Case Study: Philo and Elma Farnsworth

Philo and Elma Farnsworth

A biography of the American inventor of “the first complete electronic television system,” Philo T. Farnsworth (1906-1971), was written by the inventor’s widow, Elma G. Farnsworth (1908-2006) and is entitled Distant Vision; Romance and Discovery on an Invisible Frontier (1990). 

Philo's work was always the priority throughout their lives.  The book relates how specific events made it possible for Philo to invent electronic television from transmitter to receiver.  After his passing, Elma was able to provide a detailed account of her husband's research and inventions as well as their life together.  The case expands the meaning and implications of thought processes associated with the concept of 'channeling' or what is here described as 'distant vision.'

Phil's concept of using electrons to eliminate all moving parts from both the transmitter and receiver in his television system was a brilliant display of his genius: by intuitive thinking, logic, and hard work, he combined seemingly unrelated elements into new instruments of amazing effectiveness.

The book’s unexpected prologue recounted a “sacred experience” where prior to the birth of Philo, his father was on the way to the corral to milk the cows when he heard a voice call his name.  He turned to see his late wife, Amelia, who delivered a message concerning his new wife, Serena: “I have come to tell you that Serena’s child is one of God’s special spirits; great care should be taken in his upbringing.”  Amelia then faded from sight.

Elma and her husband were people of faith, attending the Mormon church.  Their adversities in life were similar to everyone’s — business disappointments, the death of a one-year-old son from strep infection, the loss of a home and lab by forest fire, periods of illness.

The question is often asked, “How could a fourteen-year-old farm boy ever devise something so technically complex as television?”  As improbable as it seems, young Philo Farnsworth not only proved it was possible, but he did it.  How could that happen?  Was it a matter of early motivation and circumstance, or, as Phil said, was there a certain amount of guidance from a higher intelligence, even God?  Phil often referred to the sequence of events that constituted our  lives as a “guided tour.”  Phil’s inventiveness was characterized by a series of inspirations that moved him toward some distant vision.

Elma related that the first indication that Philo was a gifted child came at the age of three.  His father brought him to see an engineer in a large locomotive who explained the phases of the train's operation. When they arrived home, Philo made a detailed drawing of the locomotive.  "This demonstration of photographic memory won him much praise from the older members of the family and no doubt heralded the first seeds of greatness in his young mind."

One of the opportune occurrences happened when Philo was twelve and he moved with his family to an Idaho ranch powered by a Delco power system.  In the attic of the new home he found a stack of radio, popular science and semi-technical magazines that had been left there by the former owner who had installed the system.  He read an article about sending pictures along with sound by means of radio signals through the air.  Eventually, as chronicled by Elma, “Bit by bit he collected information that eventually led him to discover that mysterious, vitally important particle called the electron, the study of which would define his life.”

Two years later, Philo’s early morning farming chores included operating a disc harrow pulled by two horses.

As usual, his thoughts turned to how he might train electrons to convert a visual image into an electrical image so it could be sent through the air.  He knew this had to be done in a vacuum.  He had read of a man named Braun who had made a crude vacuum tube and who had produced light by directing an electrical beam to a surface coated with photosensitive material.  He had also read that an electron beam can be manipulated in a magnetic field.

As he turned the horses for another row, he looked back along the even rows he had made in the damp earth.  A thought struck him like a bolt out of the blue!  The tremendous import of this revelation hit him like a physical blow and came near to unseating him.  He could build the image like a page of print and print the image line after line!  With the speed of the electron, this could be done so rapidly the eye would view it as a solid picture!  He could hardly contain his excitement.  After mulling this idea around in his mind all the time and piecing it together one piece at a time, it had fallen together like a puzzle!

Elma further reflected:

The idea that germinated in his brain for electronic television must have been a gift from God, a partnership between divine inspiration and temporal genius.  From that single seed of inspiration he peeled away many of the mysteries of the physical universe and commanded the forces of nature to do his bidding.

At the onset of this adventure, Phil always worried that he lacked enough formal education.  But his experience was his education, more than any number of years at BYU could have provided.  His laboratory was his class room, and he was both student and professor.  He learned as much as he taught and taught as much as he learned.  Phil's lack of formal training was perhaps his greatest asset, rather than the liability he feared it would be, because it enabled him to structure his observation according to the unique framework of his God given genius.  He had been spared the burden of conventional wisdom and had been deprived only of the knowledge of what was impossible.

As one reads Elma Farnsworth's biography, it becomes noticeable how the necessary support staff and equipment became accessible to Philo at the appropriate times to result with the invention of electronic television.  

The newlyweds traveled to Los Angeles in 1926.  Elma wrote that they were staying at a hotel when the thought struck her that Philo's plan for electronic television showed the potential of changing society.  Philo gave a short history of television to the men who became his financiers.

In the 1880s there were many patent applications on various ideas for sending images through the air, none of which were very effective.  Then, on January 6, 1884, Paul Nipkow, a Russian working in Germany, applied for a German patent #30105, which disclosed the first mechanical method of transmission, using a perforated spinning disc.  From that time to the present, many patents had been granted on television, all relating to similar mechanical operations.  Phil explained that none of these ideas were capable of attaining the speed and resolution that acceptable television transmission would require.


Phil picked up a newspaper from the table and explained the method used to print the picture.  Calling their attention to the fine dots making up the picture, he explained that a slick magazine picture required much better definition.  In fact, it might require as many as a quarter of a million dots of much smaller size.

In the system that Phil proposed, a picture would be scanned one line at a time in a succession of dots and focused on a sensitized plate in his Image Dissector, where electrons would be released in proportion to the brightness of the individual picture elements: if the dot on the picture was black, no electrons would be released; if white, a maximum number would be released.  This stream of electrons would then be transmitted to a cathode-ray receiving tube to be reproduced on the photosensitive surface one line at a time.

"To get that definition over television," Phil continued, "a complete picture must be transmitted at the rate of about thirty per second.  That would require approximately 7,500,000 dots, or elements, every second.  I'm sure you can imagine that this speed is beyond the capacity of any mechanical device.  Of course it would have to be very carefully synchronized with the transmitter, or you would have a lot of mush on your screen."

Philo asked for a total of $25,000 from the backing syndicate who became his funding partners.  Philo's share was specified as 20 percent, establishing him as the largest single stockholder.  He built his first television system at Crocker Research Labs in San Francisco.  The date the crew produced the first all-electronic television picture was September 7, 1927.  When Philo began demonstrating the new system, the banking group of financiers found that "the big companies that had pioneered in other areas of radio and electronics, had heavily invested in mechanical television systems and were not yet ready to accept the futility of their approach."

A collection of documents known as the "Philo T. Farnsworth and George Everson Papers 1914-1999" is among the Special Collections at the Arizona State University Libraries.

Elma noted that young Philo humbly acknowledged an influence beyond himself.  During the years when he worked to realize his ‘distant vision,’ this influence would again be recognized.  Elma remembered one occasion when her husband was struggling with a particularly difficult problem.  He decided to fall asleep thinking about it and see what happened.  In the early hours of the morning, she awoke upon hearing Philo’s declaration of success: ". . . I was just awakened with the answer."  As Elma recalled, he seemed to derive energy from his very creative process: “Many times, he ran into what appeared to be insurmountable obstacles, but his stream of consciousness, like a stream of water when blocked, made other channels and found a way around, through, or over the problem.”

The book also mentions "Phil's concept of the engram, or thought flow in connection with the here/now, which is the only reality, that split second between what has gone before and the uncertainty of the future."

Philo received patent number 1,773,980 for his electronic television system in August 1930 but perfecting television would take many more years.  "Throughout the 1930s, Phil found his time divided between defending his patents, continuing to refine his system, and haggling with his own backers for adequate funding."

After a company reorganization with stock issued in 1938 and a patent license deal with RCA in 1939, there was a period of severe depression for Philo as World War II became an obstacle to the progress of commercial television.  He knew his most controlling patents would expire by 1954.  Despite unobtainable financial goals, he usually was able to appreciate his accomplishments and enjoy life’s simple pleasures.

The end of World War II in 1945 after the United States dropped two Atomic Bombs on Japan was described by Elma as "a sequence of events that plunged all mankind into an era of lost innocence."  She remembered, "It must have been about this time that I first heard Phil use the word 'fusion.'"  The solution to controlling nuclear fusion would be his major project for the remainder of Philo's life (as described in the previous blog article).  Elma observed, "Phil thought of fusion in the same light as he had television twenty five years earlier — as a difficult problem that he might be uniquely suited to solve."

In 1949 Philo's company became a wholly-owned subsidiary of ITT.   He worked on military research projects, including a submarine detection device.

The company continued to make television receivers and Capehart record-changer/radio combinations, and Phil’s research department continued to work on space-age contracts, mostly for the Air Force.  It soon became apparent, however that the company was being phased out of commercial television.  Manufacturing activities became limited to closed-circuit TV for surveillance and monitoring equipment for such places as atomic energy plants.


He became  an expert on star tracking.  He and his men developed a device for the United States early-warning system.  Deployed around our borders, it could detect and explode a missile long before it reached our shores.  An unidentified flying object of any sort could likewise be detected and destroyed.

Interpreting this instance of the expression ‘unidentified flying objects’ with ‘UFOs’/’flying saucers’ would make this pronouncement a dubious one as this is a simplistic view when one considers the published accounts described in previous blog articles.  One might also consider the video footage taken by space shuttle Discovery Mission STS-48 on September 15, 1991 near the west coast of Australia.  Mark J. Carlotto in an abstract wrote about an unidentified flying object (designated as 'M1') that changes direction and accelerates just before "a streak crosses the object's trajectory" that appears to indicate military targeting.  The footage may be viewed in You Tube videos.

Philo developed a new tube he called the Iotron, a memory tube able to retain an image for an indefinite period.  One model allowed air traffic to be controlled from the ground, another was used in defense units, while a third was developed for telescopes, "allowing astronomers to extend their vision by 50,000 times out in space."

Some divisions of the old Farnsworth Television & Radio Company were sold off eventually, and Farnsworth Electronics was formed as a dummy holding company for the Farnsworth patents.  Because of all the bad publicity connected with the Farnsworth Company during its unsuccessful efforts to preserve its identity, the ITT changed the name to Capehart Farnsworth, an ITT subsidiary.

The growth of the company under ITT was phenomenal.  Its operations expanded from the original Capehart plant to a second, and even a third plant.  In 1957 the Boeing company chose the Farnsworth Electronics company to build prototype equipment for its seven million, one hundred nine thousand dollar contract with the U.S. Air Force for the Bomark IM99 interceptor missile.  Farnsworth had been a pioneer in missile guidance systems since 1945, having subcontracts on the Bomark, Talos, Terrier, Sparrow, Meteor, Titan, Atlas, Rascal, and Lacrosse.

Elma mentioned that Philo's "concern over world affairs and the feeling he should be doing something about fusion weighed heavily upon him."

Near the end of Philo's life, Elma described what happened one night while he was very ill with pneumonia

About 4:00 A.M., he opened his eyes and calmly told me not to worry; it would be all right now.  He said his guardian angel and another personage would now keep watch, so we could go to sleep.  He then drifted off into a deep peaceful sleep for about six hours.  When he awoke, he told me these "personages" said he was on the brink of death, and it was his choice whether to return to his earthly life or go on.  He told them he still had work to do on earth.  They then said, "So be it."  He felt the fever begin to leave him.  It was then he spoke to reassure me, then drifted off to sleep.

Elma chronicled how soon thereafter Philo was ready to make his transition.  After his passing, she felt profound despair.  On the day after the funeral, she awakened at dawn with a strange feeling.

In recent years Phil and I had experimented with mental-telepathy to a small degree of success.  I had a feeling that he might be attempting to reach me mentally.  I concentrated all of my thoughts on Phil.  My intense efforts began to cause pains through my eyes and temples.

As I was about to give up, a voice spoke to me in my mind.  There was no sound, but the clear and distinct words had a calming effect on me.  The voice told me this was a very important time for Phil, and I must let him go . . . The voice went on to say that I still had important work to do on earth.  Suddenly I knew without a doubt the nature of this work, and I was at peace.”

Among the websites about Philo T. Farnsworth is The Philo T. Farnsworth Archives.

Philo T. Farnsworth and Controlled Nuclear Fusion

This is a photo of the Mark II, Philo T. Farnsworth's second model of the Fusor (under the bell jar) amidst testing apparatus.  The photo is included in the biography Distant Vision.

Recent reports about nuclear fusion research progress lead me to wonder about how many contemporary researchers know about Philo T. Farnsworth's ideas and experiments in the field of controlled nuclear fusion.  Farnsworth conceived the basic operating principles of electronic television as a teenager and went on to invent the first complete system of electronic television.  

An October 7, 2013 BBC News article by Paul Rincon reported that during an experiment at NIF in late September, a milestone was reached as "the amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel — the first time this had been achieved at any fusion facility in the world."

Philo's widow and biographer Elma G. Farnsworth wrote in her 1989 book Distant Vision: Romance and Discovery on an Invisible Frontier:

As he explained it to me, there are basically two ways to release the energy that binds atomic nuclei.  In developing the atomic bomb, science had mastered a process called "fission," which splits the nucleus of heavy atoms such as uranium into lighter elements with an attendant release of energy.


Since the dawn of atomic theory, science has known that it might also be possible to release atomic energy by means of another type of reaction called fusion, which is the same process that powers our sun and all the stars in the universe.  Fusion involves the binding, or fusing, of light nuclei, such as hydrogen, into a heavier atom, such as helium.  Because the mass of the new helium nucleus is less than the mass of the two hydrogen nuclei which preceded, the difference is given of as energy, in a quantity expressed by Einstein's formula E=mc².


Physicists have postulated since the 1930s that it might be possible to build a device that would harness fusion.


The solution to the riddle of controlled fusion is the holy graal of modern science.  Once achieved, it will alter the course of history and reform the condition of all mankind.  It will, in short, be an equivalent to the discovery of fire.

This is the quest that began to captivate the imagination of Phil Farnsworth at the end of World War II.

In 1947 on one occasion Philo conversed about his ideas on controlled nuclear fusion over the telephone with Einstein, who confirmed for him that his original conceptions were viable.

Throughout the ‘50s, Philo continued to formalize his math and develop operative concepts for his fusion device, a fusion reaction tube which he called the “Fusor.”  By 1962, Elma was sure that fusion was every bit as real in Philo's mind as television had been during 1926 and 1927.

There was simply no question in his mind that the Fusor was going to work, and he talked frequently of the breakthrough that was only a few steps away.


On earth, Phil predicted that fusion power would soon replace every source of energy presently in use.  The most obvious benefit of this development would be the end of the pollution that fouls our skies and from the burning of fossil fuels, and our streams from human waste.  It would also eliminate the dangers of nuclear waste from the fission reactors in use today.


Once the Fusor was perfected, he figured it would be a relatively simple matter to employ it as a star drive.

In 1953 during a family vacation, Elma was behind the wheel of the car when Philo made an unforgettable announcement. "'I've figured out a way to control fusion!' he said, with a note of wonder at the enormity of what he was saying."  His son Russell asked, "More important than television?"  Philo explained how such an accomplishment would furnish the world with a very cheap, almost unlimited source of power.   ". . . I'm going to have to be very sure of myself before I let this information out." 

The Farnsworth method of controlling a nuclear-fusion reaction is quite different from any of those financed by the Atomic Energy Commission.  He proposed to contain a plasma (a high temperature, ionized plasma-separated gas composed of positive ions and negative electrons) by inertia within a minute structureless volume, using a self-generating electrical field.  (Every other process makes use of magnetics for plasma containment!) 

Farnsworth's company had been acquired by the International Telephone and Telegraph Company (ITT) in 1949.  Elma wrote: "The Farnsworth Company and ITT headquarters in New York had put their collective heads together and decided that if Phil was so sure he had a good idea, perhaps they should put some money into it and give him a chance to prove it."

When the start-up plans were finalized, Philo and his associate Frederick R. 'Fritz' Furth decided it was time to file a patent.  The Farnsworths took a train to Washington, D.C., where they were greeted by Philo's mathematical expert 'Doc' Salinger and patent attorney George Gust.

The head patent examiner had invited his top mathematical/atomic expert to sit in on this meeting.  After Phil had finished his explanations, this man said he was sorry to say he didn't understand this concept.  His superior said: "Let me remind you that never in all the patents filed by Mr. Farnsworth have we found it necessary to reject one.  I think if he says he had patentable material, then he probably has.  It is up to us to be able to evaluate it."


During the 1950s and 1960s, conventional wisdom maintained that the only way fusion could be attained was by heating the fusible materials to extraordinary temperatures, on the order of many millions of degrees.  Even today, multi-billion dollar experiments are trying to duplicate the conditions at the very center of our sun, in order to strip the like-charged atomic nuclei of their natural tendency to repel each other.  Only by overcoming this natural repulsion can fusion be attained.  Scientists since the 1950s have attempted to produce fusion by a method called "magnetic confinement," which employs enormous magnets to contain and compress the fusion fuel.  But heating the particles to high enough temperatures to achieve the intended effect requires enormous amounts of energy, and the effect can be sustained only for tiny fractions of a second.


Phil's approach to fusion was very much analogous to his approach to television thirty-three years earlier.


As Phil recognized instantly the futility of mechanical scanning, and thus devised electronic scanning, so he had recognized the futility of magnetic confinement.


He had already chosen Gene Meeks as his special assistant and George Bain, an electronics engineer, as project chief under his direction.


To produce the fusion reaction, he would need tritium and deuterium, which required a special permit from the Atomic Energy Commission.


By the end of 1959, Phil had made and discarded several Fusor models.  He then progressed to a design that appeared to have considerable merit.  This was a spherical metal enclosure with six pairs of opposing electron guns, arranged in the form of a dodecahedron with a hollow spherical abode having twelve conical orifices disposed interspersed radially between the guns and an "electron collection" system.


On Friday, October 7th, 1960, in a small basement room, the Fusor was assembled with its bell jar and hooked up to the vacuum and power systems.


At sufficiently high vacuum, power was applied and gradually raised until the power supply's maximum was reached.  A bright glow within the Fusor increased in intensity as the voltage was increased.  When a magnet was placed against the bell jar in line with the orifice of the Fusor, a gas-like flame was drawn out of the center of the structure to a length of about one inch.  This proved beyond a doubt that a plasma had been formed, as a natural gas would not have been affected!  Phil, Fritz, George, and Gene were witnesses to this major achievement.

The next morning, Saturday October 8, 1960, deuterium was admitted for the first time, and a run was started.  Soon after voltage was applied, a Geiger counter placed adjacent to the bell jar began registering counts which increased progressively as voltage was increased until the counter pointer was driven off its top scale!  Just what was causing the intense radiation — x-ray, gamma radiation and/or neutrons — could not be determined.


The following Monday, when the plant's supply room was opened, a sheet of lead was obtained to shield the Geiger counter, preventing x-ray and gamma radiation from entering the counter and permitting only neutrons to register.  A deuterium-charged run was made and a small neutron count recorded.  The neutron count increased as the voltage increased.  As the power-supply voltage was quite limited, the neutron count was also quite limited.


The Mark 1-Mod.0 was declared a huge success.  (A major change in the geometry of the Fusor was designated as "Mark" with a Roman numeral, and minor modifications as "Mod" followed by an Arabic numeral.)


To delve into Phil's "electrostatic inertial confinement" would entail explaining the details of the Fusor's operation, but such terminology as "virtual cathode," "permeable anode" and "force-fields" would only confuse the reader.  Suffice it to say that Phil intended to employ the special properties of atomic particles in effect to contain themselves.  These were the very properties that he had first discovered when he learned the source of the mysterious glow in his multipactor tubes.

Elma Farnsworth explained that the ultimate goal of all fusion research is "the reaction which, once started, would continue indefinitely under its own power."

A January 1961 New York Times article by Gene Smith reported that "Dr. Farnsworth's work is said to involve an electrostatic process in which clouds of electrons would confine the hydrogen atoms in a small area for the actual fusion process . . . The heart of his unit is a metal ball about half-way between the size of a basketball and a softball.  The fuel itself, reportedly tritium, a form of heavy hydrogen, is located in the center of this ball and measures no more than a teaspoon.  Yet once in action it is said to produce tremendous power."

A Fort Wayne, Indiana Journal-Gazette article by Ernest Williams quoted Farnsworth's commentary at a lecture the previous September:

He visualized a high-energy power pack, capable of being housed in the average-sized living room, which could generate enough power to supply the energy requirements of a city the size of Fort Wayne.

The progress of Philo's research from 1962 through 1966 is summarized in Distant Vision with Elma mentioning her husband's "ever-worsening health situation."

The work had been going on for almost five years now, and there was little question but that Phil was able to produce fusion, as evidenced by the prodigious neutron counts the Fusor could produce.  These neutrons were proof that atoms were being fused together, since the extra neutron was one of the by-products of the reaction.  After one test run of the Mark II, Phil reported that "a neutron count of 1.3 X 10⁹ per second (1.3 billion neutrons) was obtained for more than one minute.  The operation was stable and could be controlled by the operator."

Elma described the problems with the project in 1966.

Even as his determination increased, so did his mistrust of ITT and its intentions.  Phil harbored great hopes that fusion would be used for the benefit of all mankind, but he doubted that the directors of ITT shared his humanitarian intentions.  ITT being a highly profit-oriented organization, it was naive of Phil to expect them to go along with his philanthropic ideas.  Despite his reservations about ITT's ultimate intentions, Phil continued to try to solve the problems in the Fusor.


The problem was of course one of the highest technical order, but perhaps it could be explained in simple terms: in producing a fusion reaction, Phil had created what amounted to a miniature man-made star, around which formed a multi-layered electrostatic force field.  The problem was that, once the reaction was started, the force field prevented more fuel from getting into the center of the reactor core.  Without additional fuel, the star simply burned out.

In the summer of 1966 Philo and his associates worked on his second fusion patent.

He was happy in his belief that at last Hans and Fritz had finally grasped an understanding of his new math.  Together they worked for the better part of a week on the patent claims.  Finally, at a critical point concerning one of Phil's pivotal equations, he realized that they had completely missed the vital point of his concept.

With this disheartening realization, Phil closed his briefcase, arose from his chair and announced, "I have given you all the material you need to finish this patent.  Now I am going home and get drunk!"

An attempt to complete a planned article written by Philo for the Journal of the Franklin Institute also ended in frustration.  Philo's dictation was typed by Elma and the pages were sent to Fritz Furth and Bob Hirsch (Bob had joined the fusion staff in 1964) so that they could "put it in shape to publish."   Elma reported that Philo again was left bewildered.  "He said that they had revised his math so it would fit into the accepted grooves of their own ideas."

Philo eventually decided to try to complete the fusion project at Brigham Young University.  Former fusion group members agreed to join the new company, including George Bain and Gene Meeks.  The fusion patents belonged to ITT and were not offered for sale, which meant that ITT executives would have complete control over the results of Philo's further work.  Extensive preparations were made but eventually the planned new enterprise "came tumbling down around our ears," as chronicled by Elma.

There were insurmountable financial difficulties, a predicament suggesting the ineffectual structure of the world's economic system in relation to a visionary scientist such as Philo T. Farnsworth (1906-1971).  Another example of contemporary human social dysfunction is the ongoing crisis at Fukushima, an environmental disaster for all of humanity and not only the people of Japan.

For more information, visit philotfarnsworth.com.

Reflections about UFOlogy

Photograph from The Dragon and The Disc (1973) by F. W. Holiday: "This Disc was photographed by Mr. Lars Thörn at 9:55 a.m. on 6 May 1971, at a point 5 km. N.E. of Skillingaryd, Sweden.  Two successive pictures were taken before the object moved away behind the grenade shelter on the right.  Stereoscopic examination suggests that the object was a long way beyond the wall . . ."

Some of the conclusions offered by editor Charles Bowen in the UFOlogy anthology Encounter Cases from Flying Saucer Review (1977) include the first paragraphs from the final chapter "Beliefs."

We believe that "flying saucers," or UFOs, do exist: the evidence of sight, radar and sound indicates that either might be metallic, or might give the impressions of being metallic.

We believe that they could be powered in ways as yet unknown to man.  There is ample evidence of their effects on electronic devices and on the electrical systems of internal combustion engines.  However it is realized that these effects might be produced by something quite apart from the "propulsion unit."

We believe it possible that these objects could be either of extraterrestrial origin, or that they could be coming to us from another time-space continuum, perhaps some "interpenetrating universe" (there is evidence of materialization and dematerialization to support speculation in this direction), or that they could come from both.

The book presents several accounts of anomalous human teleportation.  The following excerpt of a 1968 report is from the article "A South American 'Wave'" by Gordon Creighton that was first published in Flying Saucer Review, Volume 14, Number 5 (September-October, 1969). 

Buenos Aires, Argentina.  La Razón of June 4 and the Correio do Povo (published in Pôrto Alegre, southern Brazil) of June 11, gave details of an extraordinary recent happening to the well-known Argentine painter and sculptor Benjamin Solari Parravicini.  This gentleman claimed that some time after midnight (precise date not given) he was walking home from the theater in Buenos Aires, a copy of the program in his hand.  The night was foggy, he tells us, and in the view of the "fog" or "mist" mentioned in teleportation cases we should take careful note of this point.  The streets hereabouts were deserted.

Arriving at the corner of Avenida Belgrano and Avenida 9 de Julio, Parravicini was suddenly confronted by what he took at first to be a madman, a fair-skinned Nordic type of man, "whose eyes were so light in color that it looked as though he were blind."  This individual detained him and addressed him in an unintelligible guttural language, but his manner was "kindly and even gentle."  Looking upward, on this man's instructions, Parravcini then beheld through the "fog," and at a distance of only about 50 meters, close to the tower building of the Argentine Ministry of Public Works, an extraordinary aerial ship, with no lights.

Parravicini was overcome by dizziness, and when he recovered he found himself along with three other individuals inside the machine, which was in flight.  One of these people, very handsome, was questioning him in a language which was unintelligible to him and yet his mind understood, or seemed to understand, the thoughts of the alien being.  In other words, as Parravinci said, it was a case of direct telepathic communication.

The alien told him not to be alarmed; they would merely take him for one trip around the earth and would then put him down again at the precise spot where they had taken him aboard.  A few minutes later, Parravicini found himself observing surface features of what he recognized as Japan, and then France, and then Chile.  And when he had returned, as he said, from this "dream," he found himself back on the corner of Avenida Belgrano and Avenida 9 de Julio—and there on the pavement nearby was his theater program which had fallen from his hand before the experience . . . Parravicini, for many years director of the art gallery owned by the Banco Municipal, concluded by saying that the alien beings had now contacted him several times.  He said they told him that they were watching and patroling our planet to see that no catastrophe befalls it.

A later article by Gordon Creighton entitled "More Teleportations" in Flying Saucer Review, Volume 16, Number 5 (September-October, 1970) reminded that a white fog or mist had been described in many of the accounts of anomalous human teleportation.  This article may be read online in a PDF file yet it is missing the footnote about the Gallipoli case and the last portion of the article.

Creighton's hypothesis of “teleportation by UFOs” in the article "Teleportations" (from Volume 11, Number 2 March-April 1965) in Encounter Cases from Flying Saucer Review is a generalization reminding me that while some people concentrate on researching one particular form of unexplained phenomena such as UFOlogy, hauntings, channeling, mediumship, Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP), Near Death Experiences, or psychic abilities/remote viewing, the articles at this blog indicate the usefulness of being knowledgeable about all of these topics. 

Consistent readers of this blog will notice in the account involving Benjamin Solari Parravicini an incidence of The 'Bel' (or 'Bell') Pattern and The Nine Pattern.  Other incidents of The Bell Pattern in the book include locations in or near Belgium and Belo Horizonte, Brazil; the address of one witness was on Calle Fray Luis Beltrán; and a close encounter case in Italy occurred to a couple named Bellingeri.  Although details are sketchy in some of the accounts, an occurrence of the 'Michael' Pattern is found in a 1965 French UFO sighting case at the St. Michel Observatory investigated by Aimé Michel with Charles Bowen.  Most oddly, a French 1974 case includes a space visitor compared to a Michelin advert.

In previous blog articles, I have devoted my attention to extensively documented case study books published by those who became known as the 'contactees.'  In these books, recollected commentary is offered of space people sharing their spiritual knowledge.  Truman Bethurum in Aboard a Flying Saucer (1954) quoted the female Captain Aura (who was approximately four feet, six inches in height) as having told him: "We worship a Supreme Deity who sees, knows and controls all."  During his contact experiences chronicled in The Secret of the Saucers (1955), Orfeo Angelucci wrote: "I had never been an actively religious man, but in that moment I knew God as a tangible, immutable Force that reaches to the furthest depths of Time and Eternity.  And I felt assurance that the beings in whose care I was at that moment were close to the Infinite Power."  Daniel Fry followed up his first account published in 1954 with To Men of Earth (1973) that quoted his unseen communicator 'Alan' with defining an aspect of science (beyond physical or material science and social science) as being "The spiritual science which deals with the relationship between man and the great creative power and infinite intelligence which pervades and controls all nature, and which your people refer to as God."  Arthur Shuttlewood in The Warminster Mystery (1967) quoted the apparent leader of the 'Aenstrians,' Queen Traellison, as having told him: "We are all children and living parts of the great Creator, the Living Force who controls every single particle of the universe, human or inanimate."

The following is stated in a dedication found in one of the books chronicling the mediumship of Mark Probert, The Coming of the Guardians: An Interpretation of the "Flying Saucers" as Given from the Other Side of Life (Third Edition 1957) compiled by Meade Layne.

This book is dedicated to those metaphysicians of the Western World who, as yet, have not enlarged their frame of speculation beyond the boundaries of things corporeal.  It deals with the problem of the Aeroforms, or Unidentified Flying Objects, and concerns their nature, origin, and the reasons for their incursion at this historically climactic juncture.

The separation of Science from Metaphysics and Occultism is arbitrary, and this must be recognized if the problem is to be understood.  This applies also to the existence of the ether(s) and the principle of emergence.  The Communicators here quoted are excarnate humans, but what they say is without philosophical bias and untainted by religionism.

All that the compiler of this book can hope for, is that it may reach some readers sufficiently receptive to scan its pages without prejudice and try to consider the problem as a whole.  Future years will add much to its content, but the basic interpretation will neither be contradicted nor impaired.

The Foreword included the following:

The explanations of the Aeroforms and other phenomena given here, are sanctioned and expounded by excarnate human beings, who can and do communicate with here-living people in various ways — as well as by etheric beings themselves, who are not excarnate humans.  This, of course, raises a huge question-mark in the minds of millions of the prejudiced and uninformed.

Communicators from 'the ascended realm' have in common a penchant for utilizing metaphors and hyperbolism as chronicled throughout a vast collection of documentation offered in the cases of such famous 'paranormal people' as Guy and Edna Ballard, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Rosemary Brown, Edgar Cayce, Pearl Lenore Curran, John Dee, Elizabeth Fuller, Eileen Garrett, John of God (João Teixeira da Faria), Leslie Flint, Mark Macy, Mark Probert, Andrija Puharich, Jane Roberts, and Chico Xavier (to name some of them — all topics of previous blog articles).

Dana Howard recounted in her second book Diane — She Came from Venus (1956) an event "the world might call an experience in the 'miraculous'" that also induced her to comment, ". . . there is nothing supernatural, but only higher arcs of the natural exemplified."  On April 29, 1955 Dana attended a private seance of ‘physical medium’ Reverend Bertie Lillie Candler at the Church of Divine Light in Los Angeles.  After Reverend Candler went into a deep trance, Dana described seeing a rising glow of phosphorescence some ten or twelve feet away from Candler.

It was very tall at first, but out of this phosphorescent substance a form began to manifest itself.  She was definitely different from the other “spirit” manifestations, a solid, fleshly being, delicate in charm and manner.

She called for DANA.  Overwhelmed with emotion I could not choke back, I went up to her, standing only inches away from the manifestation.  While I did not recognize her instantly, I knew there was something quaintly familiar about her.  Standing like a sylph-like goddess, and bowing low in greeting to the twenty-seven persons present, the rich tones of her voice vibrated through the little church.

"I AM DIANE.  I COME FROM VENUS.”

Once adjusted to the vibrations she dwindled in size until I judged her to be about five feet tall.  As she tossed back her well-shaped head revealing her perfectly chiseled features, there was no mistaking her identity.  She was the same “being of unsurpassed loveliness” who sixteen years earlier had escorted me to the waiting spaceship.

I was speechless at first, my thoughts tumbling over one another.  I finally managed to say:

"Are you my mentor . . . the person who has been giving me those wonderful discourses?”

She answered: “Yes.  This is the first time we of the greater planets have been permitted to come to beings of earth.  From now on we shall be with you, always.”

Diane then went into a few moments of profound discoursing the content of which I could not recall later.  Before taking her leave, as if to reassure me that she was not an imposter, she placed a corner of her jewel-bedecked garment in my hands that I might feel the texture of the fabric—materials I quickly identified as Venusian.

She then went into a beautiful, thythmic dance described by one onlooker as “The rhythm of the ocean waves.”  She finally bade us all good night and with her fragile hand on my shoulder she melted into the nothingness.

Dana Howard collected descriptions from others who attended the seance that night.  Lucille Points of Los Angeles commented that “this was the most outstanding experience of my life.”  A confirmatory joint statement by Mrs. Gladys Campbell and Mrs. Maude Haas attested: "It was truly a marvelous thing to be present and see for myself such a wonderful personality, and I know you must be very humble and gratified to have the facts that you have brought before the public in your book —'My Flight to Venus,' substantiated in such an unexpected manner."

One is perhaps reminded by My Flight to Venus (1954) that if any planet would symbolize love, it would be Venus with a name inspired by the Roman goddess associated with fields and gardens, beauty and most especially love.  Blog readers might also recall my article "The Ectoplasmic Flying Saucer". 

In Guy Lyon Playfair’s biography Chico Xavier: Medium of the Century (2010), Playfair provided details about the circumstances of several of Xavier’s channeled books, including his sixtieth book Evolution in Two Worlds ‘automatically’ written in collaboration with another medium, Dr. Waldo Vieira, in forty days—twenty for each medium—in 1958.

Asked how he managed to write it in the first place, Chico explained that although in his normal state he was unable to understand a word of Evolution, during the actual writing he had been raised to the level of his superconscious mind, and had taken down, as dictated to him, the notes for a lecture course being given in the next world.  This is certainly what the book reads like, and I can find no other feasible explanation for its origin.

Playfair noted that while the book was being written, a similar book was published: The Corpuscular Spirit Theory, the first book of Hernani Guimarães Andrade. This book had taken Andrade “three years to write after more than twenty years of study and reflection."

The word superconscious/superconsciousness can be found in transcripts from the work of channelers Edgar Cayce, JZ Knight and Andrija Puharich; and is mentioned in books by Eileen Garrett, Gordon Higginson, Gladys Osborne Leonard and Arthur Shuttlewood, among others.

Willy Reichel wrote in An Occultist's Travels (1908) about many fascinating experiences with 'materialization medium' Mr. C. V. Miller (whose 'principal control' was 'Betsy'), including the following excerpts.

. . . I saw three spirits undoubtedly in their outer form, without any muffling, and recognized them by their speech to be the departed persons whose names they gave.


. . . once two spirits materialized who said that they had been Egyptian dancing-girls; they wound up themselves a musical clock standing beside me, and danced, that is, made the dancing movements, similar to those I had seen the dancing dervishes perform in Cairo in January, 1902, after which they dematerialized before my eyes.

Another time beings appeared, shining radiantly from within outward—words of description fail me—they said they had never lived upon this earth, but were "Spirits of the Sun," and allowed me to touch them, in order to convince me that, out of love for mankind, they had adapted themselves for this moment to the earthly sphere.


. . . the spirits which, in his circle, are distinguished as "high," represent the theory of palingenesis, or reincarnation, not in the sense of the esoteric doctrine of Buddhism, but in the sense of Allan Kardec.


In reply to a question in regard to this asked at Miller's, as to how I myself stood in this respect, I received the answer that I was already reincarnated for the fourth time.  The last time—about three hundred years ago—I had been a Bohemian king, who desired as such to give his people laws which would lead to progress, but he could not accomplish it, and therefore died discontented and weary of life; I had now reincarnated myself again to serve mankind by the dissemination of magnetism and occultism.

Contemplating Spiritualism with introductory notes for a 1974 edition of An Occultist's Travels, Colin Wilson wrote: 

While I am not a dedicated spiritualist, I am inclined to accept  the notion of some sort of "life after death" rather than not.  But I also suspect that what man really discovered in the mid-19th century were the strange forces produced by his own subconscious —or superconscious—mind.  Before we can even begin to grasp what happened, we may need a completely new picture of nature.

Colin Wilson wrote about the subject of UFOlogy with Alien Dawn: An Investigation into the Contact Experience (1998).  Instead of focusing primarily on firsthand accounts as I have elected to do with the articles of this blog, Wilson attempted to make sense of a diverse variety of topical books.  His "Selected Biography" includes books by Budd Hopkins, John Keel, Donald Keyhoe, John Mack, Brian O'Leary, Arthur Shuttlewood, Michael Talbot, and Jacques Vallee.  Wilson explained in the book:

When I began this book, my knowledge of UFOs was slightly wider than that of most newspaper readers, but not much.  I had even written a small paperback on the subject.  This did not prepare me for the effect of reading two hundred or so books about UFOs.  These left me in no doubt that something was trying to communicate with us, but that direct communication would be counterproductive.

In an Introduction for a 2010 edition of Alien Dawn, Wilson reflected about his experiences researching the paranormal.  Investigating a Yorkshire 'poltergeist' haunting in 1989 left him "totally convinced that poltergeists . . . are, in fact, disembodied spirits."  Looking for s starting point for what he planned to be a "comprehensive study" of UFOs, he learned that crop circles contained complex geometrical theorems.  Wilson commented about John Keel's The Mothman Prophecies (1975): "What Keel's book sees to show is that there is no clear dividing line between UFO phenomena and the 'paranormal' . . ."

Wilson recounted having conversed with Andrija Puharich about his case study Uri: A Journal of the Mystery of Uri Geller (1974).  Wilson wrote:

I told him my view that his book on Uri had failed to make an impact because it was too full of utterly unbelievable events.  He assured me that he had, in fact, cut out some of the more preposterous anecdotes, because he was aware that he was overloading the reader's credulity.

. . . on one occasion in November 1973, Geller had actually been 'teleported' from a New York street to the house in Ossining.

In the Preface of Uri, Puharich wrote about what he had learned while researching the case.  He explained: "The controllers of the universe operate under the direction of the Nine.  Between the controllers and the untold numbers of planetary civilizations in the universe are the messengers . . . Some of these messengers take the form of spacecraft, which in modern parlance are called unidentified flying objects, or UFOs."

Colin Wilson mentioned in Alien Dawn a synchronistic UFO sighting by his wife.

On 4 September 1997, while I was writing this book, my wife went out into the garden at about 11:00 at night, to give the dogs a final airing, when she saw an orange globe, about the size of the moon, which moved in the direction of an orange streetlight on the estate below, then turned and went back the way it came.  She had time to go indoors and call my son Rowan to come and see it before it vanished behind trees.  Yet she was so little struck by it that she did not even bother to tell me for several days, when I happened to mention that a large number of UFOs are orange globes, and she realised that she had probably seen a UFO.

A profile of metaphysical author F. W. Holliday—author of The Great Orm of Loch Ness (1969) and The Dragon and the Disc (1973)—in Alien Dawn includes a description of categorically paranormal incidents in his life.

In 1969, while he was investigating Irish lake monsters, Ted went to stay at a haunted house on the Isle of Mull.  He was awakened in the early morning by footsteps that he recognised—from previous experience—as 'peculiar,' as if, he says, they had a kind of double echo.  They were heavy boots coming upstairs.  He sat up in bed, expecting a phantom visitant through the door.  Instead it took a short cut through the wall, and stood by the headboard of his bed.  A Belfast-accented voice demanded, "Who the hell are ye?," and a heavy blow landed on the headboard of the bed.  Then, slowly, the tension drained out of the atmosphere, the entity obviously having used up all its energy.  Ted lay awake until dawn.  It was clear to him that not only had he encountered a ghost, but the ghost had encountered him, and been indignant at finding its bed occupied.

He also had an odd experience when driving his motorcycle in open country, and, just before roaring around a steep bend, heard a voice say clearly, "Mind the cows."  He slowed down, and found the road around the bend full of cows that had broken out of a field.  Without the warning, there would certainly have been an unpleasant accident.

While he was investigating water monsters, personal experience also led him to take an interest in UFOs.  In January 1966, fishing on a harbour wall near his home in Wales, he saw a luminous object skimming a hundred feet above the waves—a spherical mass of white light that pulsated once every two seconds.

There would be further UFO sightings for Holiday and his last book would be published posthumously, The Goblin Universe (1986) with a byline "by Ted Holiday" and introduction by Colin Wilson.

Upon reading Wilson's Alien Dawn—as someone sensitive to synchronicities involving names and patterns of names—I noticed there were several instances of people named 'Russell' mentioned in the book.  (A previous article relating to this topic is "Adventures in Synchronicity".)  Among the Acknowledgments, Wilson wrote: "Finally, I am grateful to Lorna Russell, of Virgin Publishing, for asking me if I would like to write a book on the possibility of extraterrestrial life.  Neither she nor I had any idea of what this would turn into."  In the first chapter he mentioned being at a 1995 conference on Conscious Evolution where Peter Russell was among his fellow speakers.  His interaction with Uri Geller and Andrija Puharich encompassed work on a movie that the 'space intelligences' had recommended be done: ". . . the movie fell through.  (In due course, I was hired by Robert Stigwood, the theatre impressario, to work on a film about Uri, but that also fell through.)"  A film about Uri was eventually made by Ken Russell although this is not mentioned by Wilson.  Also, Wilson reported that impressive scientific testing of Uri was done by Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ at Stanford University, while Wilson's comments about the Greek mathematician Euclid included the comment "Bertrand Russell had found him so enjoyable that he read right through the Elements as if it were Alice in Wonderland."  Another statement mentioning someone named Russell is: "Yeats's friend George Russell (the poet AE) contributed a section to the book [The Fairy Faith in the Celtic Countries (1911) by Walter Evans-Wentz] in which he describes his own fairy sightings with the precision of an anthropologist describing primitive tribes: shining beings, opalescent beings, water beings, wood beings, lower elementals."  

I, myself (Mark Russell Bell) was able to speak to Colin Wilson when he was the guest on the "Dreamland" radio show hosted by Whitley Strieber in 2001: ". . . I was hoping to hear what optimistic conclusion he might've reached over the years.  And I wouldn't mind hearing something about God and spirituality or sexuality or whatever he would care to say."  Wilson replied: "Basically, as Whitley observed earlier in the program, I am totally optimistic because I've seen that all human beings have this same capacity for the peak experience — bubbling, overwhelming happiness."

In retrospect, during my research of unexplained phenomena encompassing UFOlogy, perhaps the most significant discovery has been the prominence of EVP among all audio and video recordings and broadcasts.  Previous articles with commentary about this include "EVP and UFOlogy — MP3 Audio: Arthur Shuttlewood 1968 Interview" and "Adventures in UFOlogy".