government may already have developed
propulsions systems based on these principles. I've also noted that very few
of the people making these claims choose to reveal where the ideas for the
various devices they've 'invented' originally came from.
And that pisses me off. So, I'm writing this blurb to set the record
straight, and give credit where credit is due.
In the 1920's a young scientist named Townsend Brown became enamored
with Electromagnetism. He spend the next 50 years doing this research, most
of that time spent in obscurity, at the fringes of the mainstream scientific
community. In the 1940's, the US government considered Mr. Brown an
invaluable asset. But something happened. Conspiracy theories abound, most
of them relating to the Philadelphia Experiment.
I'm not going to speculate on what happened, because I don't know,
and until we can get some government documents declassified in the future,
we'll probably never know. Besides, none of this is of importance.
What IS important is the work Townsend Brown did with
electrogravitation - gravity and electromagnetism.
In 1929, Townsend Brown and his professor Dr. Biefield jointly
published a paper on what came to be known as the Biefield-Brown effect. It
was Brown who first observed the effect in 1923, and who continued the work
in this field until his death in 1985.
Brown discovered an effect he called electrogravitation, which
differs from electromagnetism. What he originally observed was that by
placing a condenser between two magnetic poles and changing the polarity, he
could make the condenser thrust up or down.
Over the years, he noted that he was able to change the mass of an
object through these means, and that there appeared to be a direct
correlation between RPMS and the change in mass. He did his first propulsion
experiments on water, with great success.
Eventually, he moved on to using the Biefield-Brown effect to
levitate objects. He even created his own electrogravitic discs, mini flying
saucers, which can be seen here:
A wealth of information on Brown and his work can be found here: The gyroscopic principals being utilized by inventors today are NOT The man was marginalized by the government and scientific community When one thinks about a gyroscope, the principals involved in mass
ctures/bahnson6.jpg
x.htm
the original work of these individuals. It all stems from the work done by
Townsend Brown a generation prior to the work being done today.
for most of his adult life. Now that he's dead, I see no reason why we
should continue not to give credit where credit is due. I feel we should
recognize THE pioneer in this field of research.
reduction are identical to the principals observed by Brown and Biefield in
the 1920's. The faster a gyroscope spins, the faster its 'polarity' shifts.
There is no brilliance or genius at work here. It is simple extrapolation of
scien