A good read for UFO enthusiasts. Below is an introduction to the project with link at the end.
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INTRODUCTION TO PROJET MONTGOLFIER REPORTS
by Jacques M. Cornillon
I came into the life of Thomas Townsend Brown, in the mid-1950’s. I was the U.S Technical Representative for a French aeronautic company, Sociéte National de Construction Aeronautiques du Sud-Ouest, (S.N.C.A.S.O). I was in the library of the Institute of Aeronautical Science of Los Angeles, studying a magazine when my attention was drawn to the word “Wow” written in the margin, with exclamation points. I read the article “The Flying Saucer: A Simplified Explanation of the Application of the Biefeld-Brown Effect to the Solution of the Problem of Space Navigation” by Mason Rose, Ph.D., that said a Townsend Brown had found a new force that seemed to indicate a new form of propulsion for aviation. In this article he outlined the Biefeld-Brown Effect, electrogravitation, and its application to space navigation. There was considerable interest throughout the world on this subject at that time, with many applications for patents. An address was provided at the end of the article, so I decided to contact the author, Dr. Mason Rose. I did, and we met. Subsequently he introduced me to a ‘Dr. Shank’. We spoke at length about Brown’s project and its history and of my company and our potential interest in Brown’s project. At the conclusion they recommended that I contact Brown, which I did on my return to the East Coast.
I met with Townsend Brown in Washington on April 7, 1955. I first asked him if he was free to work with our French company, that he was not already engaged with an American company or with the American government. He told me that he would get back to me in a few days. Several days later, he called me to tell me that he was able to work with us. We then made a contract with him to come spend some time with us at our facility outside of Paris to make the experiments that he had outlined for us. He had given us plans of some ‘flying saucers’ that he wanted us to build in our workshops, and to procure a machine to produce the needed energy source, (see T. Townsend Brown Proposal and T. Townsend Brown Blueprints).
Our company undertook the project in secret with a limited team, at a building in our Courbevoie facility called ‘B12’. We baptized this project “Projet Montgolfier”, in honor of the French brothers who were the first men to experience free flight. Our first goal was to make a complete scientific study of the Biefeld–Brown effect.
Dr. Brown came to France twice in the period from 1955 to 1956. Many tests were made. The first round of testing was done in the air. We found that when we ‘flew’ the saucers around the tether, this was simply a pure demonstration of ‘electric wind’. We found there was a small force that sometimes was added to the expected force, but it was much too small to measure in the air where there is ionization.
So it was decided that a new round of tests needed to be made in vacuum to eliminate the effect of ionization in the air. We created a vacuum in a small bell jar with a modified miniaturized saucer and tether design from Dr. Brown and performed a series of new tests. While we did achieve results indicating a separate force not attributable to ionization, the experiments in the small bell jar were affected by the outside atmosphere on the bell jar wall and rendered these experiments scientifically inconclusive.
It was decided that the next step was to make tests in a big vacuum chamber. Dr. Brown again sent us designs for the construction of a large vacuum chamber and test apparatus.
As this phase of the project was undertaken my company was merged into another company. During this turbulent period of the merger we were able, with difficulty, to continue and complete the construction of the large vacuum chamber, though moved to a less hospitable location. The president of my company, now the president of the new merged company, Sud-Aviation, decided not to continue the experiments but to pass them along to another company S.N.E.C.M.A. (Société Nationale d’Étude et de Construction de Moteurs d’Aviation) that was more specialized in this type of research.
The team made some hasty tests before having the project shut down for delivery of the vacuum chamber to the new company. The Final Report for the Projet Mongolfier, April 15, 1959, outlined these five tests confirming, as in the prior tests, that there was a definable force. At this point our team was scattered, the project shut down and we were unable to make the further tests to further refine and quantify the results.
It was at this point that I lost contact with the project, and despite later efforts was never able to find out what, if anything, happened to it.
Note: Jacques Cornillon passed away on May 30, 2008, at the age of 99, not long after he concluded these notes.
Link to article http://projetmontgolfier.info/Home_Page.php
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