Hopper-WJ · Source catalogue

Patent for a non-inductive coil: many parallel insulated conductors in series, packed into a solid cylinder, with half the sections carrying current up and half down so that net magnetic flux cancels. Hooper postulates that each current-carrying electron carries a loop of magnetic flux with it, so the flux moves at the electron drift velocity V and gives a motional electric field E = B x V. In the opposed-current package both B and V reverse, so B x V keeps its sign and the two sets add, giving a field he says is 'not magnetic, not electrostatic' and 'immune to electrostatic shielding'. He proposes measuring it with a cylindrical capacitor and electrometer (P.D. = B V l), and so measuring electron drift velocity. He argues the field polarizes neutral atoms and attracts matter like gravity, that cryogenic or superconducting operation could raise drift velocity (and field) by about 10^10, and that FIG. 3 (pulsed coil and beam balance) and FIG. 4 (steady non-inductive disk over a balance) could change the weight of an object, to weightlessness or antigravity. Further proposed uses: spacecraft lift, desalination, signalling and power transmission through barriers. The patent contains no measured numbers. First-person experimental assertions (flux moves with the charges; immunity to electrostatic shielding; electrometer measurement; AC operation works) are given without any description of the experiments. All gravity, weight and antigravity effects are phrased as predictions. Printing errors fixed by the Certificate: mu0 as 10^17 corrected to 10^-7; drift velocity 3.6x10^12 cm/s corrected to 3.6x10^-2 cm/s. The five claims cover only hardware (the non-inductive cylindrical coil, insulation and single folded wire, cryogenic cooling to superconductivity, winding on a hollow tube); none claims a gravity or motional-field effect. The scanned copy carries unattributed hand annotations.

Key claims

• Magnetic flux around a current-carrying conductor moves along the conductor with the drift velocity of the electrons, producing a motional electric field E = B x V.
• A non-inductive winding with half its conductors carrying current in each direction has no measurable net magnetic field, yet the B x V fields of the two sets add, giving an isolated motional electric field.
• This B x V field is immune to electrostatic shielding.
• The voltage on a cylindrical capacitor around the device equals B V l, so the electron drift velocity can be measured directly with an electrometer.
• A converging B x V field polarizes neutral atoms and exerts an attractive force on neutral matter equivalent to gravity.
• At cryogenic or superconducting temperatures the electron drift velocity, and so the B x V field, rises by up to about 10^10.
• A uniform B x V field from a collapsing-flux coil (FIG. 3) or a steady non-inductive disk (FIG. 4) could increase, cancel or reverse the polarization induced by Earth's gravity, so an object's weight would rise, vanish or reverse (antigravity).
• The B x V field can pass through solid barriers, enabling signalling, power transfer and detonation through concrete or armor.
• Desalination (FIG. 8): a coil on a hollow tube drives Na+ and Cl- ions of flowing brine apart by the B x V field, so the stream can be separated (stated as a use; no test reported).

Relevance: Primary statement of Hooper's device and theory in his own words. Gives the physical model, equations, drift-velocity figures and what is claimed vs only predicted. The claims show the legal protection is for a non-inductive coil, not for any demonstrated gravity effect. QE addition: the desalination use (FIG. 8) is a concrete, testable application stated in the folder patent itself, and depends on the shielding/field claims. The related patent US 3,656,013 (Investigator file, see entry below) repeats desalination and adds arc-plasma and 'transmuting hydrogen into helium' passages.

Mainstream conflict: Mainstream electrodynamics has no flux that travels with the electrons (magnetic field lines have no identity or velocity), and the cancelled-field arrangement is the standard non-inductive (bifilar) winding with no net external effect. In mainstream theory the motional field E = v x B is cancelled or screened by induced charges in conductors, and gravity is not an electric polarization effect. The drift-velocity enhancement at low temperature at fixed current density is not supported by v = J/(n e). Weight change and antigravity from such fields conflict with the equivalence principle and general relativity. These are reviewers' judgements to be weighed; no experimental data are given in the patent to support or refute them.

An autobiographical technical essay (pp.1-8, footnotes 1-9), one-paragraph Summary (p.9) and resume (p.10). Hooper (born 1895; PhD California 1925; Professor of Physics at Principia College 1931-1964; later President of Electrodynamic Gravity, Inc., Sarasota) tells how he arrived at the B x V theory. (1) In WWII he tried to build an aircraft drift/ground-speed meter measuring the voltage induced by motion across the vertical component of Earth's field. Accepted theory said the motional field B x V would be cancelled inside the aircraft by an equal and opposite electrostatic field from wall charges. His analysis agreed on magnitude but he says 'shielding experiments very carefully planned and carried out proved conclusively that the cancellation was not actual but only virtual' and that the B x V field was 'immune to every kind of shielding'. The device did not work, and the experiments are not described (apparatus, readings absent); he refers to Chapter 3 of his unpublished book. He notes that Earth's gravity is the only other field known to be unshieldable and suggests a kinship. (2) In 1957 Joel E. Fisher reported a small gravity-meter signal over a spinning rotor of permanent magnets. Fisher and Hooper built rotors and presented papers to the APS in 1958-59 (Hooper, 'Equivalence of the Gravitational Field and a Motional Electric Field', Chicago, 28-29 Nov 1958). Then 'came the disappointment': a heavy sound absorber between rotor and meter removed the signal, and a high-pitched sound or a buzzer alone deflected the meter, so 'our joint project collapsed'. Both men nonetheless kept the belief that a link exists because of the shared immunity to shielding. (3) After retirement, with a small corporation, an electromagnet rotor and then an all-electric generator of over four thousand parallel conductors in series, bent 180 degrees at the ends, held in epoxy in a cylinder inside a grounded 1/8 inch stainless steel pail. Using a Keithley 640 vibrating capacitor electrometer and Tektronix 545B oscilloscope, he reports voltage induced on a cylindrical air capacitor around the pail, taken as the B x V field passing through the shield, with no measurable magnetic flux and acoustic disturbances eliminated. (4) He claims the generator shows Oersted's flux moves at the electron drift velocity (citing Cullwick 1957), can measure drift velocity and conduction-electron density, and has shown drift velocity is greater at low temperature at large current density. He argues via Jeans' theorem that a non-uniform field must attract matter, that an intensified (superconducting, liquid-helium) version should simulate gravity, cause weightlessness and anti-gravity, and that electrical energy 'available everywhere' could be tapped. He cites Brauner (Endeavour 1969) and Burridge (American Mercury 1958) for 'experimental evidences that the agency responsible for gravity is an electric field'. The essay gives no measured numbers beyond 'over four thousand' conductors and instrument model numbers; no voltages, currents, field strengths, controls or error estimates. Thermal and switching-transient pickups are not discussed. Later planned experiments (attraction of matter; superconducting version) are announced, with no result recorded here. QE UPDATE from the deep read of the New Horizons manuscript (research/files, not a manifest document): the 'shielding experiments very carefully planned and carried out' that the essay does not describe appear in ch.3 of the manuscript as three 1954-era closed-circuit tests (Ironing Board, dated 26 Mar 1954, with a 100-turn coil and microvolt meter; Trapeze; Aluminum Box), not as WWII tests [read: deep/research-hooper-NewHorizons-main.md section 2]. The WWII drift-meter plan was, per the manuscript preface, 'reviewed by the U.S. Bureau of Standards, and its workability confirmed under a certain restriction' that it would be inoperable inside a metal-clad aircraft [read: NewHorizons p.9]. The essay's generator measurement is described in the manuscript ch.7 with generator, capacitor and electrometer all inside one grounded stainless-steel box; Hooper gives the field as about 10^-2 V/m at 30 A [read: NewHorizons pp.71-73].

Key claims

• During WWII the B x V motional field in an aircraft was not cancelled by wall charges as accepted theory says; the cancellation is only 'virtual', and the field is immune to shielding of every kind (experiments not described).
• In 1957-59 Fisher and Hooper's spinning-magnet rotor gave gravity-meter deflections, but a sound absorber removed the signal and a buzzer alone reproduced it (Hooper reports this as the collapse of the project).
• An all-electric generator of over 4000 series-connected parallel conductors in a grounded 1/8 inch stainless steel pail produces no measurable magnetic flux yet charges an external cylindrical air capacitor, which Hooper attributes to a B x V field passing through the shield.
• Oersted's magnetic flux moves at the electron drift velocity, and the generator measures electron drift velocity and conduction-electron density.
• Electron drift velocity at large current density is greater at low temperature than at room temperature.
• A sufficiently intense non-uniform B x V field (superconducting, liquid-helium cooled) would attract all matter like gravity, and could make objects weightless or repelled (anti-gravity).
• The electric energy 'available everywhere on the earth' could be converted into useful power.

Relevance: Gives the history and the experimental reasoning behind the patent: the WWII origin of the 'immunity to shielding' claim, the failed Fisher rotor gravity-meter work (with its acoustic-artifact result recorded by the inventor himself), the generator measurement setup, and the inventor's resume. Names the places to find numbers (1958 APS paper, 1970 Boulder proceedings p.483, Bull. APS 15(2):209, the New Horizons book). The essay's undescribed shielding experiments, its generator and its energy claim are filled in (by Hooper's own words) in New Horizons ch.3, ch.5-7; see the related-document entries below. His stated energy mechanism is ultra-high-frequency pulsating atomic B x V fields harvested with 'ultra-high frequency rectifiers' (ch.6, p.69), with no frequency or power magnitude given.

Mainstream conflict: Mainstream electrodynamics predicts that a motional field is accompanied by induced charges that cancel it inside conductors; a field passing through a grounded steel shield and an unshieldable field linked to gravity are not part of accepted physics. A signal on a capacitor outside a grounded pail near a high-current winding has mundane candidate sources (induction from current switching, thermal and contact EMFs) that the essay does not discuss. The reviewers decide; the essay offers no data to settle it. The inventor's own acoustic finding is evidence against the rotor-gravity result.

Hooper's fullest statement. Preface: the WWII aircraft drift-meter plan was reviewed by the US Bureau of Standards (no date, report number or reviewer given) and judged workable except that it would be inoperable inside a metal-clad aircraft, because the motional field was assumed electrostatic and so shielded; Hooper consulted 'some of the foremost thinkers in physics' and says none could point to experimental evidence for that. Ch.1/3 quote a letter from an unnamed National Bureau of Standards colleague (two equal and opposite fields, or no field at all, are both 'not in conflict with anything observed experimentally') and Smythe 1939 p.500 (the induced emfs in the shields 'will set up electric fields tending to counteract the fields induced inside'); Hooper also reports a paraphrased 1944 conversation with Fermi. Ch.3 describes three shielding experiments, all closed-loop circuits with a microvolt or galvanometer detector: Ironing Board (26 Mar 1954, Principia College; 19 trials, mean 10.64 microvolts observed vs 10.76 calculated, 1.1% low), Trapeze (six nested soft-iron pipes, qualitative) and Aluminum Box (qualitative). Ch.5: gravity as the difference between the pull and the push of a convergent B x V field on an atom's nucleus and electrons; Bohr-model orbital field E = -q r0 w^2 / r (1/r) and spin field falling as 1/d^3; orbital frequency 6.8e15 per s; a self-described 'very elementary and non-rigorous' derivation of F = G M1 N2 / r^2 by chained proportionality assumptions. Ch.5 end and ch.6: energy from the atoms of the earth by 'ultra-high frequency rectifiers' (no frequency or power given); anti-gravity by depolarizing then repolarizing a platform. Moray passage (p.68): Moray's claimed 50 kW, Dr Carl Eyring (BYU) concluding the energy came 'at least in part' from field energy 'in the earth itself' (Eyring quote taken from Moray's own book). Ch.7: the all-electric generator inside a grounded stainless-steel box together with the capacitor and Keithley 640 electrometer; field about 10^-2 V/m at 30 A; a two-magnet lecture demo; dry-ice operation said to 'approximately double' V, followed by a sentence saying V 'does not increase with decreasing temperature' (internally inconsistent as printed; dry ice is about -78 C, text says -50 C).

Key claims

• The 1954 Ironing Board experiment (closed 100-turn coil, shielded, microvolt meter) reproduced the calculated v x B emf to 1.1%, and Hooper concludes shielding does not diminish it.
• The WWII drift-meter plan was reviewed by the US Bureau of Standards and judged inoperable inside a conducting cavity; Hooper says no experimental evidence supported the assumption that the motional field is electrostatic.
• Gravity is the difference between the pull and the push of a convergent B x V field on the nucleus and electrons of each atom.
• Atoms emit ultra-high-frequency pulsating B x V induction fields, and a receiver with ultra-high-frequency rectifiers could convert them to usable power (Moray may have tapped the same source).
• The generator's field passes through a grounded stainless-steel housing and is about 10^-2 V/m at 30 A.

Relevance: Supplies what the two folder documents leave out: the contemporaneous mainstream response (NBS review, NBS letter, Smythe), the detector geometry of every shielding experiment, Hooper's energy and gravity mechanisms and the Moray/Eyring link. It also shows that in ch.7 the detector sits inside the same grounded box as the source.

Mainstream conflict: In the three ch.3 experiments the detector is a closed circuit part of which cuts the earth's field, which standard theory predicts regardless of shielding. No ch.3 or ch.7 test places an open-circuit detector outside a closed grounded shield. Mainstream theory has no gravity from B x V fields, and the ch.5 derivation assumes Q^2 proportional to M1 N2. These are for the reviewers to weigh.

The appendix bundles four items. (1) Hooper's 'Similarities' article: the generator (4020 conductors, 9 in long, #11 copper, 924 m of wire, up to 30 A, 3300 W, 3.7 ohm), Figure 1 (220 VAC, isolation transformer, centre-grounded balanced rectified supply, shielded cables, generator in a grounded cabinet, electrometer read-out outside), the formula PD = (mu0 n I V / 2 pi) ln(r2/r1) with PD = 5 microvolts at 10 A giving V = 1.78 cm/s against a classical 1.762e-2 cm/s (reconciled by a 100-fold decrease in n 'as indicated by Fermi-Dirac statistics'), and six control experiments (thermoelectric: rapid up-and-down current sweeps; a larger outer capacitor with no result stated; stray flux below about half a gauss; charge carried in on the lead wires, cured by the balanced supply; polarity; an unnamed 'disinterested expert' with a Tektronix oscillograph who confirmed the Keithley readings). The 'very high composite frequency nature' sentence that explains why the field was never detected is on p.85. (2) US 3,656,013 reprint. (3) US 3,610,971 reprint with weight experiments given only as designs ('should'). (4) Gibson 1983 with Tables 1-5. The texts of the 1958 Chicago, 1963 St. Louis, Bull. APS 1970 and Boulder p.483 abstracts are NOT in the appendix; only citations of the last two (p.89). No weight, balance or gravimeter result is reported anywhere in the appendix; Gibson mentions only that rotor measurements with a capacitor or a gravity meter were swamped by magnetic fields, vibration and noise.

Key claims

• PD of about 5 microvolts at 10 A across the capacitor implies an electron drift velocity of 1.78 cm/s, 100 times the classical 1.762e-2 cm/s.
• The generator's field was not due to thermoelectric effects, stray flux or lead-wire charge (the five/six control tests listed), and a disinterested expert confirmed the readings with an oscillograph.
• The field readily passes through 1/8 in and 1/4 in stainless-steel sheets (the capacitor plates).
• Shielding experiments are in the manuscript (ref. 4), not the appendix.

Relevance: Gives the generator's design, the formula and the controls in Hooper's own words, and states plainly that no open-circuit control, dummy-generator run or weight observation is reported.

Mainstream conflict: The model treats the 4020-conductor bundle as one B(r) = mu0 n I / 2 pi r although half the currents run each way; the 100-fold adjustment to n is an assumption; the stated steady DC deflection under AC current is not explained. For the reviewers.

Account by Hooper's secretary and laboratory assistant. She and her husband Warren (who funded the work 1968-71) have a commercial stake and the manuscript is sold under the company's copyright; she says she was present at every experiment. The only source of the 1969 data tables. Tables (microvolts across the capacitor): room-temperature DC at 10 A gave 7, 10 and 15 microvolts on 4 Feb, 11 Feb and 19 Jul 1969, and at 30 A 60, 90 and 125 (140 later the same day as the generator warmed). Hot generator at 30 A gave 220 microvolts. Added resistance at fixed current raised the reading with the supply voltage: at 13 A, 15 microvolts at 48 V (3.7 ohm, nothing added) against 100 microvolts at 160 V (12.3 ohm, rheostat or photofloods alike); at 30 A, 60 (110 V), 200 (5.3 ohm, 160 V) and 360 microvolts (7.5 ohm, 225 V). Dry ice (5 h) gave 95 microvolts at 30 A, and after 17 h 37-45 microvolts with the readings fitting PD proportional to I^4, and circuit resistance fell from 3.7 to 2.3 ohm. AC runs were nearly linear, -4.5 microvolts at 10 A. Admitted problems: a thick-plate/thin-plate charge reversal; a supply imbalance (100 V, 26 A: -11 then +17 microvolts one way, +28 the other way, 11 microvolts apart) that was cured with a balanced supply, after the tabulated measurements were taken ('we did not redo them because ... the unbalance was always a negative factor ... never more'); day-to-day variation by a factor of about 2, attributed partly to 8-10 degrees of room temperature. Inventor-side arguments against artefacts are recorded (up-and-down current scans, hot-generator 'jump back at 25 amps', same effect with any form of resistance, steady needle). No dummy generator, open-circuit or reverse-wound control, calibration or noise level is reported. Weight or attraction observation: none. She burned out the vacuum tube on her only attempt after Hooper's death (1971) and says no one was continuing the work.

Key claims

• At the same 13 A the reading rose from 15 to 100 microvolts when the supply voltage rose from 48 V to 160 V by adding resistance, whether by rheostat or photofloods.
• The reading follows PD proportional to I^2 at room temperature DC and I^4 in dry ice, and is almost linear in AC.
• The supply imbalance always lowered the readings, so the unbalanced tabulated readings understate the effect.
• The hot-generator increase was not wholly thermoelectric, because the reading jumped back at 25 A.
• The 10 A room-temperature reading was 7, 10 and 15 microvolts on three days, not a fixed 5 microvolts.

Relevance: The only raw 1969 data; contains both the artefact-suggestive pattern (reading tracks supply voltage and temperature) and the inventor's rebuttals, which must both stay in the record.

Mainstream conflict: The reading's rise with supply voltage and heat at fixed current is what lead-wire potential, charging and thermoelectric pickup would give; interpreted by Hooper/Gibson as fewer conduction electrons. For the reviewers.

Rotating-flux machine. Contains no readings anywhere. FIG. 11: a U-shaped yoke with two axial permanent magnets and a brass rod; a conductor swept through the gap gives a galvanometer deflection; the same deflection, opposite sign, when the magnets turn with the yoke; none when yoke and conductor are fixed and only the magnets turn (all qualitative; Faraday-disc/unipolar puzzle). Counter-rotating compound rotor in a grounded high-permeability box 70, meant to give a cumulative B x V field outside the box 'demonstrable' by a capacitor and electrometer (Fig. 9); the demonstration is described as one that 'might' be done, not as performed. Second embodiment: desalination, sodium ions driven to the centre and chloride outward, with no data. 'Transmuting hydrogen into helium' with an arc in the tube, B x V confining the arc, by adding protons and neutrons one at a time; no mechanism for supplying neutrons, no yield. Third embodiment: no moving parts, three-phase half-wave rectified currents at about 1000 Hz. Claims 1-6 cover hardware only (rotor in a grounded conducting enclosure; detector means; the yoke apparatus).

Key claims

• A rotating array of parallel electromagnets in a grounded conducting enclosure produces a B x V field outside the enclosure that a capacitor and electrometer could detect (not shown as performed).
• In the FIG. 11 yoke apparatus the induced emf appears when the yoke or the conductor turns but not when only the magnets turn.
• A B x V field separates Na+ and Cl- in flowing brine (desalination).
• A B x V field confines an arc and, by adding protons and neutrons to hydrogen, transmutes hydrogen into helium.

Relevance: Holds the desalination, arc-plasma and transmutation claims that appear in no other reviewed document, and the one grounded-box-with-outside-detector design (unperformed).

Mainstream conflict: Hydrogen-to-helium transmutation needs a neutron supply and passage over the Coulomb barrier, neither addressed. The FIG. 11 result is the classic Faraday-disc/homopolar puzzle with no stated controls. For the reviewers.

NASA's only test found. Four flat 30 cm self-canceling coils (printed circuit, 26 AWG, 10 AWG, 4 AWG) at two currents each, ambient and frozen in ice, with a 555 g acrylic disk on a balance beam (threshold 20 mg), a servo accelerometer (40 microgal threshold) and a magnetometer. On/off toggling was used rather than warm-up. Result: no weight change or gravity change beyond the error bars, freezing made no difference; the surface-charge readings were 'too erratic to reach definite conclusions' and 'highly suspect'. The coils were not perfectly self-canceling (up to 895 mG net field at 100 A), which moved the accelerometer by -0.8 microgal per mG and was subtracted. Table I 'predicted Hooper effect' values (relative units, i^2 p/A scaled; 14 to 149) appear about 10 times smaller than i^2 p/A as the paper defines it (unstated unit factor). 'Rise of the nonferrous disk' (p.5) is a conditional phrase referring to the disk of the patent's weight-change FIG. 4; NASA reports no Hooper weight reading and says Hooper's own experiments 'concentrated instead on measuring the charge build-ups'; its suspicion that any rise was convection from coil heat is not tested. NASA did not test Hooper's main apparatus (the vertical wire bundle) or his warm-up procedure. Mead 1972 and Cravens 1990 are cited as survey references; Cravens (ref. 4) is the one cited for Hooper's work. The authors write that 'there is no history of this simple test ever being conducted independently' before theirs.

Key claims

• No weight change or gravity change was observed with any of four self-canceling flat coils at the tested currents, ambient or frozen.
• Hooper's patent claims cover construction only; his documented experiments measured surface charge, not weight.
• Any genuine effect below the apparatus thresholds (20 mg on 555 g) would be too small for propulsion.
• Hooper's observations may have been a misinterpretation of thermal effects (the authors' suspicion, not tested).

Relevance: The only documented independent test of the weight-change configuration; its limits (not the vertical-bundle generator, not warm-up, modest thresholds, imperfect cancellation) matter for how far it settles the matter. It is an agency's characterization of Hooper's claims.

Mainstream conflict: none (it reports a null result)

Thesis analysing Hooper's idea. The 'Montana State duplication' of Hooper's shielding experiments (ref. 24) is a 1985 EE 470 course paper by T. Lamb summarising experiments by J. C. Stover and Klicker himself (so a student, interested-party summary); it describes shielding of a conductor-plus-ammeter detector (and the capacitor-electrometer detector) by a grounded Faraday cage and 'magnetostatic shielding', with no apparatus, magnitudes or results given. Klicker could not reproduce Hooper's generator: hardware and instrument limits 'forced an analytical investigation' (p.5), and an electron-beam experiment was abandoned (p.54). He writes that Hooper 'with possibly one exception' (Graneau, a private remark) is the only person to have measured the effect. Statement on shielding: the only way to shield from a motional field is a magnetic shield 'around the source of the magnetic flux'; a shield around the detector 'only redirects the flux', which differs from Hooper's 'immune to every kind of shielding, magnetic or electrostatic'. His only number for Hooper's generator is a calculation: 14 microvolts at 30 A with v = 0.0176 m/s (arithmetic checks to 1.42e-5 V), compared 'favorably' with unspecified measured results. His 'one half' flux velocity is a fit parameter: matching flux velocity to the carrier velocity fails by a factor 2 against the baseline (special relativity / Moon-Spencer Ampere law), so he sets flux velocity = half the carrier velocity, explicitly 'assumed that the baseline is correct, and only experimental evidence can determine if this is true'; with that factor Hooper's 14 microvolts would become 7. Abstract: 'This author has not been able to disprove Hooper's claims.'

Key claims

• A motional field is shieldable only by a high-permeability shield around the source of flux, not around the detector.
• The Montana State duplication of Hooper's shielding experiments is a one-sentence report of a student course paper by the thesis author's colleague.
• If flux moves with the carriers at half their drift velocity, the motional-field force matches special relativity to second order and the Moon-Spencer Ampere law.
• Hooper's generator gives 14 microvolts at 30 A when calculated with v = 0.0176 m/s.

Relevance: Independent analytic treatment by a sympathetic author; shows that the 'immunity to shielding' claim is qualified even by its supporters, that no independent measurement of the generator exists in this document, and that the flux-velocity factor is theory-matching.

Mainstream conflict: The author presents the model as equivalent to relativity to second order, not additional to it. For the reviewers.