LAS ÉLJTES DEL PODER
II. INFLUENCIA DE LA OPINIÓN PUBLICA EN LA VIDA COTIDIANA
3. ACCIÓN DE LA COMUNICACIÓN EN EL PROCESO DE CAMBIO
Basic Description:
The Wishing machine is a reasonably standard three-transistor common-emitter RC-coupled audio frequency amplifier with two simple flat copper plates on the input - one at ground potential and the other connected to the high-impedance input of the amplifier - and an output consisting of a simple vertical rod antenna. It is powered by a 6-volt battery.
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The device appears to be effective in accelerating growth or decay of reasonably simple life forms such as viruses, bacteria, fungi, plants, insects, and lower animals.
When a symbolic sample - a photograph of a plant, field, tree, or person, for example - is placed between the two copper input plates and the amplifier is turned on, the experimenter then consciously thinks of some change he desires to occur or some wish concerning the object symbolized in the sample placed between the plates.
The device has apparently been known to (a) achieve a 90%+ kill ratio of Japanese beetles in 90 test plots in tests conducted in the 1950s by the Pennsylvania State Department of Agriculture; (b) achieve a 70% kill ratio against corn borers in other tests conducted by the same agency; (c) destroyed tent caterpillars in a tree 1200 miles from the site of the device; (d) all but eliminated acne from the skin of an adolescent girl; and (e) eliminated a large number of severe warts on an infant girl. There may have been other tests conducted and other results achieved, but the author has some documentation on these.
The device apparently does not work in a destruc-tive mode against other human beings. In other words, it is not a murder machine, which is why it can be considered for publication in this book. However, it appears to be a member of a class of "Wishing
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Figure 9-1: Block diagram of the wishing machine.
chines" in general, some of which can and apparently have been used as such. This doesn't seem to be voodoo magic, but it appears indeed to be magic under the definition of that term as it has been used in this book.
Historical Background:
Work on this particular machine apparently was initiated in about 1946 by Colonel Henry Gross (Yale, 1906), a banker and investor who was at that time head of the selective service system for the state of Pennsylvania. He was assisted by two other gentlemen named Upton and Armstrong, both Princeton Class of 1905. Additional data on these latter two men has not been located. Work began when
one another in 1946, whereupon the three men decided that if nothing known to science at that time could have saved the two women, they should start looking beyond science.
All three pursued their goal as a hobby with no desire to make money; they'd already done that. They apparently were pure amateurs in this regard. The Pennsylvania tests were apparently conducted in the early 1950's.
Author's Experience:
I heard about this Wishing machine in a private communication from John W. Campbell, Jr. dated June 22, 1956. Apparently, Campbell's publication of the article about the Hieronymous machine brought responses from a large number of people working on or having had experience with other such machines. Since this was such a simple device
(
like the symbolic Hieronymous machine), I built one.My eldest child, Constance, was at that time less than three years old and suffering badly from warts. Warts are, of course, caused by any one of a number of different viruses. She was especially susceptible because she had warts everywhere, and we had grown increasingly concerned about their locations and extent of growth. Medical treatments had included such severe measures as direct treatment of the warts with arsenic acid, a procedure that seemed to me rife with hazard in an infant.
I placed a photograph of my daughter between the input plates of my Wishing machine, turned on the battery power, and consciously thought about those warts going away, about killing the virus that was causing the warts, and about my daughter without them. I kept the Wishing amplifier constantly operating on battery power, since from time to time during the subsequent days I kept thinking about her and those warts.
The result was frightening. Within three days, my daughter's warts had decreased markedly, including those that were beginning to grow inside her nostrils. Within four weeks, she was free of warts and has not had anything like them since.
I disassembled my Wishing amplifier because I was afraid of what I might henceforth do with it. At that time in my life, it seemed that this phenomenon involved too much personal power of a sort that I didn't understand and felt that it might not be controllable. I wasn't certain whether or not I could handle it. All of us are secretly aware of the impulsive beast that hides deep within us. Indeed, most of our rearing and education is aimed toward demanding that we restrain that beast in a mental cage in the deep recesses of our mind...and please throw away the key.
The machine was also sheer, outright magic whose consequences were far beyond those of machines such as the dowsing rods and Hieronymous machine which were, by
In the years since, I have learned that such devices (and there are many of them) can be safely used by most people because we have built-in "circuit breakers" or
"emotional fuses" that prevent most of us from using such machines for destructive purposes. Furthermore, we've been taught to use and depend upon them with dire consequences for those who didn't.
Beyond that, however, appears to be an accumu-lation of data that indicates such machines are useful only against fairly simple living organisms which operate totally on a pre-programmed or instinctual basis. Such organisms behave as systems without feedback with only linear programming; disrupt the programming and the system stops. It does not work on human beings who can and do over-ride instincts with higher thought processes.
I hesitated to include this device in this book for two reasons: (a) it is probably the most atrocious and impossible of all the amazing mind machines I've ever encountered and one of a class of devices for which it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to either dismiss out of hand, explain away, or even generate a reasonable hypothesis of how and why it works at all, which it does; and (b) because of the total lack of any concept of why and how it works, there is always a serious question about whether or not the data on the limitations of its effectiveness are complete and totally valid.
However, simply
because of these two factors, it is necessary to get the information out to amateur investigators so that some additional experimentation may clarify the situation.
Instructions for Fabrication:
As discussed above, this device is a straightforward transistorized audio amplifier. It may be operable on the symbolic level in concert with other devices such as the Hieronymous machine. Instructions given here are for the physical parts unit, however.
A suitable transistorized amplifier circuit is shown in Figure 9-1. The values of the components are called out. All of the parts can be purchased at stores such as Tandy Radio Shack. The amplifier can be built on an ordinary phenolic board and enclosed, along with its battery and the antenna mount, in an electronic component box. The two metal input plates can be easily obtained at most craft and hobby shops.
Although copper was used in the original device built by the author, any electrically conductive plate can be used.
Aluminum and brass sheets are available in most hobby shops. The antenna is a simple collapsible rod that can be taken from a scrapped portable transistor radio or CB trans-ceiver. Or the antenna can be nothing more than a piece of stiff wire.
Figure 9-2: Circuit schematic for a transistorized