Project Magnet was an

unidentified flying object An unidentified flying object (UFO), more recently renamed by US officials as a UAP (unidentified aerial phenomenon), is any perceived aerial phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained. On investigation, most UFOs are id ...

(UFO) study programme established by

Transport Canada Transport Canada (french: Transports Canada) is the department within the Government of Canada responsible for developing regulations, policies and services of road, rail, marine and air transportation in Canada. It is part of the Transportati ...

in December 1950 under the direction of Wilbert Brockhouse Smith, senior radio engineer for Transport Canada's Broadcast and Measurements Section. It was formally active until mid-1954 and informally active (without government funding) until Smith's death in 1962. Smith eventually concluded that UFOs were probably extraterrestrial in origin and likely operated by manipulation of

magnetism Magnetism is the class of physical attributes that are mediated by a magnetic field, which refers to the capacity to induce attractive and repulsive phenomena in other entities. Electric currents and the magnetic moments of elementary particles ...

History

Smith made a request to use the facilities of the Department of Transport to study UFOs. The project was formally approved on December 2, 1950 with the intention to collect data about UFOs and apply any recovered data to practical engineering and technology. The ultimate goal of the project was to apply any findings on the subject of geomagnetism to the possibility of exploiting Earth's

magnetic field A magnetic field is a vector field that describes the magnetic influence on moving electric charges, electric currents, and magnetic materials. A moving charge in a magnetic field experiences a force perpendicular to its own velocity and to ...

as a source of

propulsion Propulsion is the generation of force by any combination of pushing or pulling to modify the translational motion of an object, which is typically a rigid body (or an articulated rigid body) but may also concern a fluid. The term is derived from ...

for vehicles. Smith and his colleagues in government believed that UFOs, if real, might hold the key to this new source of power. A small-scale undertaking, the project used DOT facilities, with some assistance from personnel at the

Defence Research Board Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC; french: Recherche et développement pour la défense Canada, ''RDDC'') is a special operating agency of the Department of National Defence (DND), whose purpose is to provide the Canadian Armed Forces ...

(DRB) and the

National Research Council National Research Council may refer to: * National Research Council (Canada), sponsoring research and development * National Research Council (Italy), scientific and technological research, Rome * National Research Council (United States), part of ...

. In June 1952 Smith issued a preliminary report arguing that UFOs likely came from intelligent, extraterrestrial sources and almost certainly manipulated magnetism for flight. A 1953 report reiterated these conclusions. Also in April 1952 the Canadian government established Project Second Storey, a parallel UFO research project, with Smith also involved. It consisted of a group of scientists and military officers who met periodically to consider the UFO question and to recommend government action. Smith reported to Second Storey on some of Project Magnet's findings and conclusions. Smith believed UFOs were linked to

psychic A psychic is a person who claims to use extrasensory perception (ESP) to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance, or who performs acts that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws, ...

phenomena and believed himself to be in contact with extraterrestrial beings who communicated to him through

telepathy Telepathy () is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic W ...

. Smith wrote a number of articles for ''Topside'', the publication of the Ottawa New Sciences Club which he founded, outlining the philosophy of the "Space Brothers" with whom he claimed to be in contact. The articles were later collected and published posthumously in 1969 under the title ''The Boys from Topside''.

Shirley's Bay

In October 1952, Smith set up an observatory at Shirley's Bay outside

Ottawa Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core ...

to study reports of UFO sightings, believing that UFOs would emit physical characteristics that could be measured. A number of sighting reports were investigated by Project Magnet but in 1954 the project was shut down. Smith was allowed to use the Shirley's Bay facilities with his own funding and did so until his death in 1962.

Footnotes

References

*Clark, Jerome, ''The UFO Encyclopedia: The Phenomenon from the Beginning, Volume 2, L-Z'' Detroit: Omnigraphics, 1998 (2nd edition, 2005), *Story, Ronald J. (editor) and J. Richard Greenwell (consulting editor), ''The Encyclopedia of UFOs'', Garden City: Doubleday & Co, 1980,
Canada's Unidentified Flying Objects: The Search for the Unknown
at Library and Archives Canada {{UFOs Government responses to UFOs