Thomas Townsend Brown

Thomas Townsend Brown (March 18, 1905 – October 27, 1985)^[1] was an American inventor whose research into odd electrical effects led him to believe he had discovered a type of anti-gravity caused by strong electric fields. Instead of being an anti-gravity force, what Brown observed has generally been attributed to electrohydrodynamics,^{[citation needed]} the movement of charged particles that transfer their momentum to surrounding neutral particles in the air, also called "ionic drift" or "ionic wind". For most of Brown's life, he attempted to develop devices based on his ideas, trying to promote them for use by industry and the military. The phenomena came to be called the "Biefeld–Brown effect" and "electrogravitics".

Brown's research influenced some amateur experimenters who build "ionic propulsion lifters" powered by high voltage. There are still claims that Brown discovered anti-gravity, an idea popular with the unidentified flying object (UFO) community and spawning many conspiracy theories.^{[citation needed]}