Reading Room

8 August 1955

SUBJECT: Revised Technical Note on the Operating Principle of the Apparatus, Operation BRAVO-CHARLIE

TO: , Asst. Director, OSI

Copy: W. Seaton, Division Chief, Western Europe

The undersigned has been engaged, since the meeting of 30 June 1955 at the facility, in the preparation of a revised account of the operating principle of the apparatus, in fulfillment of the undertaking he gave at the meeting of 27 May 1955 following the First Field Trial. The present note is the result of that work. It is forwarded to the Asst. Director with a copy to the Division Chief, Western Europe, for the consideration of both Offices. The undersigned is conscious that the contents of the note will be unwelcome to both Offices and that they place in question certain understandings upon which the program has been conducted from its inception. He is constrained to forward the note notwithstanding the consequences. The alternative course, which would be to continue silent upon matters which he is no longer in conscience able to leave unstated, is one he is not prepared to follow.

The note is in three parts. The first sets forth the matters of fact upon which the revised account rests. The second sets forth the revised account itself. The third sets forth the consequences which in the undersigned’s judgment follow from the revised account for the further conduct of the program.

PART ONE — MATTERS OF FACT

The undersigned advances the following matters as established by the operational record of the program and not in serious dispute among the technical group.

First, the bench trials of the preliminary phase demonstrated that physical articles placed within the field of the apparatus could be caused to depart from the chamber and to return to it after an interval of approximately four seconds as measured at the apparatus. The articles, upon return, exhibited certain alterations of a character not contemplated by the working hypothesis. Inorganic articles were returned without apparent alteration save for a lateral positional displacement of regular character. Organic articles were returned with measurable reduction of mass and with discoloration consistent with prolonged exposure to dry heat, the deterioration increasing in a manner that is not linear with the magnitude of the displacement.

Second, the photographic record of Trial Seven of the preliminary phase, conducted upon 31 August 1954, recorded upon three of four exposures a shadow of indeterminate origin, within the field but not coincident with the articles or with the field structure. The shadow has not been characterized. Its existence was not entered upon the official report of Trial Seven at the time of its occurrence, upon a determination of the undersigned which the undersigned is here constrained to acknowledge. The matter is more fully addressed in the second part of the present note.

Third, the First Field Trial of 23 May 1955 was conducted in conformity with the operational planning. The apparatus operated within the predicted parameters throughout the displacement sequence. The field formed at the principal vessel as predicted. The displacement was initiated as commanded. The four seconds elapsed. The principal vessel did not return.

Fourth, a passage from the Roman historian Livy, recording the sighting of phantom ships gleaming in the sky over Italy in the year 218 B.C., appears in a printed anthology published in 1951, in advance of the authorization of the program and in advance of the conduct of the trial. The passage is consistent in every particular with the trial. The manuscript tradition supporting the passage is of antique date.

Fifth, no anomaly was recorded in the photographic plates of the First Field Trial of a character similar to the shadow recorded at Trial Seven.

PART TWO — REVISED ACCOUNT

The working hypothesis under which the program has hitherto been conducted has held that the apparatus effects the displacement of physical matter along the temporal axis in the rearward direction, and the subsequent recovery of the same matter to the point of initiation. The hypothesis is consistent with the bench trials at small magnitudes. The undersigned does not believe that it is consistent with the further matters of fact set forth in the first part of the present note.

The undersigned advances the following revised account, which he offers not as established but as the most economical account presently consistent with the matters of fact. The apparatus does not displace matter along the temporal axis. The apparatus effects the translation of matter from the four-dimensional manifold of ordinary experience into a manifold of higher dimensionality, of which the temporal axis is one of several axes and of which the spatial axes of ordinary experience are likewise embedded as subordinate axes. The deterioration of organic materials, the lateral positional drift, and the shadow recorded at Trial Seven, are not to be understood as artifacts of the displacement process. They are to be understood as the effects upon translated matter of the higher manifold itself, or, more precisely, of the inhabitants or properties of the higher manifold with which translated matter is, by virtue of its translation, brought into contact.

The shadow recorded at Trial Seven is, upon this account, the projection into the chamber of an object whose extension in the higher manifold exceeds the dimensionality the apparatus is capable of rendering. The undersigned offers, as an analogy of a kind he is reluctant to draw but which he believes will be useful to the reader, the case of a sphere passing through a plane. An inhabitant of the plane, observing the passage, would perceive a circle of growing and then shrinking radius, where the sphere itself would not be capable of being perceived as a sphere. The shadow at Trial Seven is, in the undersigned’s judgment, a perception of the same kind. The technical group was, at the moment of the third exposure, in the presence of an object whose nature could not be rendered in the photographic medium. The plates recorded what they could record.

The recovery of articles from the higher manifold to the four-dimensional manifold of ordinary experience is not, upon this account, a property of the apparatus. The apparatus effects the translation. The return is effected by some agency other than the apparatus, the nature of which the undersigned is not in a position to characterize, save in the following respect. The agency does not, in every case, return what was translated to the point of initiation. It returned, in the bench trials, articles to the point of initiation with the deterioration noted. It did not return the principal vessel of the First Field Trial. It may or may not return future articles dispatched by the program; the matter is not within the control of the program.

The phantom ships of Livy’s prodigy are, upon this account, to be understood as the principal vessel of the First Field Trial, observed in the sky over the Tyrrhenian Sea in the year 218 B.C., after its translation by the apparatus and before its disposition by the agency. Whether the vessel has been retained by the agency, whether it has been destroyed, whether it has been returned to some other point in the four-dimensional manifold than the point of initiation, the undersigned is not in a position to say. He observes only that the historical record contains a description of the vessel at the coordinates to which the apparatus dispatched it, and that the description has stood in the historical record since antiquity, which is to say since before the apparatus was constructed and since before the program existed to construct it.

The undersigned is conscious that the revised account as here set forth has implications for the understanding of the historical record more generally. The undersigned has not undertaken to address those implications in the present note. He observes only that the historical record is, upon the revised account, not necessarily to be understood as a fixed body of evidence to which the program may dispatch articles, but as a body of evidence upon which the program’s operations may have already had effects that are now visible in the record. The Livy passage is one such effect. The undersigned does not exclude the possibility that there are others. He does not exclude the possibility that there are effects in the record that have been produced by operators other than the program, of whose existence the program has no knowledge.

PART THREE — CONSEQUENCES FOR THE FURTHER CONDUCT OF THE PROGRAM

The undersigned draws the following consequences from the revised account, which he submits for the consideration of both Offices.

The first consequence is that the program does not possess the capability it has hitherto believed itself to possess. The program does not displace matter rearward in time. The program translates matter into a manifold from which the matter is or is not returned by an agency the program does not control. The operational utility of the apparatus, considered as an instrument under the program’s authority, is accordingly less than has been supposed.

The second consequence is that the dispatch of further articles, and a fortiori the dispatch of further personnel, is an act the consequences of which cannot be predicted by the program with any confidence. The dispatch of articles to the higher manifold is a transfer of those articles to the disposition of the agency. The articles may be returned. They may not. If they are returned, they may be altered. The alteration may not be characterized in advance.

The third consequence, and the one upon which the undersigned wishes particularly to insist, is that the program is not in a position presently to assess the disposition of the agency toward further activity by the program. The agency returned, in the bench trials, articles of small mass with relatively minor alteration. The agency did not return the principal vessel of the First Field Trial. The undersigned is not in a position to say whether the difference of treatment reflects a difference in the agency’s disposition toward articles of different magnitudes, or toward the dispatch of personnel as distinct from inanimate matter, or toward the program’s purposes more generally, or whether the difference reflects nothing systematic at all. The undersigned is in a position to say that the dispatch of further articles, especially of articles of a character that might be construed by the agency as hostile to its interests, is an act the consequences of which the undersigned cannot foresee and would not undertake to predict.

The fourth consequence, which the undersigned states with reluctance but which he is constrained to state, is that the loss of the complement of the principal vessel of the First Field Trial is a loss for which the program bears responsibility upon any account, and that the responsibility is not discharged by the cover arrangements that have been applied to the loss for the purposes of the Division’s reporting. The men were dispatched by the program to a coordinate in the higher manifold from which they have not returned. The program is not in a position to recover them. The program is not in a position to communicate with them or to ascertain their disposition. The undersigned is not himself in a position to address the matter further than to observe that it weighs upon him and that he believes it ought to weigh upon both Offices.

The undersigned accordingly recommends that the program suspend the dispatch of further articles pending consideration of the matters here set forth, and pending such further work as the technical group is able to undertake upon the characterization of the agency. He observes that this recommendation is in conflict with the preparations presently in train for the Second Field Trial. He observes further that he is not in a position, having committed the present note to writing, to participate in the conduct of the Second Field Trial upon its present operational planning. He is prepared to discuss with both Offices what alternative arrangements may be considered.

The undersigned is at the disposal of both Offices to address such questions as the present note may raise.

Principal Technical Officer

Operation BRAVO-CHARLIE