Reinventing the Antigravity Wheel?



The following is a letter to the editor sent to US News;



The story "Take that, Isaac Newton," (News: Analysis & Commentary,

Sept. 30) reminded me of an incident about 40 years ago, when I was an

engineer doing gravity-survey work at the Franklin Institute

Laboratories.  With a colleague from General Electric, I visited Joel

Fisher in New York to look at an antigravity effect similar to what

you reported.  (the 1992 Podletkov experiment)



Fisher was a wealthy businessman who had reported his experiments

through the Gravity Research Foundation.  An earnest amateur, Fisher

had assembled a flywheel from the strongest permanent magnet he could

find and spun it on a vertical axis at high speed.



He claimed a sensitive gravity meter placed along the axis would show

a small but definite diminution of gravity when the flywheel was

spinning.



He had his work checked by a retired physics professor (whose name I

forget), who was very puzzled by what seemed to be a real effect

without any concentional explanation.



Fisher believed gravity and a rotating magnetic field were intimately

related.



The demonstration Fisher promised us ended in comic fiasco,

unfortunately, as the automobile engine he used to spin the flywheel

blew up and sent the audience running.  I never heard more of Joel

Fisher, and I often wondered whether he had further success.



Earnest amateurs are hard to find these days, and that's too bad.



William C. Yager

Blue Bell, PA