Muzz
7th February 2012, 23:15
Hi all
Im sure there are plenty of folk here that new giroscopes did this. But I wasnt aware of the effect on gravity and found this quite fascinating.
PROFESSOR ERIC LAITHWAITE - Gyroscopes
MHlAJ7vySC8
Eric Laithwaite, Emeritus Professor of Heavy Electrical Engineering at Imperial College, London, died on November 27, 1997 aged 76. He was born on June 14, 1921.
http://1.2.3.12/bmi/antigravitypower.tripod.com/laithwaite.jpg
At the age of 76, at a time when many emeritus professors have long since hung up their gowns, Eric Laithwaite was happily working, like a schoolboy with a Meccano set, on the biggest project of his life - a huge working model of a futuristic rocket launcher.
America's National Aeronautics and Space Administration had commissioned him to develop a concept worthy of Ian Fleming's Dr No - a five-mile long track to be tunnelled up the inside of a 10,000 ft mountain, hurtling a space capsule along the track and out through the summit into Earth orbit. The power was to come not from conventional rockets but from the love of Laithwaite's life - linear motors.
Ever since 1947 Laithwaite had been known as 'The father of the linear motor'; however, as he constantly pointed out, he did not invent it, he simply rediscovered it.
'The linear motor is no more than an ordinary electric motor spread out, but it can create a magnetic river capable of providing friction-free travel', he told 1950s television audiences.
Within a few years he had designed the world's first magnetically levitating high-speed train; and such was the force of his personality that he managed to persuade the Government of the day to back it with £5 million. A mile of track was built and a full-scale levitating locomotive tested. It was one of the last great all-British postwar investments in high-tech engineering, but it was abandoned.
'He was devastated', observed the Science Museum historian Brian Bowers, 'but it did not dampen his inventiveness.'
For Laithwaite it was a crossroads. Having pinned his future on magnetic levitation, in his early fifties, he had to turn to other things. He threw himself into writing learned books on the linear motor and popular ones on invention; he renewed his childhood passion for butterflies (at his death he had one of the country's largest private collections of specimens); he became a familiar figure on radio and television, where his engaging enthusiasm rapidly made him Britain's best-known engineer of the day.
It was his fame, however, that was to lead indirectly to his downfall, in the eyes of many of his colleagues. As Britain's first media engineer, he attracted the interest of a small army of amateur inventors. Many popular scientists are profoundly irritated by this sort of attention, often binning what they regard as 'crank' letters.
But not Laithwaite. One letter, in particular, caught his eye: in it an amateur inventor described a wheeled device which apparently contravened Newton's Third Law of Motion - It moved without any power to the wheels or any thrust. Intrigued, Laithwaite invited the inventor, Alex Jones, to Imperial College. The device Jones brought was powered by a simple gyroscope and it moved forward on Laithwaite's bench with ease.
'Alex showed me something I could not explain, so I just had to investigate it. It was sheer curiosity, like Alice following the White Rabbit', Laithwaite was to say later. He spent the next few years immersing himself in the specialised world of gyroscopes, gradually convincing himself that they did break known scientific laws, and that they might be a hitherto unrecognised source of preternatural power. So, when he was invited to give the Faraday Lecture at the Royal Institution, he knew exactly what to show his august audience.
He brought with him an array of gyroscopes - from toy ones that balanced on model Eiffel towers, to a huge 50lb one that he spun up and raised effortlessly above his head with one hand. 'Look', he exclaimed to the assembled dignitaries, 'It's lost weight!'
Ignoring their evident shock at such a heretical claim, he pressed on to his final demonstration - two spinning gyroscopes mounted on kitchen scales, which he claimed had also lost weight.
'I thought my fellow scientists would be genuinely interested, so I wasn't prepared for the utter hostility of their reaction', Laithwaite recalled later. For the first time in its history, the Royal Institution failed to publish the Faraday Lecture that year. Laithwaite's nomination for the Fellowship of the Royal Society was cancelled.
ezJAmT19xwo
He retired from Imperial College in 1981 pretty much in disgrace. But he never lost his fascination for gyroscopes. 'None of my critics could ever explain to me how a 50lb spinning wheel loses weight', he said. He teamed up with Bill Dawson, a fellow electrical engineer and businessman, and spent the last years of his life experimenting with a variety of complex gyroscopic rigs, finally proving to his satisfaction that they could produce 'Mass Transfer' - a brand new thrust-less propulsion system. In 1993 he applied for a patent on a gyroscopic space-drive; typically,he had built the demonstration model out of his childhood Meccano set.
In September 1996, however, two Nasa scientists arrived at his Sussex University laboratory, and his life went full circle. They were looking for a new way of getting spacecraft into earth orbit, thought of linear motors, and headed straight for the world expert.
'I showed them all the magic of magnetic levitation', said Laithwaite happily, 'and they gave me the contract.'
He was working on Maglifter when he collapsed - and subsequently passed on.
Reprinted from the online version of the London Times
LETTER FROM HAROLD ASPDEN: Regarding Antigravity and Prof. Eric Laithwaite
By Harold Aspden (http://www.padrak.com/ine/NEN_5_9_5.html)
Im sure there are plenty of folk here that new giroscopes did this. But I wasnt aware of the effect on gravity and found this quite fascinating.
PROFESSOR ERIC LAITHWAITE - Gyroscopes
MHlAJ7vySC8
Eric Laithwaite, Emeritus Professor of Heavy Electrical Engineering at Imperial College, London, died on November 27, 1997 aged 76. He was born on June 14, 1921.
http://1.2.3.12/bmi/antigravitypower.tripod.com/laithwaite.jpg
At the age of 76, at a time when many emeritus professors have long since hung up their gowns, Eric Laithwaite was happily working, like a schoolboy with a Meccano set, on the biggest project of his life - a huge working model of a futuristic rocket launcher.
America's National Aeronautics and Space Administration had commissioned him to develop a concept worthy of Ian Fleming's Dr No - a five-mile long track to be tunnelled up the inside of a 10,000 ft mountain, hurtling a space capsule along the track and out through the summit into Earth orbit. The power was to come not from conventional rockets but from the love of Laithwaite's life - linear motors.
Ever since 1947 Laithwaite had been known as 'The father of the linear motor'; however, as he constantly pointed out, he did not invent it, he simply rediscovered it.
'The linear motor is no more than an ordinary electric motor spread out, but it can create a magnetic river capable of providing friction-free travel', he told 1950s television audiences.
Within a few years he had designed the world's first magnetically levitating high-speed train; and such was the force of his personality that he managed to persuade the Government of the day to back it with £5 million. A mile of track was built and a full-scale levitating locomotive tested. It was one of the last great all-British postwar investments in high-tech engineering, but it was abandoned.
'He was devastated', observed the Science Museum historian Brian Bowers, 'but it did not dampen his inventiveness.'
For Laithwaite it was a crossroads. Having pinned his future on magnetic levitation, in his early fifties, he had to turn to other things. He threw himself into writing learned books on the linear motor and popular ones on invention; he renewed his childhood passion for butterflies (at his death he had one of the country's largest private collections of specimens); he became a familiar figure on radio and television, where his engaging enthusiasm rapidly made him Britain's best-known engineer of the day.
It was his fame, however, that was to lead indirectly to his downfall, in the eyes of many of his colleagues. As Britain's first media engineer, he attracted the interest of a small army of amateur inventors. Many popular scientists are profoundly irritated by this sort of attention, often binning what they regard as 'crank' letters.
But not Laithwaite. One letter, in particular, caught his eye: in it an amateur inventor described a wheeled device which apparently contravened Newton's Third Law of Motion - It moved without any power to the wheels or any thrust. Intrigued, Laithwaite invited the inventor, Alex Jones, to Imperial College. The device Jones brought was powered by a simple gyroscope and it moved forward on Laithwaite's bench with ease.
'Alex showed me something I could not explain, so I just had to investigate it. It was sheer curiosity, like Alice following the White Rabbit', Laithwaite was to say later. He spent the next few years immersing himself in the specialised world of gyroscopes, gradually convincing himself that they did break known scientific laws, and that they might be a hitherto unrecognised source of preternatural power. So, when he was invited to give the Faraday Lecture at the Royal Institution, he knew exactly what to show his august audience.
He brought with him an array of gyroscopes - from toy ones that balanced on model Eiffel towers, to a huge 50lb one that he spun up and raised effortlessly above his head with one hand. 'Look', he exclaimed to the assembled dignitaries, 'It's lost weight!'
Ignoring their evident shock at such a heretical claim, he pressed on to his final demonstration - two spinning gyroscopes mounted on kitchen scales, which he claimed had also lost weight.
'I thought my fellow scientists would be genuinely interested, so I wasn't prepared for the utter hostility of their reaction', Laithwaite recalled later. For the first time in its history, the Royal Institution failed to publish the Faraday Lecture that year. Laithwaite's nomination for the Fellowship of the Royal Society was cancelled.
ezJAmT19xwo
He retired from Imperial College in 1981 pretty much in disgrace. But he never lost his fascination for gyroscopes. 'None of my critics could ever explain to me how a 50lb spinning wheel loses weight', he said. He teamed up with Bill Dawson, a fellow electrical engineer and businessman, and spent the last years of his life experimenting with a variety of complex gyroscopic rigs, finally proving to his satisfaction that they could produce 'Mass Transfer' - a brand new thrust-less propulsion system. In 1993 he applied for a patent on a gyroscopic space-drive; typically,he had built the demonstration model out of his childhood Meccano set.
In September 1996, however, two Nasa scientists arrived at his Sussex University laboratory, and his life went full circle. They were looking for a new way of getting spacecraft into earth orbit, thought of linear motors, and headed straight for the world expert.
'I showed them all the magic of magnetic levitation', said Laithwaite happily, 'and they gave me the contract.'
He was working on Maglifter when he collapsed - and subsequently passed on.
Reprinted from the online version of the London Times
LETTER FROM HAROLD ASPDEN: Regarding Antigravity and Prof. Eric Laithwaite
By Harold Aspden (http://www.padrak.com/ine/NEN_5_9_5.html)