Gravity Research Foundation

The Gravity Research Foundation is an organization established in 1948 by businessman Roger Babson (founder of Babson College) to find ways to implement gravitational shielding. It holds an annual contest rewarding essays by scientific researchers on gravity-related topics. The contest, which awards prizes of up to $4,000, has been won by at least four people who later won the Nobel Prize in physics.

The foundation held conferences and conducted operations in New Boston, New Hampshire through the late 1960s, but that aspect of its operation ended following Babson's death in 1967.

It is mentioned on stone monuments, donated by Babson, at more than a dozen American universities.

Thomas Edison apparently suggested the creation of the Gravity Research Foundation to Babson, who established it in several scattered buildings in the small town of New Boston, New Hampshire, which Babson chose because he thought it was far enough from big cities to survive a nuclear war. Babson even put up a sign declaring New Boston to be the safest town in North America if World War III came, but town fathers toned it down to say merely that New Boston was a safe place.

In an essay called Gravity - Our Enemy Number One, Babson indicated that his wish to overcome gravity dated from the childhood drowning of his sister. "She was unable to fight gravity, which came up and seized her like a dragon and brought her to the bottom," he wrote.

The foundation held occasional conferences that drew such people as Clarence Birdseye of frozen-food fame and Igor Sikorsky, inventor of the helicopter. Sometimes, attendees sat in chairs with their feet higher than their heads, to counterbalance gravity. Most of the foundation's work, however, involved sponsoring essays by researchers on gravity-related topics. It had only a couple of employees in New Boston.

The physical Gravity Research Foundation disappeared some time after Babson's death in 1967. Its only remnant in New Boston is a granite slab in a traffic island that celebrates the foundation's "active research for antigravity and a partial gravity insulator." The building that held the foundation's meetings has long held a restaurant, and for a time had a bar called Gravity Tavern, since renamed.

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