350+ Pages = A "Sprawling Epic"
Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 7:00 pm
Hello, everybody...
As some of you have no doubt gathered by now, I've been back from Cayman Brac for a little over a week. I think I mentioned somewhere along the line that when I got back, I was going to sit down and print every page of what I've written so far (something I have not been doing) and read the whole thing from "Preface" to "Chapter 60." I did that all last week, and was astonished to discover that the first 60 chapters add up to 354 single-spaced, letter-sized pages. Good grief.
My first thought upon seeing it all in one binder on my desk is two words: "Sprawling Epic."
My second thought was to show it to my wife: "See, I have been busy!"
It's really staggering the amount of ground this story covers, starting as it does in 1905 and covering all the upheavals and disruptions -- scientific and otherwise -- of the 20th Century.
The next thought was that what has been posted here just what I've been saying it is all along: the "first draft" of what is very much a "work in progress."
What has been written so far serves its purpose. It attempts to come to grips with the material, to hang the various pieces on some kind of framework, to get some sense of how it unfolds and fits together. I'm guessing we've put together about 3/4s of the jigsaw puzzle.
I can also see that, once I've made it through this first pass, there is going to have to be a lot of rewriting. And a lot of cutting.
It's interesting, for example, to see how many times I've used expressions like "the archives are devoid of any records..." or "there are no surviving records," all of which are different ways of saying "we just don't know."
When I read those passages, my first thought is a bit of self-admonition: "Surely, with just a little more effort, a few more phone calls.... I can get some answers." And then I remember Morgan's opening caveat: that the records have all been "weeded." That makes me grateful for the volume of material I've compiled, because that leaves plenty of room to just excise all the "we don't know" sections and just leave in what we do know. Future readers will find it easy enough to surmise what's missing.
I was also surprised to discover that there are lots of weasel words, despite my promise not to use them. Such entries will need to be revised.
There is also one important theme that struck me as I worked my way through the material.
Lately, elsewhere in these forums, I have made a big deal of something that dawned on me a few months ago, namely the difference between "Electrohydrodynamics" (EHD) and "Electrogravitcs" (E/G) and how it seems that by confusing the two, the former has become a means of concealing the latter.
EHD is the application the Biefeld-Brown effect in a fluid dielectric (liquid or air); E/G, I now realize, applies the Biefeld-Brown effect in a solid dielectric. Most of the work that is being done around the world now with "Townsend Brown technology" -- like the lifters -- is actually EHD stuff and when it doesn't work in a vacuum, people conclude there is no "antigravity" effect. Right they are. But has anybody tried the same experiments in a vacuum with a solid dielectric lately? If they have, they're not talking about it, and apparently with good reason.
When I re-read the entire text with that distinction in mind, what strikes me is that everything Brown is talking about "publicly" -- like the "Complete System" described in Chapter 27 -- is EHD technology, NOT E/G technology. In fact, after Brown went public with his ideas in the Popular Science article "How I Control Gravitation" (Chapter 21), there is virtually NO MENTION of anything having to do with gravitation or electrogravitics for the rest of the book -- so far, at least.
It looks like the subject doesn't really come up again publicly until the "Interavia" article "Flight Without Stress Or Strain" that was published in 1956 -- during the height of the "G-Engines" flap that Nick Cook discusses in "Hunt for Zero Point." Prior to that, anything that Townsend Brown was doing with "electrgravitics" was strictly under wraps -- if at all.
In other words, Brown pretty much stopped discussing the "gravity" aspects of his work very early on, even before the Caroline expedition. And everything that he talked about publicly -- and everything that is being discussed publicly today -- is not "electrogravitics," it's "electrohydrodynamics." And most people don't know the difference
Everybody with me on that?
The other observations that occur to me as I pour through the material are probably the sorts of things any writer or artist makes when observing their own work. I can see a tendency to "over write" in some places. There are a lot of places where I repeat myself -- probably because I forgot I'd mentioned certain things when I got around to mentioning them again. And some of the transitions strike me as a bit abrupt -- particularly when I switch from the "Townsend and Josephine" threads to the "Linda and Morgan" threads. But that's what "second drafts" are for.
So, that's what's had me occupied for the past week. Now that I've got the whole thing sitting on my desk (in one large loose-leaf binder), it's nice to how far we've come, but there are still some miles to go before "The End" can scroll up the screen....
Now then, when last we saw Dr. Brown, he was recuperating in Laguna Beach, CA... return with us now (or soon, anyway...)
--PS
As some of you have no doubt gathered by now, I've been back from Cayman Brac for a little over a week. I think I mentioned somewhere along the line that when I got back, I was going to sit down and print every page of what I've written so far (something I have not been doing) and read the whole thing from "Preface" to "Chapter 60." I did that all last week, and was astonished to discover that the first 60 chapters add up to 354 single-spaced, letter-sized pages. Good grief.
My first thought upon seeing it all in one binder on my desk is two words: "Sprawling Epic."
My second thought was to show it to my wife: "See, I have been busy!"
It's really staggering the amount of ground this story covers, starting as it does in 1905 and covering all the upheavals and disruptions -- scientific and otherwise -- of the 20th Century.
The next thought was that what has been posted here just what I've been saying it is all along: the "first draft" of what is very much a "work in progress."
What has been written so far serves its purpose. It attempts to come to grips with the material, to hang the various pieces on some kind of framework, to get some sense of how it unfolds and fits together. I'm guessing we've put together about 3/4s of the jigsaw puzzle.
I can also see that, once I've made it through this first pass, there is going to have to be a lot of rewriting. And a lot of cutting.
It's interesting, for example, to see how many times I've used expressions like "the archives are devoid of any records..." or "there are no surviving records," all of which are different ways of saying "we just don't know."
When I read those passages, my first thought is a bit of self-admonition: "Surely, with just a little more effort, a few more phone calls.... I can get some answers." And then I remember Morgan's opening caveat: that the records have all been "weeded." That makes me grateful for the volume of material I've compiled, because that leaves plenty of room to just excise all the "we don't know" sections and just leave in what we do know. Future readers will find it easy enough to surmise what's missing.
I was also surprised to discover that there are lots of weasel words, despite my promise not to use them. Such entries will need to be revised.
There is also one important theme that struck me as I worked my way through the material.
Lately, elsewhere in these forums, I have made a big deal of something that dawned on me a few months ago, namely the difference between "Electrohydrodynamics" (EHD) and "Electrogravitcs" (E/G) and how it seems that by confusing the two, the former has become a means of concealing the latter.
EHD is the application the Biefeld-Brown effect in a fluid dielectric (liquid or air); E/G, I now realize, applies the Biefeld-Brown effect in a solid dielectric. Most of the work that is being done around the world now with "Townsend Brown technology" -- like the lifters -- is actually EHD stuff and when it doesn't work in a vacuum, people conclude there is no "antigravity" effect. Right they are. But has anybody tried the same experiments in a vacuum with a solid dielectric lately? If they have, they're not talking about it, and apparently with good reason.
When I re-read the entire text with that distinction in mind, what strikes me is that everything Brown is talking about "publicly" -- like the "Complete System" described in Chapter 27 -- is EHD technology, NOT E/G technology. In fact, after Brown went public with his ideas in the Popular Science article "How I Control Gravitation" (Chapter 21), there is virtually NO MENTION of anything having to do with gravitation or electrogravitics for the rest of the book -- so far, at least.
It looks like the subject doesn't really come up again publicly until the "Interavia" article "Flight Without Stress Or Strain" that was published in 1956 -- during the height of the "G-Engines" flap that Nick Cook discusses in "Hunt for Zero Point." Prior to that, anything that Townsend Brown was doing with "electrgravitics" was strictly under wraps -- if at all.
In other words, Brown pretty much stopped discussing the "gravity" aspects of his work very early on, even before the Caroline expedition. And everything that he talked about publicly -- and everything that is being discussed publicly today -- is not "electrogravitics," it's "electrohydrodynamics." And most people don't know the difference
Everybody with me on that?
The other observations that occur to me as I pour through the material are probably the sorts of things any writer or artist makes when observing their own work. I can see a tendency to "over write" in some places. There are a lot of places where I repeat myself -- probably because I forgot I'd mentioned certain things when I got around to mentioning them again. And some of the transitions strike me as a bit abrupt -- particularly when I switch from the "Townsend and Josephine" threads to the "Linda and Morgan" threads. But that's what "second drafts" are for.
So, that's what's had me occupied for the past week. Now that I've got the whole thing sitting on my desk (in one large loose-leaf binder), it's nice to how far we've come, but there are still some miles to go before "The End" can scroll up the screen....
Now then, when last we saw Dr. Brown, he was recuperating in Laguna Beach, CA... return with us now (or soon, anyway...)
--PS