"New York Times (19 September 1917)
"Professor Tells of Electrical Tests Turning Attraction Into Repulsion."
A new theory as to gravitation will be announced soon before the St. Louis Academy of Sciences by Professor Francis E. Nipper, retired head of the Department of Physics of Washington University.
"It will be shown that gravitational attraction between masses of matter not only has been diminished into zero, but has been converted into repulsion which is more than twice as great as normal attraction."
New Gravitation Theory ~
Professor Nipper made his experiments with bodies suspended horizontally toward each other. By introducing electricity into the atmosphere he converted normal attraction into repulsion.
"If electricity can alter the gravitational attraction of the bodies used in my experiments," he said, "the same force can alter the earth's attraction. If the negative electricity could be drawn from the earth's surface, gravitational attraction suddenly would cease and the cohesion of the earth's surface would be disastrously affected."
Electrical Experimenter (March 1918)
"Can Electricity Destroy Gravitation?"
Is it possible to nullify, and further to even reverse, the effect of gravity by electricity? This scientific conundrum seems about to be solved, at least to a certain extent. To begin with, everybody is familiar with that law of physics which states that "all particles of matter attract each other with a force which is greater the nearer the particles are together", and to be still more definite, Newton's law says that bodies behave as if every particle of matter attracted every other particle with a force that is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. It is the gravitational attraction between the earth and the bodies upon it which causes the latter to have weight.
This fact is often lost sight of and should be well understood by every student. To make the matter more clear let us imagine that a man's body is (as by flying, jumping, diving from a high point, etc.) for the moment separated from the surface of the earth. As soon as the mass of the body is separated from the earth, gravitational attraction is set up between the two masses. The earth pulls the man's body, and also his body pulls the earth, but as the mass of the earth is infinitely greater, its movement cannot be detected.
The scientists of today believe that in some mysterious way the minute electrical charges existing on the particles making up molecules and atoms are definitely linked up and concerned with such basic phenomena as gravitation. Since all bodies are made up of atoms it would seem to logically follow that the forces of gravity must depend in some way upon attractions which atoms exert upon each other, and due to the fact that the atoms are separated, at least in solids and liquids, by extremely small distances, we might expect these inter-atomic forces to be relatively more powerful than are those of ordinary gravitation.
Until recently, however, the mystery linking this inter-atomic activity with the force of gravitation baffled all attempts at solution, although many scientists had tackled it.
But at last experimental proof has been forthcoming through the untiring labors of Professor Francis E. Nipher, of the St. Louis Academy of Science. In a pamphlet issued November 8, 1917, Prof. Nipher supplies experimental evidence that gravitational attraction can not only be suspended or nullified by the electrical current, but it actually can be transformed into "gravitational repulsion"!
All during the summer of 1917, Prof. Nipher had his apparatus in almost continuous operation, and the experiments have been repeated time and again, always with the same result.
Prof. Nipher's mechanical apparatus resembled that used in the "Cavendish experiment", by which it was first experimentally proved that Newton's law of universal gravitational attraction applied to small bodies in their action upon each other at short distances, just as well as it did to small terrestrial bodies under the influence of the earth. This apparatus consists of a delicate torsion suspension fiber (Figure 3 & Figure 4), a light, rigid arm at the lower end of the fiber suspension, and at either end of this bar two small lead spheres of known mass. Two equal large balls of solid lead are placed close to the small suspended spheres in the manner shown. Now, remembering our law of physics stated above -- that every body in space attracts every other body proportionally to their respective masses and inversely as the distance between them -- then it is evident that when this apparatus is set up, that the small suspended spheres will be slightly attracted by the larger, stationary balls. This condition is represented in Figure 1.
Before connecting any form of electric current to the modified Cavendish apparatus, Prof. Nipher took special precaution to carefully screen the moving element from any electrostatic or electromagnetic effects. His apparatus briefly consists of two large lead spheres ten inches in diameter, resting upon heavy sheets of hard rubber. Two small lead balls, each one inch in diameter, were now suspended from two silk threads, stationed at the sides of the two large lead spheres, from which they were separated by a little distance. Moreover, the suspended balls were insulated elaborately from the large spheres by enclosing them first airtight in a long wooden box, which was also covered with tinned iron sheets as well as cardboard sheets. There was, furthermore, a metal shield between the box and the large metal spheres. The large metal lead spheres now exerted a certain gravitational pull upon the suspended small lead balls as indicated in Figure 1, and the small lead balls were slightly pulled over towards the large spheres.
In his first experiments Prof. Nipher applied a high tension current from a static machine to the large lead balls (Figure 2). No difference was noted whether the positive or negative terminals were applied. In one of these experiments the masses were "repelled" (normal gravitational attraction had been nullified and changed to repulsion) by a force nearly twice as great as the initial gravitational repulsion. The effect is shown in Figure 3.
In further experiments Prof. Nipher decided to check his results. To do this he replaced the large solid lead spheres with two metal boxes, each filled with loose cotton batting. These hollow boxes (having practically no mass) rested upon insulators. They were separated from the protective screen by sheets of glass and were grounded to it by heavy copper wires. The metal boxes were then charged in every way that the solid lead spheres had been, but not the slightest change in the position of the lead balls could be detected. This would seem to prove conclusively that the "repulsion" and "gravitational nullification" effects that he had produced when the solid balls were electrically charged were genuine and based undoubtedly on a true inter-atomic electrical reaction, and not upon any form of electrostatic or electromagnetic effects between the large and small masses. If they had been, the metal boxes, with no mass, would have served as well as the solid balls.
Another interesting experiment was conducted with low frequency alternating current applied to the large lead spheres. Spring contact brushes were fastened to the wooden blocks supporting the large spheres as shown in Figure 4, one brush on either side of the ball. This permitted sending current through the ball from one side to the other. First, a direct current of 20 amperes as sent through the two large masses, but no effect on the suspended masses could be detected. Next, an alternating current of 20 amperes was sent through the two masses (See Figure 4), with the result that the gravitational attraction was quickly reduced to zero, and not only that but in 15 to 20 minutes the small lead spheres had moved over one-half as much to the opposite direction as the distance they had been attracted originally towards the large masses. Thus gravitation had not only been completely nullified, but it was actually reversed."
This was obviously before T. Townsend Brown's work.
Now we also have the work of Kowsky and Frost which is interesting in the sense that while it was to be about gravity is seems to indicate a quantum rearrangement of the material which is very similar to what we now call ORMES or Orbitally Rearranged Monoatomic Elements
See: http://www.rexresearch.com/kowsky/kowsky.htm
"Although some remarkable achievements have been made with shortwave low power transmitters, radio experts and amateurs have recently decided that shortwave transmission had reached its ultimate and hat no vital improvement would be made in this line. A short time ago, however, two young European experimenters working with ultra-short waves, have made a discovery that promises to be of primary importance to the scientific world.
The discovery was made about six weeks ago in a newly established central laboratory of the Neuuartadline-Werke in Darreskein, Poland, by Dr Kowsky and Engineer Frost. While experimenting with the constants of very short waves, carried on by means of quartz resonators, a piece of quartz which was used, showed a clearly altered appearance. It was easily seen that in the center of the crystal, especially when a constant temperature not exceeding 10 C / 50 F was maintained, milky cloudiness appeared which gradually developed to complete opacity. The experiments of Dr Meissner, of the Telefunken Co,, along similar lines, according to which quartz crystals, subjected to high frequency currents clearly showed air currents which ld to the construction of little motor based on this principle. A week of eager experimenting finally led Dr Kowsky and Engineer Frost to the explanation of the phenomenon, and further experiments showed the unexpected possibilities for technical uses of the discovery.
Some statements must precede the explanation. It is known at last in part, that quartz and some other crystals of similar atomic nature have the property when exposed to potential excitation in a definite direction, of stretching and contracting; and if one uses rapidly changing potentials, the crystals will change the electric waves into mechanical oscillations. This piezo-electric effect, shown in Rochelle salt crystals by which they may be made into sound-producing devices such as loud-speakers, or reversely into microphones, also show the results in this direction. This effect was clearly explained in August 1925 Radio News and December 1919 Electrical Experimenter. These oscillations are extremely small, but have nevertheless their technical use in a quartz crystal wave meter and in maintaining a constant wavelength in radio transmitters. By a special arrangement of the excitation of the crystal in various directions, it may be made to stretch or increase in length and will not return to its original size. It seems as if a dispersal of electrons from a molecule resulted which, as it is irreversible, changes the entire structure of the crystal so that it cannot be restored to its former condition.
The stretching out, as we may term this strange property of the crystal, explains the impairment of its transparency. At the same time a change takes place in its specific gravity. Testing it on the balance showed that after connecting the crystal to the high tension current, the arm of the balance on which the crystal with the electrical connections rests, rose into the air. The illustration, Fig. 3, shows this experiment.
This pointed the way for further investigation and the determination of how far the reduction of the specific gravity could be carried out. B the use of greater power, finally to the extent of several kilowatts and longer exposure to the action, it was found eventually that from a little crystal, 5 by 2 by 1.5 millimeters. A non-transparent white body measuring about 10 centimeters on the side resulted, or increased about 20 times in length on any side (See Fig. 4). The transformed crystal was so light that it carried the whole apparatus with itself upwards, along with the weight of 25 kilograms (55 lb) suspended from it and floating free in the air. On exact measurement and calculation, which on account of the excellent apparatus in the Darredein laboratory could be readily carried out, it was found that the specific gravity was reduced to a greater amount than the change in volume would indicate. Its weight had become practically negative.
There can be no doubt that a beginning has been made toward overcoming gravitation. It is to be noted, however, that the law of conservation of energy is absolutely unchanged. The energy employed in treating the crystal, appears as the counter effect of gravitation. Thus the riddle of gravitation is not fully solved as yet, and the progress of experiments will be followed further. It is, however, the first time that experimentation with gravitation which hitherto has been beyond the pale of all such research, has become possible, and it seems as if there were a way discovered at last to explain the inter-relations of gravity with electric and magnetic forces, which connection, long sought for, has never been demonstrated. This report appears in a reliable German journal, Radio Umschau."
There seems to be some very interesting experiments and results that have been obtained (and less than publicized) in regards to gravity and the effects electromagnetic energy plays on the possible manipulation of gravity.
