LeBon-G: Investigator site log

Run 2026-10-08 (first run, Step I)

Web time used: 9.6 minutes of searching and browsing (timer 1791518069 to about 1791518645; cap 10 minutes). Not a deep dive. Chrome (claude-in-chrome) was used for Google and for script-rendered or script-refusing pages; pages that allowed it were fetched by curl into research/pages/ and grepped. One cross-project check (not web): the owner's Moray texts in review/Morray-TH/_text were grepped for Le Bon, because web snippets showed Moray quoting Le Bon.

Keywords tried

All queries of this run (Google unless stated): 1. "Le Bon" "Moray" "Evolution of Matter" 2. "Sea of Energy" Moray "Le Bon noted the emission by all bodies" 3. Moray "Sea of Energy" "Le Bon" "immense" 4. "Girard Le Beau" "Evolution of Matter" 5. "Le Bon" "lumière noire" 1896 "Comptes rendus" 6. Mary Jo Nye "Gustave LeBon's black light" 7. "de Heen" Liège "Le Bon" dissociation matière 8. Einstein "Le Bon" letter Gustave "intra-atomic" OR "énergie intra-atomique" 9. "Einstein, un siècle contre lui" "Le Bon" chapitre XI 10. Einstein "Le Bon" 1922 letter "Collected Papers" OR site:einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu 11. Izarn "Le Bon" phosphorescence invisible sulfure de zinc infrarouge 12. site:borderlandsciences.org "Le Bon" OR "Le Beau" 13. "fonds Gustave Le Bon" OR "archives de Gustave Le Bon" laboratoire rue Vignon physique 14. "Gustave Le Bon" brevet OR patent inventor 1890..1920 "Le Bon" Paris appareil 15. "P. de Heen" "Le Bon" radiations "Institut de physique" Liège 1900 OR 1901 OR 1902 16. "Le Bon" infrared stimulation OR quenching phosphor "zinc sulphide" OR "calcium sulphide" history 1899 17. Moray FBI "Le Bon" library book "Evolution of Matter" Salt Lake 18. "Evolution of Matter and Energy" "Le Beau" OR "Le Bon" -Vassilatos 19. "Le Bon" "lumière noire" réfutée OR critique Becquerel 1897 infrarouge "Revue scientifique" 20. "Homemade Lightning" Ford "Le Bon" "Evolution of Forces" calcium sulphide 21. "Le Bon" Gustave "Académie royale de Belgique" associé élu 22. Nodon 1902 "Le Bon" priorité "radiations" métaux lumière électroscope 23. "Le Bon" "rayons N" OR "N-rays" "black light" Blondlot Nye history 24. nobelprize.org nomination archive "Gustave Le Bon" physics 1903 - archive.org advancedsearch: creator:(Le Bon, Gustave); title:(comptes rendus hebdomadaires) AND year:[1896 TO 1903] - Gallica SRU: dc.creator all "Le Bon, Gustave" and dc.date < 1932; (gallica all "phosphorescence invisible" and gallica all "Le Bon") - blocked - HathiTrust full text: "Girard Le Beau"; "Evolution of Matter and Energy" (blocked) - Open Library: "evolution of matter and energy"; author=Le Beau q=matter

Not yet tried (for the next run): "Le Bon" "Berget" 1897 Lippmann; "énergie intra-atomique" "Revue scientifique" 1903; "Le Bon" "Bouty" Sorbonne laboratoire; "Le Bon" "Ostende" 1907 conférence; "Le Bon" assistant (name of his laboratory assistant); "Le Bon" "Kelvin" radium 1904 retraction; Legge translator "F. Legge" Le Bon correspondence; "Dan Winter" Le Bon photocopies; Moray "Radiant Energy" 1926 "Le Bon"; "Moray" FBI file; Le Bon in German ("Le Bon" "schwarzes Licht" / "Entstehung und Vergehen der Materie" 1908 German translation); Lenard and Le Bon; Niepce de Saint-Victor and Le Bon plagiarism charge; Académie royale de Belgique annuaire Le Bon élu.

Leads for review

1. The inventor's own work

• 1896 primary note "La lumière noire", CR 122 (1896) 188-190, read from the IA scan: light from a paraffin lamp or the sun passes through cardboard, iron and copper "n'est qu'une question de temps"; name "lumière noire" "en raison de leur invisibilité pour l'œil"; heat and stored light "entièrement éliminées". Bears on claims 4 and 5 (what was claimed in 1896 versus the 1908 re-sorting). [web] research/2026-10-08-archive-org.md
• 1899 primary notes (presented by Poincaré): CR 128, 16 Jan 1899, invisible residual luminescence of CaS: exposures 2 h (3 days), 12 h (15 days), 30 h (25 days), 40 days (6 months), traces after 60 days (18 months); and 30 Jan 1899, transparency of opaque bodies to long waves (downloaded, not read). Claim 4. [web]
• Le Bon's letters to Poincaré (9 Jan 1899: infra-red maximum near 1 μ on sulphides, sensitivity "de l'ordre de celle du gélatine bromure pour le bleu"; 29 Nov 1902: quinine-sulphate discharge in a closed box "énormément réduite", ions must circulate). Claims 3 and 4. [web] research/2026-10-08-henripoincarepapers.md
• La Naissance et l'Évanouissement de la Matière (1908, Mercure de France; Ostend lecture, Aug 1907), Gutenberg #67253: Le Bon's short statement of the general law of dissociation. Claims 1-3. [web]
• Full French texts at gustavelebon.org and French first editions on IA (1905-1907) for checking Legge's translation. Claims 1-2. [web]
• Le Bon-Einstein letters, 1922 (Le Bon to Einstein 9 Apr 1922, CPAE vol.13; Einstein's replies 30 June and 13 July 1922 per Moatti): Le Bon pressing intra-atomic energy as "un fait d'expérience et non d'hypothèse mathématique". Claims 2 and 5. Texts not yet read. [web]
• Le Bon's papers at IMEC (fonds 851GLB, incl. "documentation scientifique" and correspondence). Claims 3-5; the deciding record for laboratory method. [web]

2. Supporting information by others

• Reproduction at the Sorbonne, 1897: Poincaré (letter c. April 1897, summary) saw with Lippmann "M. Berget, qui a reproduit l'expérience de Le Bon"; Le Bon's CR note of 5 Apr 1897 says his experiment on light acting on metals was reproduced in Lippmann's laboratory by his préparateurs. Documented in two related sources (Le Bon's note; Poincaré's letter as summarised by the editors from Nye's notes). Claim 3/5. [web]
• Pierre de Heen (Liège) repeated and adopted Le Bon's dissociation experiments and compared them in importance with X-rays, according to Le Bon (L'Évolution de la matière, introduction; La Naissance..., 1908). De Heen's own memoir (1912, Mémoires de l'Académie royale de Belgique) cites Le Bon; not yet read. Claim 1/5. [web]
• M. Izarn's letter (Forces p.350 footnote): not identified on the web (query 11 negative). Claim 4.
• Poincaré as reviewer: checked protocols (equal exposure, light leaks, ebonite de-fogging), presented four of about fifteen notes (1899, 1902), and in 1903 framed Le Bon's reservoir as stored potential energy of sub-atoms (endothermic formation; "comment peut-elle être si extraordinairement stable ?"). Claims 2, 4, 5. [web]
• Le Bon right against H. Becquerel on polarisation of uranium rays (May 1897, Jan 1899); Becquerel 1900 cites Le Bon's negative result, his 1903 book drops the credit (Martins). Claim 5. [web]
• 1903 Nobel nomination in physics (Nobel archive no. 18-0; Kragh). Nominator not yet read. Claim 5. [web]
• Moray's own use of Le Bon: Moray's 1926 Radiant Energy (pp.41-42) and Sea of Energy cite Le Bon by name, paraphrase the Evolution of Matter introduction, and list both books in the bibliography. This documents claim 6's core in Moray's own words, which the 1990 review did not quote. [read: review/Morray-TH/_text] research/2026-10-08-local-Morray-TH.md

3. Closely related work

• Moray transmutation programme (Research Institute, Inc., 1964-65: "Recovery of Minerals from Low Grade Ore by High Energy Bombardment"; Hooper's endorsement) - the "transmutation experiments" Vassilatos links to Le Bon's bombardment experiments. Interested parties. Claim 6. [web] rexresearch
• Moray direct-energy-conversion proposal (Air Force Materials Command file): credits "Dr. Gustave LeBon" with direct conversion "as early as 1897". Claim 6. [read: Morray-TH]
• Oliver Lodge's fin-de-siècle views "congruent" with Le Bon's ether cosmology (Kragh). Claim 1. [web]
• N-rays (Blondlot, 1903): historians group black light with N-rays (Kragh; Nye; a Millikan paper); Poincaré discussed N-ray plate measurements with Le Bon in 1903. Recorded as those sources' characterization. Claims 4-5. [web]
• Later alternative-science uses: William R. Lyne, Pentagon Aliens (techniques "rediscovered" from Le Bon); R. A. Ford, Homemade Lightning (Le Bon's calcium sulphide experiment); Resines (BSRF) "electrogravitic experiment by Dr Le Bon ... about 1907"; Vassilatos, "Induced Radioactivity by Solar Light" (JBR 1997; magnesium plate under focused sunlight). Claims 3, 4, 6. [web]
• Henri Becquerel 1897: black light = infra-red (editors of the Poincaré Papers). Le Bon's own 1908 sorting assigns part of it to infra-red. Claim 4. [web]

4. Historical record

• Le Bon's archive exists and is open: IMEC fonds 851GLB (Abbaye d'Ardenne, Caen), given by Sylvie Carnot. This bears directly on the 1990 review's "All records of Professor Le Bon have been stricken" and "books removed from all worthy libraries"; the books are also on IA and Gutenberg. Absence-of-evidence analysis: the record did not go dark; it went out of physics into the history of science (Nye 1974; Poincaré correspondence volume 2007; Marpeau 1998, 2000). Claims 5-6. [web]
• Where the experiments were done: private laboratory at 29 rue Vignon, Paris (letterhead), industrial laboratories, and Bouty's laboratory at the Sorbonne, with an assistant (Springer abstract). No Belgian laboratory found; Belgian links are the Royal Academy of Belgium membership (title pages), the 1907 Ostend lecture, and De Heen at Liège. Bears on the review's "Belgian laboratory" (claim 6). [web]
• Contemporary reception, 1896: US press (Literary Digest via BSRF; PSM May 1896): "men of science having generally thought that he has been deceived by the filtration of light through chinks in his plate holder"; "no one apparently has thought it worth while to take the trouble" to test. Claims 4-5. [web]
• Priority dispute with Nodon (1902), CR 134; Poincaré called the second note "plutôt nuisible". Claim 5. [web]
• Moray-family account of FBI questioning (1940-41) over the Salt Lake City Library copy of Evolution of Matter (John E. Moray, 1978 and 1980): interested party, first-person recollection; no FBI or library record found yet. Claim 6. [read: Morray-TH]
• "Girard Le Beau" / "The Evolution of Matter And Energy": no trace in HathiTrust full text, Open Library or Google beyond the 1990 review and its reprints; BSRF's catalogue does not list it. Moray's 1926 booklet is subtitled "The Evolution of Energy and Matter", a possible source of the hearsay title (inference). Claim 6. [web; read]
• Einstein "letter to LeBon's daughter" (John E. Moray, "I am told"): an Einstein-Le Bon exchange did happen in 1922 (to Le Bon himself); the daughter letter is not found. Claim 6. [web]

Corrections to earlier documents

• claims.md, claim 6, and facts.json (Vassilatos entry, key claim 1, summary "no Moray statement is quoted"): the statement is true of the review itself, but Moray's own writings, already in the owner's Moray project, do cite Le Bon. Evidence: review/Morray-TH/_text/Books-Works-by-Moray-Radiant-Energy-radiant-energy-1926-a4beae.txt, page 41 ("A few of these scientists were Gustave Le Bon, Davy, Ampere, Faraday ..."; "we can quote Gustave Le Bon"), and the Sea of Energy bibliography (…4thed-a49807.txt, p.197). Suggested wording for claim 6: "Moray cites Le Bon by name and paraphrases the Evolution of Matter introduction in his 1926 Radiant Energy and in Sea of Energy (bibliography lists both books); the review's further assertions (wartime library difficulty, 'very deep secrets', the third book) rest on the review and on Moray-family recollections." For the orchestrator to apply.
• deep/Gustave-...-597ab9.md §8 records "Belgian laboratory" as the review's phrase; add for the reviewers that the record found (Springer abstract; Poincaré letters' letterhead) places Le Bon's experiments in Paris (29 rue Vignon; industrial laboratories; Bouty's Sorbonne laboratory). Not an error in our file, a context note.