Electrogravitics

Electrogravitics is claimed to be an unconventional type of effect or anti-gravity propulsion created by an electric field's effect on a mass. The name was coined in the 1920s by the discoverer of the effect, Thomas Townsend Brown, who spent most of his life trying to develop it and sell it as a propulsion system. Through Brown's promotion of the idea it was researched for a short while by aerospace companies in the 1950s. Electrogravitics is popular with conspiracy theorists with claims that it is powering flying saucers and the B-2 Stealth Bomber.

Since apparatus based on Browns' ideas have often yielded varying and highly controversial results when tested within controlled vacuum conditions, the effect observed has often been attributed to the ion drift or ion wind effect instead of anti-gravity.

Brown also named this phenomenon the "Biefeld–Brown effect" after his claimed mentor, Denison University professor Paul Alfred Biefeld.

Electrogravitics had its origins in experiments started in 1921 by Thomas Townsend Brown (USA) (who coined the name) while he was still in high school. He discovered an unusual effect while experimenting with a Coolidge tube, a type of X-ray vacuum tube where, if he placed on a balance scale with the tube’s positive electrode facing up, the tube's mass seemed to decrease, when facing down the tube's mass seemed to increase. Brown showed this effect to his college professors and even newspaper reporters and told them he was convinced that he had managed to influence gravity electronically. Brown developed this into large high voltage capacitors that would produce a tiny propulsive force causing the capacitor to jump in one direction when the power was turned on. In 1929 Brown published "How I Control Gravity," in Science and Invention where he claimed the capacitors were producing a mysterious force that interacted with the pull of gravity. He envisions 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. Somewhere along the way Brown came up with the name Biefeld–Brown effect, named after his former teacher, professor of astronomy Paul Alfred Biefeld at Denison University in Ohio. Brown claimed Biefeld as his mentor and co-experimenter. After World War II Brown sought to develop the effect as a means of propulsion for aircraft and spacecraft, demonstrating a working apparatus to an audience of scientists and military officials in 1952. 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.

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