Electrogravitics and Anti Gravity: Did Thomas Townsend Brown Crack the Code to Anti-Gravity?

Thomas Townsend Brown, often referred to simply as “T. Townsend Brown,” was an American inventor born on March 18, 1905, in Zanesville, Ohio, into a prosperous family that owned a construction business. From an early age, Brown displayed a profound fascination with electronics, tinkering in a well-equipped basement laboratory funded by his indulgent parents. While still in high school during the 1920s, he began experimenting with high-voltage electrical devices, including Coolidge X-ray tubes, where he observed peculiar movements that he attributed to a novel interaction between electricity and gravity.

This early curiosity laid the foundation for a lifelong pursuit of what he termed “electrogravitics,” a field he believed could revolutionize propulsion by harnessing electric fields to counteract gravitational forces. Brown’s breakthrough came in the form of the Biefeld-Brown effect, named after him and his mentor, physicist Paul Biefeld, whom he met while briefly attending the California Institute of Technology in 1923. The effect describes how an asymmetric capacitor, when charged with high voltage, produces a net thrust toward its smaller electrode, which Brown interpreted as an anti-gravity phenomenon.

In 1927, he patented a “Method of Producing Force or Motion” based on this principle, and by 1929, he published an article in *Science and Invention* magazine detailing his findings. Convinced he had unlocked a key to gravity control, Brown designed early prototypes like the “gravitator”—an insulating block with electrodes that appeared to lose or gain weight depending on polarity—sparking his vision for wingless, electrically propelled aircraft. Throughout the mid-20th century, Brown’s research intersected with military and scientific institutions, though it often met with skepticism. In 1930, he joined the U.S. Navy, serving at the Naval Research Laboratory and participating in the 1932 Navy-Princeton gravity expedition aboard the submarine S-48.

Post-World War II, he demonstrated devices to entities like the Office of Naval Research in 1952, which evaluated his “electro-gravity device” but found no verifiable anti-gravity mechanism, attributing the motion to ionic wind—charged particles creating thrust through air interaction.

Undeterred, Brown relocated to Europe in 1955, showcasing vacuum-tested models to French aerospace firm SNCASO, and later consulted for organizations like the Bahnson Laboratory in the late 1950s. He also co-founded the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) in the 1950s, linking his work to UFO studies and fueling speculation about classified applications in stealth technology. Despite Brown’s death on October 27, 1985, his legacy endures in both scientific and fringe communities, inspiring amateur “lifter” experiments that replicate ionic propulsion effects, though mainstream physics dismisses true anti-gravity claims. Conspiracy theories persist, suggesting his ideas powered secret projects like the B-2 Stealth Bomber or even UFOs, as explored in Paul Schatzkin’s biography *The Man Who Mastered Gravity*. Brown’s story highlights the blurred line between innovative pseudoscience and suppressed breakthroughs, reminding us that what begins as an “impossible” observation in a teenager’s lab can ripple through decades of intrigue and debate.