In November 1955, Ansel Talbert of the New York Herald Tribune published a three-part series titled "Conquest of Gravity: Aim of Top Scientists in U.S." The articles documented gravity control research at more than ten major aerospace companies.
Then the research stopped — publicly. Not one company published a null result.
The Companies
The documented participants include:
- Glenn L. Martin Company (later Martin Marietta, now Lockheed Martin)
- Convair (later General Dynamics)
- Bell Aircraft (later Bell Helicopter Textron)
- Sperry-Rand Corporation
- Boeing
- Lear Inc. (founded by William Lear)
- Lockheed
- Douglas Aircraft (later McDonnell Douglas, now Boeing)
- North American Aviation (later Rockwell, now part of Boeing)
- General Electric
Two intelligence reports — "Electrogravitics Systems" (February 1956, report GRG-013/56) and "The Gravitics Situation" — were produced by Aviation Studies (International) Ltd. and found at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. These reports treated electrogravitics as an active research field with industrial participation.
The Silence
By 1957-58, all public reporting had ceased. The cessation was:
- Simultaneous — multiple companies stopped within an eighteen-month window
- Comprehensive — no partial results, no progress reports, no "we tried and it didn't work"
- Permanent — none ever resumed public gravitics research
When a research programme fails, the normal scientific outcome is a null result publication. Companies that invested resources typically explain to shareholders why the investment did not produce returns. None of this happened.
What Did Happen in 1957-58
In the same eighteen-month window:
- ARPA (later DARPA) was established (February 1958)
- NASA was created (July 1958)
- The National Reconnaissance Office was created (August 1960, existence classified until 1992)
- The Chapel Hill Conference on gravitation was co-funded by Wright Air Development Centre
The institutional apparatus for classified advanced research was built during the exact period the public research disappeared.
Failure or Classification?
As The Ether Conspiracy documents in Chapter 7: The Silence, a research programme that fails produces null results. A research programme that is classified produces silence. The pattern is consistent with classification, not failure.
The full analysis, with source documentation, is free to read online.