Betcha can't eat just one!

[Jan Lundquist]

A note on a couple of notes I received this week. One friend reported that his compulsive research has gotten him into very hot water with his mate. Another said following Townsend's career is like eating potato chips: Once you get started, you can't stop.

The Man Who Mastered Gravity introduced one of the great American stories of the twentieth century. It is a never ending story that spirals off in many directions, and much of it is in danger of being lost or buried, for lack of interest or attention. Researchers are welcome and needed. (If you live near Austin, hit me up. There are some archives at U.T. that I have on my "to get" list.)

However, beware that once you dip a toe into this subject, there is is a danger of becoming obsessed to the point of losing sight of real life. If you think you are nearing that point, run a quick check on your heart center. If you feel highly anxious, or contrarily, feel nothing, you have been in a mental state too long and its is time to stop and recharge your emotional battteries.

Jan

[Paul Schatzkin]

Once come through the portal, there is a temptation to think that you have found the key that unlocks the magic puzzle.

Then you turn the key, and all the puzzle pieces turn to dust in your hand.

And then you pick up a brush and start sweeping the dust to see what sort of patterns it forms.

There is something that comes after that, but you get my point.

Your mileage may vary.

--PS

[David Osielski]

Thanks, friends. All in moderation...

[Paul Schatzkin]

I have a variation on that old chestnut:

All things in moderation,
Including excess.



--P

[Jan Lundquist]

Reporting for the record:

Sometime in December, a desire began to build in me to have a print or painting or statuette of a cardinal (bird, not priest). I thought it was because I was thinking of my Mom whose birthday would have been the 19th. She always thought cardinals were signs from loved ones who had passed over, so peehaps I was yearning to make a connection with her. But December passed, and I was still browsing, hoping to see something that captured the exquisite beauty of the bird.

Earlier this week, I had a call from Jesse Michels, who if the story does not break him first, may do a deep dive into Townsend Brown on a future American Alchemy segment, He asked what I knew of Bob Beckwith, founder of Beckwith Electric in Florida. All I remembered from the Before Times was that he had written an account of visiting a Navy Ship that had been seen in a port halfway around the world, the day before. He originally posted it to his company website but his heirs took the account down after he passed in 2009.

I had a vague recollection, maybe,that the ship in question was the USS Cardinal. I did not know then, but have since learned that bird names are used for all ships of the minesweeper class. Apparently, the Navy also recycles names as there have been at least four Cardinals in the fleet:

• USS Cardinal (AM-6), was a Lapwing-class minesweeper that sank off the coast of Alaska's Chirakof island in 1923. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Cardinal_(AM-6. (The name sounds like Cherenkov...as in Cherenkov radiation. Is that a foreshadowing of something significant?)
  
  USS Cardinal (AM-67), was built as the civilian fishing boat Jeanne D'Arc, then acquired and used by the Navy as a minesweeper during WW II. She was decommissioned in 1944.
  
  The construction of Cardinal (AM-393) was canceled in November 1945 before launching. The war was over, no more ships were needed.
  
  USS Cardinal (AMS-4), was first commissioned in 2943, as YMS-179, a YMS-1-class minesweeper... Cardinal (AMS-4) was one of her several names and designations during her career. She was stricken from the register in 1957
  
  USS Cardinal (MHC-60), was an Osprey-class minehunter. She was commissioned on 18 October 1997, decommissioned on 7 January 2007 and sold to Egypt.

I found Beckwith's account the next day, and see that it was this last ship that he speaks of here, in Teleportation, Levitation, and Time Travel https://www.scribd.com/document/4647363 ... ime-Travel

I got my cardinal in spades, and with a bonus. The next day The Algorithm delivered a beautiful headson video of a cardinal swooping in to take corn from someone's hand. My quest is over. (I wish.)

Jan

[Paul Schatzkin]

OK, so.... "Beckwith" rings a bell but... it's been a minute.

My vague recollection from The Before Times is that was referred to or sent a .pdf file of something Robert Beckwith had published. If I did, I have a copy of it .... somewhere. It's not turning up yet.

What did turn up is this missive from Morgan, in which the name "Beckwith" is dropped out of nowhere:

Sun Mar 06 09:00:54 CST 2005

Re-read page 35 of Intrepids Last Case (paperback) or just the first page of Chapter 6 .... entitled "Wanted .. One defector." Very important words ....."A secret war directed by the Soviet Union against World War ll allies seemed unthinkable" BUT ..... Stephenson already knew that the Russian Intelligence Service (RIS) had infiltrated almost every Western institution. Proof had been found by his operatives going though the captured German files that were in his hands .... It was tough to get the rest of the world to see that though because of Russian "agents of influence" at work ....disinformation experts ....unequalled ....

Then it was written ....."It would take the ingenuity of a lawyer DEFENDING one of the Nazi war criminals ... to shock the west with PROOF of Stalins deal with Germany .......but by that time ...Stalin had already taken over the identical territory that Germany had promised him. A winner anyway and turning his eyes toward the future.....

. Stephenson already knew this of course ... already knew that the Russians had agents INSIDE the Manhattan Project .....Stephensons Caroline core group ... went further into the shadows ....the work that Dr. Brown had been following all but disappeared ....until the Pearl Harbor demonstrations that is ......men like Beckwith and his boss went into overdrive ...finding and weeding anything and everything that even smelled Dr. Brown and /or of quantum work ... ....Morgan....

Now, that's a real interesting association... Stalin, spies in the Manhattan Project, Stephenson... and who the hell was "Beckwith's boss" ?

I have no idea. Anybody want to hazard a guess?

And of course,

finding and weeding anything and everything that even smelled of Dr. Brown and / or of quantum work..."

That gets us pretty much right back where we started. These ARE the droids we're looking for, but GFL actually finding them.

Until I find more, now you know what I know.

--PS

[Paul Schatzkin]

I think this is what I'm looking for:

http://www.stealthskater.com/Documents/Beckwith_02.pdf

It's still on the Interwebs but I've downloaded a copy to my own local drives just in case.

The money quote (he says with a snort):

This 45-page overview (also available for $20 in hardcover) states that the Philadelphia Experiment as reported by Moore & Berlitz may have actually been a cover story for a project developed by Dr. Edward Teller and Nikola Tesla. This well-written book provides a great deal of historical data relevant to support Beckwith's statements. And it's worth a read to just for the background on Tesla alone.

I swear, any time I read a weasel-word phrase like "may have actually" I think, "here's a load of crap I just made up."

I mean, what is "may have actually" if not a three word oxymoron.

I might take a few mins to skim through this, but it all looks like another empty, bottomless rabbit hole to me. I hope Jesse doesn't spend too much time with the whole Philadelphia Experiment. That alone can break a man.

--PS

[Paul Schatzkin]

Chat GPT:

Did Edward Teller ever meet Nikola Tesla?

There is no widely documented evidence to suggest that Edward Teller, the Hungarian-American theoretical physicist known for his work on the hydrogen bomb, ever met Nikola Tesla, the renowned inventor and electrical engineer. Tesla's lifetime overlapped with Teller's early years, and Teller was known for his contributions to nuclear physics and weapon development, while Tesla was known for his work in electrical engineering and numerous inventions related to electricity and electromagnetism. However, there is no widely recognized historical record of the two individuals having met.

Any questions?

[Jan Lundquist]

yeah,it seems to me that Beckwith was following the canned script on the PEX story, complete with sailors embedded in the hull of the time traveling ship. The only new twist was that the ship was a converted private yacht, the SS Martha's Vineyard, and the event happened off of Rhode Island.

Beckwith never actually claims to have witnessed the actual time travel leap. He was a youngster at the time of the supposed event. From what he says, he was working for Dr. J. W. Horton, sonar specialist for GE. Would either of them had the clout to erase Brown from all the records?

On pages 18 and 19 of the document I linked above, he talks about visiting a minehunter named the USS Cardinal, and observing a button that said "Teleportation". That tore it for me. The only way a button like that would be in plain view for civilians to see on a USN ship would be if it were a deliberate misdirection.

[Jan Lundquist]

Thanks for the Morgan letter, BTW. I found a record of Evelyn McBarnett (Ruby) traveling from England about the time of the Gouzenko affair. The timing of her trip conveniently enabled her to be in the States to meet the Browns upon their return from Hawaii and accompany Jo and the kids to Zaenesville, which Linda remembers that she did.

Intrepid's Last Case chronicles the post-World War II activities of Sir William Stephenson, whose fascinating role in helping to defeat the Nazis was the subject of the worldwide bestseller A Man Called Intrepid. Sir William Stephenson (Intrepid) still stood at the center of events when he and author William Stevenson discussed in the 1980s an investigation into sudden allegations that Intrepid's wartime aide, Dick Ellis, had been both a Soviet mole and a Nazi spy. They concluded that the rumors grew, ironically, from Intrepid's last wartime case involving the first major Soviet intelligence defector of the new atomic age: Igor Gouzenko. Intrepid saved Gouzenko and found him sanctuary inside a Canadian spy school. Gouzenko was about to make more devastating disclosures than those concerning atomic espionage when the case was mysteriously terminated and ]Intrepid's organization dissolved.Unraveling the implications of Gouzenko's defection and Intrepid's removal from the case, tracing the steps of Dick Ellis and disclosing much new information regarding United States and Canadian postwar intelligence activities, Intrepid's Last Case is a story that for sheer excitement rivals the best spy fiction--and is all the more important because every word is true. Filled with never-before-revealed facts on the Soviet/Western nuclear war dance and a compelling portrayal of the mind of a professional spy, Intrepid's Last Case picks up where the first book ended, at the very roots of the cold war. It describes one of the most widespread cover-ups and bizarre betrayals in intelligence history. This is the incredible Intrepid against the KGB.

https://www.amazon.com/Intrepids-Last-C ... 1510729151

[David Osielski]

Snowing steady in Chicago these days...

Here's my cardinal keeping watch over the college library quad.

Also, working on my own Venn ala Paul

[Jan Lundquist]

Way cool, David. If he could talk he would say, "Thanks for the view".

You will appreciate that one of Linda's favorite sayings was "We're gonna need a bigger boat." I can vouch for that. I've needed ever bigger boats over the years.

I guess that is what happens with never ending stories.

Jan

[natecull]

I have this same problem. It is very hard to eat, I mean research, just one American WW2 defense scientist/engineer/industrialist with off-mainstream beliefs about physics - there are so many! I think you had to be at least 51% actual certified mad scientist to get in the door of the radar / Navy radio business in the 1940s. I suspect the same is true of radar's children - ARPA and Silicon Valley - today.

So let's take a bite of Robert Beckwith!

Reading Bob Beckwith's 2002 document, this part at least struck me as sensible (compared to the claims of "teleportation mode" buttons on minesweepers; but then technical people do love jokes, so there could well exist a button called "teleportation mode" which does not, in fact, physically teleport a ship, but just does something clever with the magnetic signal it's projecting).

After getting an engineering degree from Case School of Applied Science, I went to work with the General Electric Company. In 1942, I developed highly successful frequency shift keyed (FSK) transfer trip equipment [3]. This eliminated one high-voltage circuit-breaker at each substation where generator power was stepped up in voltage in order for sending it over a distance. Out work had the same "AAA" priority as the Manhattan Project.

The equipment became a part of nationally-coordinated electric utility crash program to connect existing generation together into what today has become the "national power grid". The specific need in 1942 was to supply power to Oak Ridge and to Hanford for the Manhattan Project (the development of the atomic bomb).

Our use of FSK was some 5 years ahead of a second use in FSK telemetry (we had always called it "telemtering"). The FSK telemetry was derived from our work by Walt Hause and others from the GE lab at Ithaca, NY. They had a contract for test firing captured German V2 rockets at White Sands. FSK
has since blossomed into worldwide use.

Yep, just getting a "national grid" would have been up there with the 1950s "interstate highway system" wouldn't it? So many things that we take for granted now were actually war requirements.

In late 1942, the success of the FSK power-line carrier equipment attracted the interest of people at Bell Telephone's Muray Hill Laboratories nearing Morristown, NJ. In a trip by my GE supervisor (Ed Kenefake) and me to Bell Lab, we learned from Dr. Edward Teller of the problem of the bottom-anchored German mine with its magnetic detector.

Oppenheimer had pretty much taken over the technical direction of the Manhattan Project. Dr. Teller took on the problem of the German mine since it seemed that we could lose the War by not being able to get troops to England before the development of the bomb was complete.

That's an interesting claim that I haven't seen before. Is there any historical justification for believing that Edward Teller was in fact involved in specifically magnetic mine detection (ie Townsend Brown Central) before he went all H-bomb-y? I mean I suppose Teller *must* have been doing something before inventing giant doomsday planet-destroying machines.

One reason my ears perk up whenever Teller's name appears in weird non-nuclear-doomsday contexts, is that for some reason Stan Deyo fingered him as being part of what Deyo considered to be the "UFO/antigravity illuminati". I don't know why! It's a weird claim to make! And a very specific one! But it shows that some kind of rumour about Teller must have been circulating through some kind of network in the 1970s. Deyo can't have just pulled Teller's name from a dartboard, right? Where did he source that rumour? I mean if I was going to randomly target someone fusion-adjacent running an antigravity project in 1978, I'd have picked John Wheeler, not Teller!

(For what it's worth, Deyo also claimed that Andrei Sakharov was Teller's counterpart as head of a USSR antigravity physics program, which at least has the justification that Sakharov wrote one paper about something somewhat adjacent to a "torsion" interpretation of General Relativity. But it's still a very odd and very thinly sourced claim to make and doesn't seem to have been borne out by history.)

I really want Teller to have spent at least part of his life doing something cool like antigravity and not just very uncool things like H-bombs. I want to believe that. But I'd like proof.

I will settle though for proof that Teller maybe hung out in the same building as Townsend Brown in 1941-ish!

Anyway: if "Morgan" was referring to this Beckwith, could "Beckwith's boss" mean (if not perhaps Teller) then Ed Kenefake?

Sadly "Intrepid's Last Case" is no longer available to borrow from Archive.org, but a Google Books search claims that the text of the book does not include the word "Beckwith".

My first Google hit for Kenefake shows that he was involved with the accelerator at University of Notre Dame University in the 1930s:

https://isnap.nd.edu/assets/186666/firstaccelerator.pdf

Ours was not the very first electrostatic accelerator, of course. It was probably the fourth, and the third one to be located at a university. Still, we have indeed an anniversary worth celebrating, in that we have now had, continuously for fifty years, at least one electrostatic accelerator
functioning on the campus. This is the story of the first one, that ran from about 1935 to 1942

Master-degree candidates were first admitted in 1934; two who came in that year, Edward Kenefake and Alfred Hiegel, plus Richard Schager who arrived the following year, completed the roster of accelerator builders, along with Collins and Coomes. Their three Master Essays make up a good part of the documentation of the accelerator.

Kenefake indeed appears in the 1934 Notre Dame yearbook, "The Dome". https://archive.org/details/thedome1934 ... ew=theater

Edward Kenefake, Notre Dame yearbook 1934

A brief mention of Kenefake in the 1936 The Dome, page 228, lists him as the head engineer of the campus radio station, a bit of a step down from particle accelerators, but maybe not for the 1930s:
https://archive.org/details/thedome1936 ... ew=theater

The staff announcers this year were Joseph Mansfield, Chief Announcer, Arem Jarrett, Gregory Byrnes, John Marbach, and Thomas Radigan. Working with these men were the engineers. Headed by Edward Kenefake this group was composed of Al Hiegel, Hal Vitter, and Dick Shiga.

Kenefake turns out to be a very happy string to search on in the Notre Damus alumni magazine, "Alumnus" (1923-1971) ( https://archives.nd.ed/alumnus/) Interestingly he now seems to be an "Edwin W Kenefake", not an "Edward" as he was in 1934. And he's nicknamed "Red".

October, 1935: Kenefake is a professor: https://archives.nd.edu/Alumnus/VOL_001 ... E_0001.pdf

In Dillon Hall Father James Fogarty is the new governor and his lieutenants are Father Norbert Hoff, Father Frank Cavanaugh, Father William McNamara, Professor Tom Madden and Professor Ed Kenefake.

March, 1937: https://archives.nd.edu/Alumnus/VOL_001 ... E_0006.pdf

Here is a bit of flashy news on Mike Leding. Mike is at the present instrumental, in fact he is the spearhead, in the formation of a Catholic Action group for Schenectady. The idea is new and novel to Schenectady and, consequently, is drawing much favorable reaction, not only from the younger set, but from the Catholic clergy as well. At the last meeting of the group more than 75 were present.
Ed Kenefake has been diligently applying himself to the success of Mike's brain child. Thus, he is able to gain a little diversion from his conscientious attempts at solving his advanced course engineering problems, under the auspices of the Educational Depajrtment of the General
Electric Company.

November, 1938: https://archives.nd.edu/Alumnus/VOL_001 ... E_0002.pdf

"Red Kenefake is connected with the General Electric in Schenectady, New York.

February, 1942:https://archives.nd.edu/Alumnus/VOL_002 ... E_0004.pdf

Forty-eight Notre Dame alumni are working for the General Electric Company, according to Joseph R. Farrell, '15, Camp Hill, Pa., who is himself associated with the company's Philadelphia office. Nearly every class graduated after 1919 is represented.... E. W. Kenefake, '34,
Schenectady

(Any relation to Joseph P Farrell, I wonder....? On this tangent: February 1948: https://archives.nd.edu/Alumnus/VOL_002 ... E_0001.pdf

ATOMIC SPECIALIST Joseph B. Farrell, professor of Chemical Engineering, represented Notre Dame at a Heat Transfer Symposium in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Professor Farrell, who was associated with the Manhattan District Atomic Energy Project during ing World War II, is interested in solving the problem of propelling aircraft by nuclear energy through a development of new methods of heat transfer.

)
Aug-Sep 1957: https://archives.nd.edu/Alumnus/VOL_003 ... E_0005.pdf

The sales manager for Carrier Current equipment of General Electric Company's ; communication products department is Edwin W. Kenefake. Ed joined the GE Company in 1936 and has had a highly successful career with this organization.
Before he became associated with the marketing aspects of the company's communications branch, Ed obtained eight patents on various devices he developed as a design engineer. He has had more than two decades of engineering and marketing experience in the communications field. While his headquarters have been in Syracuse, N. Y., for the past several years, he has traveled extensively in connection with his microwave work. Advisory assignments took him to Venezuela and Guatemala in 1954, and to India and Pakistan in 1956. He was one of the last persons to leave New Delhi when that area was ravaged by an earthquake and flood. He leads a somewhat calmer life in Syracuse with his family of four boys and one girl and his wife Ann Marie.
Mrs. Kenefake helped to organize the ladies auxiliary of the Notre Dame Club of Central New York and is a past president of that group.
Ed has been extremely active in alumni affairs having served as president of the Notre Dame Club of the Capitol District (Albany, N . Y.) and also president of the Notre Dame Club of Central New York (Syracuse)

March 1959: https://www.archives.nd.edu/alumnus/vol ... e_0001.pdf

On November 20, 1958, the Notre Dame Club of Central New Vork paid tribute to Past President ED KENEFAKE at a going away party for
Ed and his wife, Annamarte. About twenty-five couples attended a dinner for the Kenefakes at the Bellevue Country-Club. Ed and his family left us for Lynchburg, Va., around January 1, 1959

September 1970: https://archives.nd.edu/Alumnus/VOL_004 ... E_0005.pdf

Would enjoy receiving some news from EDWIN W. (RED) KENEFAKE. Has anyone heard from NORB MIZERSia lately. Another member of our class I'm sure many remember is DICK CHAPMAN. Is EDDIE KING still living in Canada? Would also like to know what ART CONLEY is doing in Canton, Ohio. Have not heard from RALPH ELSE in eight years.

Looking at Beckwith's, uh, idiosyncratic take on physics, we strike again a very familiar line of thinking... one that has been in the fringe-physics literature at least since Townsend Brown's Structure of Space (1943):

Aether then consists of "far force lines" between all atoms of universal space. Aether therefore has a density of the total quantized number of lines in all directions per cubic volume of space (say, in lines per cubic centimeter).

Aether is a variable -- being highest when holding solids together -- of moderate magnitude within super clusters of galaxies and zero in dark voids of the Universe. If the voids have no force lines, then electromagnetic radiation (including light) cannot go there. The voids may be where we are looking at empty space outside of the Universe.

That's not *quite* word for word, but very close to Townsend's SoS belief that electrons would not be able to exist in empty space far from galaxies, because space itself would have a maximum negative charge. I don't know how Townsend squared this belief with the existence of antimatter, with positively charged positrons which very much don't behave the way he thought electrons did, and with negatively charged antiprotons which we now know from recent CERN experiments to behave just like normal protons in terms of gravity.

But this weird non-GR model of gravity as a sort of "bouyancy" compared with a space field "density" - much like water, and also like diamagnetism... and possibly "dielectricity", if that was ever a concept used by anyone other than Townsend - seems to have started hanging around Navy-adjacent technical spaces since the 1940s. And then NASA-adjacent, um, "German-accented" technical spaces by the 1970s, if we include Rolf Schaffranke. And it was associated with a rescuscitated belief in the ether, which in the mainstream physics world even in the somewhat slapdash 1950s was pretty much instant career suicide. My question is: Where did this odd idea come from, and where did it spread? What social networks existed which WEREN'T mainstream academic physics, but WERE adjacent to US military engineering contractors, and in which it was considered okay to talk about "the ether" like this?

A tribute to Beckwith from his company, on the occasion of his death in October 2009, reveals that he was a real character. (Also a Freemason. Is it possible that Freemasonry was one of those social networks in which otherwise academically-disreputable alternative physics ideas spread between defense contractors?) Born 1919: 14 years younger than Townsend Brown.

https://beckwithelectric.com/news/beckw ... a-tribute/

Beckwith Electric Founder, Robert “Bob” Beckwith Passes – “A Tribute”

Robert W. Beckwith: July 25, 1919 – October 25, 2009

Largo, Florida – October 25, 2009 – Robert W. Beckwith passed away peacefully on Sunday, October 25, 2009. Bob was an honored scientist, inventor, researcher and consultant, with over 50 years as a world leader in the electric power industry and founder of Beckwith Electric Co., Inc., in Largo, Florida.

Bob is survived by his wife, Evelyn Bortner-Beckwith; two children: Tom Beckwith and Barbara Anderson; three grandchildren: Joshua, Sean, and Tiffany Beckwith; two step-grandchildren: Tommy Sanchez and Gerlid Quinones; two stepchildren: Marty Orosz and Robert Bortner; and two step-grandchildren: Alex and Aaron Orosz.

Born in Kent Ohio, Bob received his BSEE from Western Reserve University and an MSEE from Syracuse University. He also held professional engineering licenses in New Jersey, New York and Florida, as well as a Life Fellow membership with the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers).

Bob was a very curious and driven man, who often thought “out of the box”, and had many and varied intellectual and humanitarian interests. He was a Master Mason-3rd Degree, an amateur radio (HAM) operator, an avid artist and art collector. Bob was a philanthropist with numerous contributions to charities, public broadcast stations and the Hopi Indians.

Bob worked for General Electric Power Line Carrier Section in Schenectady, NY. From 1955 to 1961, he was Manager of Computers and Communications at General Electric Company Electronics Research Laboratory in Syracuse, New York. From 1961 to 1967, he was Manager of Utility Systems at Gulton Industries. In 1967, he founded Beckwith Electric Company in Largo, Florida. In 2000, Mr. Beckwith founded Beckwith Electric Research (BER), a division of Beckwith Electric Co. that conducted research at the forefront of present-day engineering and physics.

Along with his consulting work, his career achievements included working with US Defense projects during WWII, developing new high frequency transducers for SONAR applications. In addition, he helped develop transmission lines to supply power for the Manhattan Project. He was awarded over 30 patents on various aspects of the utility industry from 1949-2004.

Bob Beckwith is recognized today for his life-long dedication to the electric power community and his significant scientific contributions and influence on society in general. He will be truly missed by his business associates and family.

and one from the Tampa Bay:
https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2009/1 ... ical-edge/

INVENTOR THRIVED ON THE THEORETICAL EDGE
By Andrew Meacham Former Times Reporter
Published Nov. 5, 2009|Updated Nov. 6, 2009

Robert Beckwith, the owner of a successful electric company, was at home on the fringes of science.

While his employees made devices for generators, he was trying to levitate a quarter. While they were listening to customers, he was driving rods in the ground, listening for earthquakes in the Pacific Ocean.

The 125 employees of Beckwith Electric Co. don't mind if Mr. Beckwith, who died Oct. 25 at 90, lived on the theoretical edge. The 42-year-old company he started hasn't had layoffs in more than a decade.

He invented six of the products his company sells, including a 1990s precursor to the "smart grid" technology envisioned today.

"There was always an intensity in Bob," said engineer Drew Craig, 55. "He had these ideas, and these ideas burned in him."

Mr. Beckwith admired turn-of-the-century inventor Nikola Tesla, who introduced powering machinery with alternating current, a key component in the industrial revolution. He shared Tesla's fascination with magnetism and time travel, but couldn't get a magnetic coil to levitate a coin.

"The joke around the office was, maybe he should have used a dime instead of a quarter," said his son, Tom Beckwith, the company's chief executive.

Mr. Beckwith grew up in Kent, Ohio, an only child in a family with traceable roots to the Mayflower-era American colonies. He worked for General Electric before founding Beckwith Electric in 1967, which designs and manufactures devices for generators and transformers used by utility companies. A tornado destroyed the building in 1992, an event Mr. Beckwith calmly declared an "opportunity to rebuild."

He obtained 30 patents over the years, most of them for nuts-and-bolts methods of regulating electrical current. In recent years he was working on a way to predict earthquakes by measuring underground electrical vibrations. Mr. Beckwith had collected data that seemed to show a pattern between rumblings in the ground - as far away as the Pacific - and electrical signals received.

"We saw that we were getting vibrations that appeared to have some correlation to seismic events," Craig said. If the electrical field around the earth (discovered by Tesla) reacts to shifts in the earth, it could allow for advance warning for earthquakes, Mr. Beckwith believed.

Away from work, Mr. Beckwith and his second wife, Evelyn, enjoyed yearly trips to New Mexico, where he looked for Hopi art at an annual festival and in villages. The paintings he brought back hang on his office walls, interspersed with Mr. Beckwith's own artwork: including a drawing of an iron bridge that emerges from a mountainside and stretches across a gorge - until it stops in midair, suspended by a couple of balloons.

"Robert Beckwith" in a patent search ( https://patents.google.com/?inventor=Ro ... old&page=1 ) gets many false positives, but these ones I think are probably legitimate:

Frequency response circuits (1946/1949) - https://patents.google.com/patent/US246 ... 3A21d208eb
Frequency shift oscillator circuit (1948/1950) - https://patents.google.com/patent/US253 ... 3A8de8a35c
Frequency response circuit (1950) via Canadian GE - https://patents.google.com/patent/CA462 ... 3Ae218ddd0
Frequency response circuits (1950/1955) - https://patents.google.com/patent/US271 ... 3A3540aac3
Frequency shift oscillator circuits (1951) - Canadian, https://patents.google.com/patent/CA477 ... 3Aea2873cd
Communication system having keyed carrier to frequency shift conversion (1952/1957) - https://patents.google.com/patent/US280 ... 3Adcc8e2eb
Method and apparatus for transmission of intelligence (1952/1959) - https://patents.google.com/patent/US287 ... %3A477e4b1
Frequency response circuits (1956) - https://patents.google.com/patent/CA527 ... 3Aee94fe06
Signal transmission circuit (1958/1961) - https://patents.google.com/patent/US299 ... 3A4b90dd49
Radio receiver detection circuit (1958) - https://patents.google.com/patent/CA557 ... 3A9702ef76
Power transmission line switch control system (1967/1970, Gulton Ind Inc) - https://patents.google.com/patent/US349 ... 3Ab93b112b
Variable phase power frequency generator-amplifier (1968/1971) - https://patents.google.com/patent/US359 ... 3Aa4be152a
DC-to-DC converter (1969/1971) - https://patents.google.com/patent/US360 ... 3A84eeeb62
Spike suppressor circuit for analogue recorder (1969/1971) - https://patents.google.com/patent/US358 ... 3A954ff934
Voltage balance relay circuit (1970/1972) - https://patents.google.com/patent/US364 ... 3Ad8681b52
Relay cabinet (1970/1972) - https://patents.google.com/patent/USD22 ... 3A9baff7ef
Phase condition indicating circuit (1972/1975) - https://patents.google.com/patent/CA971 ... 3Aa9aca602
Regulator control (1972/1976) - https://patents.google.com/patent/CA985 ... 3A29e9ab18
Overcurrent relay circuit (1974/1975) - https://patents.google.com/patent/US388 ... 3Aa6d47d40
Synchronizing check relay (1978/1980) - https://patents.google.com/patent/US421 ... 3A53e672b3
Power transfer relay circuitry and method of phase measurement (1979/1981, Beckwith Electric Co) - https://patents.google.com/patent/US425 ... 3A84a94b43
Method and apparatus for providing signals from LTC transformer... (1981/1982) - https://patents.google.com/patent/US436 ... 3Ac039a9bf

(many many more proasaic AC phase stuff patents through the 1990s and then, wham...... the honey badger mode kicks in...

He hits 77 in 1996 and writes his weird magnum opus, "Hypotheses" ( https://www.stealthskater.com/Documents/Beckwith_03.pdf )

And then in 1999 at age 80 his patents go honey badger too...

Direct uses of neutrino energy (1999/2001) https://patents.google.com/patent/CA228 ... 3Abfce9921
Apparatus for obtaining worldwide data on the Earth's resonance (1999/2000) https://patents.google.com/patent/CA228 ... 3A13f76b93
Apparatus for transmuting Nitrogen 14 into Carbon 14 (2000/2001) https://patents.google.com/patent/EP115 ... 3Ae80c2989
Infinite speed space communications using information globes (2001/2002) - https://patents.google.com/patent/US200 ... 3A99fa4131
Synchronous Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) receiver (1998/2002) - https://patents.google.com/patent/US641 ... 3Abed87226
Neutrino light to photon light converting matrix (1998/2005) - https://patents.google.com/patent/US689 ... 3A6fe45205
Superconducting carbon 12 atomic strings and methods of manufacture of cables... (2004/2006) - https://patents.google.com/patent/US200 ... 3Abbc302e3
Neutrino telescope (2005/2007) - https://patents.google.com/patent/US200 ... 3A8a06553c
System for removing energy from tornados and hurricanes (2006/2008) - https://patents.google.com/patent/US200 ... 3Aa8d30fe8
Neutrino receiver (2005/2007) - https://patents.google.com/patent/US200 ... 3A6b34bb14
Apparatus and method for sensing Earth's inner ELF signals... (2006/2007) - https://patents.google.com/patent/US200 ... 3A90487781

The "Neutrino" related patents smell quite a bit Townsend Brown-y. Or perhaps Gregory Hodowanec-y.

Now imagine that Beckworth isn't the only one who has a personal trajectory like this, and that these honey badger level 11 physics ideas and many others have been kicking around in the minds of several other highly placed defense-adjacent engineers much like Beckworth since the 1940s. It doesn't mean that any of these ideas are necessarily correct or implementable, but, if enough people in overlapping social circles have been thinking and talking about stuff like this for decades, that maybe explains quite a lot of the weird chatter that sometimes pops up to the surface....

Nate