Al Bielek's Speech at the MUFON
Conference [Spelling & identification of several previously
unrecognized words & names corrected by Rick Andersen, October 1992.]
Introduction
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HOST: Alfred Bielek is our speaker tonight, and I heard
him at the UFO conference in Phoenix, in September, and I think it was
pretty much agreed that he was the most interesting of any of the
speakers, at least on subject material. So there hasn't been anyone
that I know of that was actually involved in the Philadelphia
Experiment, that was still around to tell you about it. And he is. So
I think this one is a really exciting program.
Now there are some tie-ins with UFO's in a sense in
that, well-- I will let him tell you a little bit about that, but one
of the projects that he was working on is still highly classified, and
it did involve some UFO's, and he really can't talk about that one as
much; tonight, he might just briefly touch on it. But I think it's
real interesting that there's so much government secrecy around this
as much as there has been
around UFO's, and the government has denied that this one has ever
happened. So just in that relationship, I think it is very
interesting, and it certainly has a tie-in with the things that we
discuss here in our group. So with that, I introduce Alfred Bielek.
"THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT"
As announced, my name is Alfred Bielek, I am a survivor
of the Philadelphia Experiment. I am going to ask before really
starting: Out of the people who are here, how many of you really know
what the Philadelphia Experiment, so called, was really all about?...
I don't see very many hands going up. So probably the second question
is a little bit superfluous. How many of you have any ideas to whether
this experiment actually started in the war years? That is, World War
II, say '41 '42.
How many of you think it started then? Very few are knowledgeable
about that.... A few hands go up. Or who may think it started
earlier?.... Well the ones who say earlier are correct.
It actually had its genesis in 1931-1932, in a strange
little windy city called Chicago, Illinois. At that time there had
been, through the Twenties and early Thirties, a lot of speculation in
the popular literature, meaning scientific popular literature like
"Popular Science", "Popular Mechanics", "Science Illustrated", on the
subjects of invisibility, trying to make an object disappear, or a
person
disappear, or even teleportation. I guess the people at that time in
there writing thought that maybe we were close to it, in the terms of
a scientific accomplishment, but there was a great deal of
speculation, and very little if anything was ever done about it.
About that time in '31, some people decided maybe it was
about time to do something about it and they got together at the
University of Chicago. The three principles involved were Dr. Nikola
Tesla, Dr. John Hutchinson and dean of the University of Chicago,
later chancellor, and a Dr. Kirtenauer, who was an Austrian physicist,
who came from Austria and was on staff at the University of Chicago.
They did a little research....a feasibility study type thing at that
time, did not accomplish very much, at that particular moment, in that
period. A little bit later, the entire project was moved to the
Institute of
Advanced Studies at Princeton.
The Institute of Advanced Studies itself was an
interesting organization. It is not part of the university system, it
is not part of Princeton. It exists on Princeton property, but is a
independent entity. It was founded in 1933, under whose auspices, or
for what purpose, can't really say, other than someone wanted an
institute for very advanced studies, post doctoral research and this
type of thing. Among the first people to join were such interesting
and well-known
people as Albert Einstein. I won't go into Albert Einstein's history,
because he's too well known, but he joined the staff in 1933. He was
of course from Bonn, Germany, and after he left Germany in 1930 (some
of the biographies said 1933, but it was in 1930), he came to the
United States, and went to Pasadena, Ca. He was teaching at Cal-Tech.
He was there for about three years, and was invited to join the
institute, in which he did in 1933, and he remained there until his
death.
Einstein's principle function was a theoretical
physicist, a theoretical man, strictly mathematics, in the area of
physics. Well known of course for his Special Theory of Relativity,
his General Theory of Relativity, and the speculative Unified Field
Theory. Other people joined about the same time. One of the more
important individuals who joined was of course, Dr. John von Neumann,
who was born in Budapest, Hungary, and he came from Europe. He took
his degree in mathematics, a PhD in mathematics in 1925, in Budapest.
He taught in the German University system for approximately four
years, at two different posts. During that period of the four years,
he met Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, who was in Europe at that time, who
became important later on after the project, and a number of other
people.
Now, von Neumann was rather interesting. He was a
theoretical man, a theoretical mathematician. But he was also a
"nuts-and-bolts" man, which means he knew how to apply pure theory.
Einstein did not, and this is very important. Now one of the other
people turned up at that university, that is where he was teaching at
that time, was a very important man, if I can read my notes here, was
a man by the name of David Hilbert. Probably none of you have ever
heard of David Hilbert. A Dr. in mathematics, he was considered in
Europe as a most outstanding mathematician; he never did leave Europe
as far as I know. He was born, raised, and died in Germany. He died in
Germany about 1965, approximately. But he was in the circle which Dr.
von Neumann met.
Hilbert is most well-known and remembered for the fact
that he developed a very exotic form of mathematics called Hilbert
Space. He was the first man to define mathema- tically multiple
realities, multiple space, and what it all meant in the terms of a
mathematician's point of view. To the most of us it is almost meaning-
less, and to the average person it is meaningless, but it is important
to the physicist, and to a
mathematician, because he laid the ground work to what became the
Philadelphia Experiment.
Hilbert and von Neumann got together. Von Neumann wrote
a paper in Germany, in German, on Hilbert and some of his work. And
von Neumann, being a very outstanding man himself, took Hilbert's work
and "ran with it", as the saying goes, and he developed whole new
systems of mathematics of his own. Von Neumann is well-known in
mathematical circles, as is Hilbert, and some of his work has been
published, and post-Philadelphia Experiment wise. One of the things he
is well-known for is Game Theory. He also developed a system of ring
operators, very exotic species of algebra, none of which really means
anything except to somebody who is very heavily steeped in mathematics
and is a pure mathematician. Other people became important to this
project as time went on.
Now in 1934 roughly, they moved the project to the
Institute, and Dr. Tesla comes into play here. Tesla is a very
important man. His history's fairly well known. There is a movie out,
by Segrabe Productions in Yugoslavia, outlining his life. He was born
in 1856. He went to school, to the regular schools, a gymnasium, which
is their high school, he started in a university. He was there one
year when his father died. He
ran out of funds, so he could not continue his formal education, but
he understudied the professors there and so he sat in on the classes.
He then took work as he could find it, in Europe at Western Union for
a period of time. Then he joined the Edison Corps. of Europe. And when
he decided to move to the United States in 1884, he had a letter of
introduction from Edison's man, who ran the Edison Corps. in Europe.
So he arrived in the United States in 1884, and as the
saying goes, with a good working knowledge of eleven languages, four
cents in his pocket, a book of poetry, and a letter of introduction to
Thomas Edison. It was most important that he had that letter of
introduction, because that became, for a period of time, his mainstay.
He was introduced to Edison and immediately got into an argument with
Edison over the differences in their basic approach to electricity.
Edison was a DC man and Tesla, as was well-known, was a AC man, and
Edison couldn't see the AC and wanted no part of it. He already had a
vested interest, if you will, in the DC machinery which he had
designed and built, and in the power systems he was putting together.
Well, he worked, that is Tesla worked for Edison for about six months.
They got into a violent argument over money, namely a promise that was
made to Tesla, that if he solved a certain problem, within a certain
time deadline, that he, Edison, would give him $50,000 as a bonus.
Well, he did the job and finished it, and he came to Edison and asked
for his bonus. Edison laughed, ho ho, that's a big joke, American
sense of
humor and all of that. Tesla didn't think that was a big joke, and
just packed up and left immediately, and went back to digging ditches.
After that he met various people, did various things,
one of them being for the American President of Western Union. He
worked for him for a period of time. That gentleman helped him set up
his first laboratory. As time went on, he became an American citizen,
and he started to give a series of lectures at the old Institute of
Electrical Engineers, which
in the 1880's and 1890's was very prominent in New York, and Tesla
became a very prominent, regular speaker, on various subjects of
course involving AC theory, electrical power, and anything else he
happened to think was important. With everybody there, their support,
everything he presented was important.
At one point he gave a demonstration on electrical
theory and AC power, and one of the attendees was Mr. George
Westinghouse. So in approximately 1889, Westinghouse bought all of
Tesla's patents, 20 of them on an AC generator system, and AC power
distribution, paid him a million dollars cold cash, and a royalty of
one dollar per horsepower, for every horsepower produced in equipment
from that point on, for the life of the patents. This put Tesla in
business very thoroughly. In 1893, Tesla won the award for providing
the power for the Chicago
World Exposition. It was the first time a major exposition had any AC
power applied for generation; previous to that was DC power, when
there was power available, and that did not suit Mr. Edison very well,
but nevertheless Tesla won it. He was already backed by J.P. Morgan.
And he also did something else of great note at that exposition: he
demonstrated for the first time, publicly, a model boat,
radio-controlled, in the boat basin. He repeated this demonstration in
1898, at another demonstration in Madison Square Garden, New York
City.
In the meantime there was a contest on for the
development of high power, long range power transmission, and Tesla
won the award to build Niagara Power Station, the first major
hydroelectric power station in the United States to be equipped with
AC power. He won it because he promised he could ship power all the
way to New York City without losses, and he proved it.
In 1899, Tesla went to Colorado Springs to do a lot of
research, and in this period of the research he was dabbling into very
basic areas of research involving very high powered electricity,
electrical bolts-- the Tesla Coil, if you will. He was there two
years, he made some press announcements. One of them, in 1899, was
that he had been in contact with some people off planet Earth, ET's,
if you will, in our modern terminology. The press took a great deal of
note in it, and the
scientific colleagues took a very dim view of it, at the time. That
was not a popular subject; they thought he was a little bit 'around
the bend' perhaps, which they thought very much he was later, a couple
of decades later. But he stuck to his guns.
Well, in 1906, again with JP Morgan's backing, he was going to develop
a system for transmission of radio and television signals, and the
Wardencliff Tower was built on Long Island in 1906.
About a year before its completion, he went to JP Morgan
and said, "Really, Mr. Morgan, I intend to use this tower for the
production of FREE POWER, for everyone. FREE ELECTRICAL POWER." And
Mr. Morgan said to him, "You mean to tell me Mr. Tesla, that somebody
can stick an antenna rod in the ground, and
another one in the air, and pick up all the FREE POWER they want, and
I can't put a meter on it and charge them?" And Tesla said, "That is
correct." JP Morgan said, "I will tell you, Mr. Tesla, when I am ready
for you." Obviously Mr. Morgan never called him again, cut off all of
the funding. The Wardencliff Tower sat until 1914 when it was
dynamited by someone. And that was the end of that project. Now in the
meantime Tesla went on to other things. I will cut this a little bit
short, because we are going to get into the main part of this.
In 1917 of course there was a war on-- World War I.
Tesla was approached by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then secretary of
the Navy, to do some work for the government, which he gladly agreed
to do. He was also involved at that time with the American Marconi Co.
and that company was seized during World War I, as a possible hot-bed
of alien activity, and you know the usual para- noia that exist during
wartime. And the whole company was absorbed by the government, Tesla
with it. Tesla did develop a number of interesting things at that
time, one of them the Rogers Antenna System. The Rogers System for
transmission of wireless, which made it possible for the military at
that time-- the patent was classified for many years-- to transmit
voice communications to Europe from the United States, without static
and without noise-- an unheard-of feat at that time. The system is
still in use today by the military.
In 1919 a new corporation was formed, RCA, and Tesla
became part of it. It was formed out of the old nucleus of American
Marconi. Tesla remained with RCA, first as an engineer, then as a
director of engineering, and then after 1935 as the director of all
engineering and research worldwide for RCA, which lasted until 1939,
at which timed he retired. During this entire period of time, he had
an impeccable track record for
producing hardware that worked and never failed, ie. he never failed
to produce something that worked. He was also well-known as a man who
visualized these things in his head before he ever put it down on
paper, or told somebody what to build, down to the last gnat's eyebrow
of a dimension.
What's important, to know this, and to understand that
Tesla's approach to the projects, was largely intuitive, not without a
mathematical background, because he had that, but his mathematics was
that of the last century, the 1880's. And there was a lot known about
Electrical Theory at that time, but it was not at that time that they
developed Radio. Hertz got into this in the late 1880's 1890's. Tesla
never agreed with Hertz on what a radio wave is. But in 1933,
Roosevelt became President of the United Sates. He called his old
friend Nikola Tesla down to Washington, and asked him, "How would you
like to do some more work for the government?" And Tesla said, "Fine".
And he said, "We have a project for you." He wound up being the
director of what would later become known as the Philadelphia Project.
And that is basically how Tesla became involved in that project. He
was named by the President, so far as what we can determine now. He
was the first director, this does show in certain records, and they
proceeded.
In 1936, there was a first test of some hardware, and
this was moderately successful. This means it resulted in some partial
invisibility, enough to be encouraging enough to show that they were
on the right pathway and the right track, and the Navy became very
interested; actually they were interested from the beginning in 1931
and provided some research money. And in 1936 they provided more, and
the project expanded.
Well this went on and things expanded from that point onward, more
people became part of the project.
A Dr. Gustave Le Bon became a close associate of Dr. von
Neumann, joined the staff. Can't find any record of him today, but
nevertheless he was there, and another man, a Dr. Clarkston, joined in
approximately in 1940. Now this was not the only project going on at
the Institute. There were other people there doing various things. The
only man who knew everything that was going on there was of course Dr.
Einstein himself, he was considered as the General. If you had a
problem, you went to
see the General. He was a general consultant to everyone, whatever the
project might be.
Now this thing continued to grow. I haven't gotten into
how I got involved in it yet, didn't quite get into it at this point.
I came in later. But I think what I want to do at this point is take a
slight break from the theoretical side and show you a video tape, part
of it, produced by EMI Thorn Corp. of England. This movie was produced
basically in 1983, and was released in the United States in 1984 from
England to be shown in theaters, with schedule to setup about mid
August of '84. And the movie lasted TWO WEEKS. About three days before
the movie was released, EMI Thorn received a letter from the United
States government saying 'we don't want this movie to be shown in the
United States.' They decided after some deliberation to ignore the
letter, because they had already made their release dates, and they
said well three days we can play that we never got the letter. So they
released the movie, and it was shown in various
places; New York, Philadelphia, as I understand there were huge
waiting lines to see it, and various other cities around the US.;
Phoenix, Sedona, AZ., Chicago, Los Angeles, whatever.
Another letter arrived at EMI Thorn in England, shortly
thereafter-- a very stern, "We don't want this movie shown in the
United States." So EMI Thorn could not ignore
the second letter. So they fired back at the Government, and said 'if
you want this movie stopped, you will have to get a court injunction
to stop it.' And the U.S. government said 'we will', and they did.
They got a court order banning the showing of this movie in the United
States. That court order took effect sometime early September, and the
movie dis- appeared completely for two years. In the meantime EMI
Thorn went ahead and decided that they wanted to fight this, and they
did successfully. Two years later they had a counter-injunction
issued, banning the first one, and it again became available as a
video tape. I
don't believe it has ever been shown in a movie house after that, but
the video tape is commonly available.
Transcribed October 12, 1991
by Clay Tippen
7809 Cypress St.
West Monroe, LA
71291-8282