Gravity Research Foundation

Through history humans have happily lived alongside gravity, accepting it as a physical fact of the universe even if they could not quite put their finger on what it actually was.

Not everyone was okay with gravity always pushing us humans around though. Particularly Roger Babson who started the Gravity Research Foundation in 1948,

As an organization designed to find ways to implement gravitational shielding.

Now the only remnants of the GRF are scattered stone monuments located in obscure locations on a dozen American university campuses.

Yet, in 1948, Babson established its headquarters in New Boston, New Hampshire,

Which Babson chose because he thought it was far enough from big cities to survive a nuclear war.

So confident was Babson of New Boston’s relative safety that he put up a sign declaring New Boston to be the safest town in North America is World War III came,

But town fathers toned it down to say just that New Boston was a safe place.

Babson persevered though, emboldened by the childhood drowning of his sister in his pursuit to extinguish gravity,

[He wrote] ‘She was unable to fight gravity, which came up and seized her like a dragon and brought her to the bottom.’

With his sister’s memory entrenched Babson was able to build a fairly reputable society that included notables such as Clarence Birdseye, of frozen food fame, and Igor Sikorsky who invented the helicopter.

At the GRF meetings it was no uncommon to see attendees who,

Sat in chairs with their feet higher than their heads, to counterbalance gravity.

These meetings accomplished little though and the foundation decided to stop trying to block gravity and instead to try to understand gravity as best it could. To this end they began to award annual prizes to essays written on gravity.

Stephen Hawking won in 1971, as did Nobel Prize in Physics winner Julian Schwinger, allowing the GRF’s legacy to live on.

Even though the physical society crumbled with Babson’s death in 1967, the yearly essay awards keep its name in the papers.

And on American campuses you can still find, if you know where to look, stone tablets reading,