RankingsPrimerArbiterPhysicistMathematicianContrarianQESites logClaimsSourcesResearch notes

Internet Archive full-text search - 2026-10-03

Site: https://archive.org/ (full-text search of OCR'd texts, periodicals and government logs). API used: https://archive.org/services/search/beta/page_production/?service_backend=fts&page_target=texts&user_query=...; item text via https://archive.org/download/{id}/{id}_djvu.txt. Result: positive. Recheck: yes (newspaper and periodical runs are still being added).

Queries tried

  • "Moray" "Rural Electrification" "radiant energy"; "Moray is unfathomable"; "Franklin P. Wood" Moray
  • "Felix J. Frazer"; "Felix Frazer" Moray; "Moray" "radiant energy" Frazer; "Henry Moray" "radiant energy"; "T. Henry Moray"
  • "Moray" Slattery "radiant energy"; "Moray" "Rural Electrification Administration" Frazer; "Moray" Halleck "radiant energy"; "Moray" Carmody "radiant energy" (noise only)
  • "Thomas Henry Moray"; "MORAY, T. HENRY"; "Moray, Thomas Henry"; "Cosmoray"; "Moray Products Company"
  • "Moray" "Salt Lake City" "Sea of energy"; "Moray" Cosray "Salt Lake City"; "Moray" "Photo actinia"; "Moray" "Beyond the light rays"
  • Metadata search: Moray AND ("radiant energy" OR Cosray) (8 items, all copies of Moray books or free-energy compilations) Phrase quoting is loose in this backend; many hits are noise (Moray Firth, moray eels, Ursula Moray Williams).

Findings

  1. Chicago Daily Tribune, 11 Dec 1944 (the wire source of the Salt Lake Tribune story). [web https://archive.org/details/per_chicago-daily-tribune_1944-12-11_103_296] OCR text read. It prints the fuller REA engineer's report: "Moray is unfathomable. He is an unmitigated ass, crackpot, nitwit, religious fanatic, essentially honest, unable to originate or perpetuate a hoax or fraud. In some inexplicable way he has, I believe, stumbled on to something that he himself cannot understand, but which, if it is all he thinks it is, will more profoundly affect the human race than any discovery in previous history." It also says the scheme was to draw electric energy out of the atmosphere "and, at the same time, 'change the present stupid profit system'", and quotes Halleck: "the REA testimony is almost too much to believe. That agency has spent many thousands on nut house schemes ... the American farmer deserves better from his government than administration by daft incompetents." Halleck "said Moray was kept on the pay roll after Wood had made his report." Excerpt saved: files/IA_ChicagoTribune_1944-12-11_Halleck-REA-Moray_OCR-excerpt.txt. - The Salt Lake Tribune version quotes only the favourable half of Wood's sentence. The 5th edition (digest p.179-184) names Frank P. Wood(s) and Felix Frazer, says Halleck made "irresponsible comments" and dates the episode to 1942, but the digests do not show it quoting the Wood report. The full sentence is mixed: personal contempt, a judgement that Moray was honest and not a hoaxer, and a belief that he had "stumbled on to something".

  2. FBI FOIA case log, 2000: a 74-page FBI file with the subject "MORAY, T HENRY". [web https://archive.org/details/foia-log-2000-2002] (file "FOIA Log 2000-2002_djvu.txt"). Entry: MORAY, T HENRY 917273 0 2/25/00 8/17/00 74 72 Granted in Part(3); the requester (printed on the line below the subject) is Michael J. Ravnitzky. So request 917273 was received 25 Feb 2000 and closed 17 Aug 2000, with 74 pages reviewed and 72 released, part withheld under exemption code (3). A second request, MORAY, THOMAS HENRY 924753 6/23/00 7/18/00 Notary(4), requester Larry E. Nelms, was closed for lack of a notarised consent / proof of death. Excerpt saved: files/IA_FBI-FOIA-log-2000_Moray-entries.txt. - The folder's FBI material is the 249-page Yakovlev/Rosenberg file with one Moray passage. A 74-page file indexed to Moray himself exists and was released in 2000. It is not on the FBI Vault (checked: vault.fbi.gov search "Moray" returns only Anatoli Yakovlev Part 05 and unrelated files). It can be requested as previously processed records (cite request 917273). Bears on Claim 6 and on research recommendation R-04.

  3. Felix J. Frazer is probably the Technocracy economist and occultist of that name. IA hits: Felix J. Frazer (b. 1891) co-wrote the Report of the National Survey of Potential Product Capacity (1935, with Harold Loeb; a federally funded survey), wrote The ABC of Money and Tomorrow's Money (1948), was later "Grand Prolocutor" of the Builders of the Adytum in Los Angeles and wrote Parallel Paths to the Unseen Worlds (1967); he also appears in Borderland Sciences Research seance memoranda. [web https://archive.org/details/report00ofnationalnatirich] [web https://archive.org/details/parallel-paths-to-the-unseen-worlds-felix-j-frazer] [web https://archive.org/details/bota-adytum-news-notes-1959-1967b]. The 1944 story calls the Moray investigator "Feliz J. Frazer, an investigator for the works projects administration" and quotes the "stupid profit system" phrase, which fits a Technocrat. The 5th edition says Moray was sent to California on REA business "investigating spiritual seances" [read: digest 5thed p.177], which fits an occultist; it also says Frazer worked "with advice from Columbia University scientists in New York City" [read: digest 5thed p.180], and Technocracy began at Columbia. Identity not proven: it rests on name, era, Technocracy wording and the seance detail. If confirmed, the man who smashed the device in 1939 was an ideologically motivated economist-occultist, not an engineer or utility agent.

  4. Franklin P. Wood (REA engineer) appears as a Denver electrical engineer who addressed the Denver Section of the AIEE (Electrical World, vol. 73, 1919) and organised the "American Technocratic League" in Denver (Labor World, Chattanooga, 1929-1940 run). [web https://archive.org/details/electrical-world-vol-73] [web https://archive.org/details/labor-world-chattanooga-tn-1929-1940]. Same-name identification; plausible, not proven.
  5. Copyright registrations (Catalog of Copyright Entries): "Moray, Thomas Henry. Radiant energy ... compiled for the layman ... Salt Lake City, Research institute [c1945] 20p. (c) 12-23-45; AA 3629; new matter: pages 3 to 17" and "A short treatise on Alpha, Beta, Gamma ray therapy. sheet. (c) 7-11-46; AA 16336" [web https://archive.org/details/catalogofcopyrig431libr]; "MORAY, T. HENRY. Radiant energy. 55 l. NM: new matter. (c) Thomas Henry Moray; 15Jan56; A231706" [web https://archive.org/details/catalogofcopyrig3101lib]. The folder's Radiant Energy "originally compiled 1926" printing mentions post-1945 physics; a 55-leaf 1956 registration with new matter is a candidate for that printing. Also "Pardey (W. A.), Portland, Or. Cosmoray manufactures tritomic oxygen. (c) Apr. 14, 1941" (a Cosmoray, i.e. Moray-company, ozone leaflet) [web https://archive.org/details/catalogofcopyrig381li].
  6. Secondary literature (not evidence): Vassilatos Lost Science, Manning, Kelly, Bearden, BSRF Round Robin (May-June 1947, "Who is Thomas Henry Moray?") and Borderland catalogues all repeat the Moray-book narrative. The BSRF Round Robin 1947 item is an early independent mention worth reading once.

Files saved

  • files/IA_ChicagoTribune_1944-12-11_Halleck-REA-Moray_OCR-excerpt.txt
  • files/IA_FBI-FOIA-log-2000_Moray-entries.txt