The Royal Institution is Not Amused
Few people visit the Royal Institution, in London's Albemarle Street, for
amusement. There are not many laughs at Britain's second oldest scientific
institution, founded in 1799, where Sir Humphry Davy demonstrated his discovery
of the elements sodium and potassium and where Michael Faraday discovered
electromagnetic induction. It's true there have been some lighter moments in the
famous circular lecture theatre, especially since Sir William Bragg introduced
Christmas Lectures for Children in the 1920s. But, on the whole, this is stuffed
shirt territory.
One night in 1973 the stuffed shirts got a shock from which they have still
not recovered. It was an experience at which, like Queen Victoria, they were not
amused. Indeed it was so unamusing for them that it is the only occasion in the
Royal Institution's two hundred year history that it has failed to publish a
proceedings of a major lecture, or 'evening discourse'. The cause of this unique
case of scientific censorship was the maverick professor of electrical
engineering of Imperial College, London, Eric Laithwaite.
Laithwaite was no stranger to controversy even before his shadow fell across
so distinguished an institutional threshold. In the 1960s, Laithwaite invented
the linear electric motor, a device that can power a passenger train. In the
1970s, he and his colleagues combined the linear motor with the latest
hovercraft technology to create a British experimental high speed train. This
was a highly novel, but perfectly orthodox technology.
The advantages of such a tracked hovercraft are obvious to anyone who sees a
hover-rail train running along,suspended in the air above the track -- it is
quiet, has no moving parts to wear out and is practically maintenance-free. The
significance of this last point quickly becomes clear when you learn that more
than 80 per cent of the annual running costs of any railway system is spent on
maintenance of track and rolling stock because of daily wear.
The British government at first invested in the development of his device but
later, after a series of budget cuts, pulled out pleading the need for economy.
Laithwaite, a blunt-speaking Lancashire man who did not shrink from speaking
unpopular truths, told the Government and its scientific bureaucrats the mistake
they were making in no uncertain terms, but its decision to cancel was
unchanged.
Laithwaite refused to be beaten and took his invention one step further. He
designed an even better kind of hover train -- one in which his linear motor was
levitated by electromagnetism giving a rapid transit system that not only
provides quiet, efficient magnetic suspension over a maintenance-free track, but
which generates the electricity to power the magnetic lift of the track from the
movement of the train.
Speaking in the early 1970s, Laithwaite said of his new 'Maglev' system,
'We've designed a motor to propel [the train] that gives you the lift and
guidance for nothing -- literally for nothing: for no additional equipment and
no additional power input. This is beyond my wildest dreams -- that I should
ever see that sort of thing.'
Laithwaite's Maglev design was not quite perpetual motion, but certainly
sounded enough like something-for-nothing to make the scientific establishment
turn its nose up in suspicion. But this project, too, was cancelled by the
government and further development was halted. Today, Maglev trains are being
built in Germany and Japan but Britain continues to spend 80 per cent of its
railway budget on maintenance of conventional transport systems -- several
hundred millions every year.
With the Maglev project cancelled, the technology Laithwaite had devoted the
previous twenty years to developing was put in mothballs. The object of his
entire career for decades disappeared overnight. By an extraordinary chance at
just the same time that the Maglev project was cancelled, Laithwaite received an
intriguing telephone call out of the blue from an amateur inventor, Alex Jones.
Jones claimed to have a remarkable new invention to demonstrate which he had
tried to interest scientists and engineers in, so far without success. Would
Laitwaite like to take a look at it? While others had dismissed Jones as a
crank, Laithwaite, now with time on his hands, invited him to come to Imperial
College.
When Jones arrived in the laboratory he had a strange-looking contraption to
show. It was a simple wooden frame on wheels that could be pushed backwards and
forwards on the bench top, like a child's trolley. But suspended from the front
of the frame was a heavy metal object that could swing from side to side like a
pendulum. The metal object, Jones explained, was a gyroscope.
As Laithwaite looked on in puzzled amazement, Jones started the gyroscope
spinning and then allowed it to swing from side to side. The wooden box moved
along the bench top on its wheels although there was no drive to the wheels and
no external thrust of any kind -- something that shouldn't happen according to
the laws of physics.
'When Alex switched his machine on,' recalled Laithwaite, 'it was quite
disturbing to one's upbringing. The gyroscope appeared to be producing a force
without a reaction. I thought I'd seen something that was impossible.'
'Like everyone else I was brought up on Newton's laws of motion, and the
third law says that for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction,
therefore you cannot propel a body outside its own dimensions. This thing
apparently did.'
Laithwaite started some gyroscope experiments of his own, making large
spinning tops with most of the mass in the rim of the wheel, and he found that,
'these very definitely did something that seemed impossible.'
It was at this critical point in his career that he was invited by Sir George
Porter, president of the august Royal Institution, to deliver a Friday Evening
Discourse.
In retrospect it might seem to be rather risky for Sir George to have invited
a blunt-speaking and controversial figure to address the Institution. But, until
then, Laithwaite's clashes with the government and scientific bureaucrats over
the development of his Maglev train had been a conflict over money and over
innovation: not over scientific principles. He had fought the same kind of
battle as most senior scientists in Britain for scarce resources.
He may have been the sort of outspoken individualist who finds himself in the
headlines, but he was still a distinguished professional scientist, still a
member of the club.
It was against this background that the Royal Institution invited him to
deliver the lecture. But the Friday Evening Discourse is no ordinary lecture. It
is a black tie affair, preceded by dinner amidst the polished silver and
mahogany of the Institution's elegant Georgian dining room, under the
intimidating gaze of portraits of the giants of science from the eighteenth and
nineteenth century, staring down from the panelled walls.
When you are invited to be thus feted by your fellow members of the Royal
Institution and to deliver a Discourse from the spot where Faraday and Davy
stood, it is usually the prelude to collecting the rewards of a lifetime of
distinguished public service: Fellowship of the Royal Society; Gold Medals;
perhaps even a Knighthood. In keeping with such a conservative occasion, those
invited to speak generally choose some worthy topic on which to discourse -- the
future of science, perhaps, or the glorious achievements of the past.
But Laithwaite chose not to discourse on some worthy, painless topic but
instead to demonstrate to the assembled bigwigs that Newton's laws of motion --
the very cornerstone of physics and the primary article of faith of all the
distinguished names gathered in that room -- were in doubt.
Standing in the circular well of the Institution's lecture theatre,
Laithwaite showed his audience a large gyroscope he had constructed -- an
apparatus resembling a motorcycle wheel on the end of a three foot pole (which,
is precisely what it was). The wheel could be spun up to high speed on a
low-friction bearing driven by a small but powerful electrical motor.
Laithwaite first demonstrated that the apparatus was very heavy -- in fact it
weighed more than 50 pounds. It took all his strength and both hands to raise
the pole with its wheel much above waist level. When he started to rotate the
wheel at high speed, however, the apparatus suddenly became so light that he
could raise it easily over his head with just one hand and with no obvious sign
of effort.
What on earth was going on? Heavy objects cannot suddenly become lighter just
because they are rotating, can they? Such a mass can only be propelled aloft if
it is subjected to an external force or if it expels mass, in a rocket engine
for example. Had Laithwaite taken to conjuring tricks? Were there concealed
strings? Confederates in trapdoors?
If Laithwaite expected gasps of admiration or surprise, he was disappointed.
The audience was stunned into silence by his demonstration. When he went on to
explain that Newton's laws of motion were apparently being violated by this
demonstration, the involuntary hush turned to frosty silence.
'I was very excited about it,' he recalled, 'because I knew I had something
to show them that was startling. And I did it rather in the spirit of "come
and see what I've discovered -- come and share this with me." It was only
afterwards that I realised no-one wanted to share it with me. The reaction was
"the man's obviously a lunatic". "There must be some trick"
was what people said.'
'I was simply trying to tell them, "look, here's something very unusual
that's worth investigating. I hope I've got sufficient reputation in electrical
engineering not to be written off as a crank. So when I tell you this, I hope
you'll listen." But they didn't want to.'
'After the Royal Institution lecture all hell broke loose, primarily as a
result of an article in the New Scientist, followed up by articles in the daily
press with headlines such as "Laithwaite defies Newton". The press is
always excited by the possibility of an anti-gravity machine, because of space
ships and science fiction, and the minute you say you can make something rise
against gravity, then you've "made an antigravity machine". And then
the flood gates are unleashed on you especially from the establishment. You've
brought science into disrepute or you're apparently trying to because you've
done something that is against the run of the tide.'
The resounding silence of his audience continued long after that fateful
evening. There was to be no Fellowship of the Royal Society, no gold medal, no
'Arise, Sir Eric'. And, for the first time in two hundred years, there was to be
no published 'proceedings' recording Laithwaite's astonishing lecture. In an
unprecedented act of academic Stalinism, the Royal Institution simply banished
the memory of Professor Laithwaite, his gyroscopes that became lighter, his
lecture, even his existence.
Newton's Laws were restored to their sacrosanct position on the altar of
science. Laithwaite was a non-person, and all was right with the world once
more.
For the next twenty years, Laithwaite carried on investigating the anomalous
behaviour of gyroscopes in the laboratory; at first in Imperial College and
later, after his retirement, wherever he could find a sympathetic institution to
provide bench space and laboratory apparatus.
By the mid-1980 -- what he called 'the most depressing time' -- Laithwaite
had conducted enough empirical research to demonstrate that the skeptics were
right when they said that there were no forces to be had from gyroscopes.
'The mathematics said there were no forces and that was correct', Laithwaite
recalled. 'The thing that wouldn't go away was: can I lift a 50 pound weight
with one hand or can't I? Of all the critics that I showed lifting the big
wheel, none of them ever tried to explain it to me. So I decided I had to follow
Faraday's example and do the experiments.'
After retiring from Imperial College, laithwaite began a long series of
detailed experiments. Sussex University offered him a laboratory and he formed a
partnership with fellow engineer and inventor, Bill Dawson, who also funded the
research. Laithwaite and Dawson spent three years from 1991 to 1994,
investigating in detail the strange phenomena that had unnerved the Royal
Institution.
'The first thing I wanted to find out was how I could lift a 50 pound wheel
in one hand. So we set out to try to reproduce this as a hands-off experiment.
Then we tackled the problem of lack of centrifugal force and the experiments
were telling us that there was less centrifugal force than there should be.
Meanwhile I started to do the theory. We devised more and more sophisticated
experiments until, not long ago, we cracked it.'
The real breakthrough came, said Laithwaite, when they realised that a
precessing gyroscope could move mass through space. 'The spinning top showed us
that all the time, but we couldn't see it. If the gyroscope does not produce the
full amount of centrifugal force on its pivot in the centre then indeed you have
produced mass transfer.'
'It became more exciting than ever now because I could explain the
unexplainable. Gyroscopes became absolutely in accordance with Newton's laws. We
were now not challenging any sacred laws at all. We were sticking strictly to
the rules that everyone would approve of, but getting the same result -- a force
through space without a rocket.'
The research of Laithwaite and Dawson has now borne practical fruit. Their
commercial company, Gyron, filed a world patent for a reactionless drive -- a
device that most orthodox scientists say is impossible.
Sadly Eric Laithwaite died in 1997. His device remains in
prototype form, comparable perhaps to the Wright Brother's first aircraft
or Gottlieb Daimler's first automobile.
Shortly before his death, Laithwaite spoke philosophically about the
long experimental road he had trudged virtually alone.
Why should people reject the idea of something new?' he asked. 'Well, of
course, they always have. If you go back to Galileo, they were going to put him
to death for not saying the earth was the centre of the universe. I'm reminded
of something that Mark Twain once said; 'a crank is a crank only until he's been
proved correct.'
'So now I myself have demonstrated that I've been correct all along. Anyone
seeing the experiments would know at once, if they knew their physics, that I've
done what I said I could do, and that I'm no longer a heretic.'
Laithwaite's reactionless drive is an extraordinary machine; a machine that
orthodox science said could never be built and would never work. But though it
may well eventually prove of great value -- perhaps even providing an
anti-gravity lifting device -- it is a net consumer of energy, just like
Griggs's Hydrosonic pump. There is no evidence at present that it is an
over-unity device -- merely a novel means of propulsion that proves there are
more things in heaven and earth than are currently dreamed of by scientific
rationalism.
But there are other Laithwaites, and there are other engines: some even more
extraordinary than the reactionless drive.
