1957 William Decker ANTI-GRAVITY NOTES monograph RARE

Anti-Gravity Notes, by William T. Decker.  Decker Engine Works, Plasterco Virginia, 1957.  Stated First Edition.  Monograph,  Six (6) mimeographed pages including cover sheet, stapled in upper left corner. VG-, never folded. former owner's name stamped on cover sheet.

William T. Decker was an American engineer/entrepreneur of the rocket scientist persuasion in the post WWII / early Cold War era, when rocket science was all the rage and space travel a bright glimmer just over the horizon.  He seems to have made a name for himself in ramjet technology, particularly with cyclic propulsion techniques -- using pulsed ram jets to spin rotors (see my other auctions for CYCLIC PROPULSION, another Decker monograph) all to various ends and effects, most notably helicopters & VTOL.  He also did research and published works on centrifugal propulsion, including a Variable Velocity Centrifugal Propellor ("an ideal propulsion device for a flying saucer design," says he...) which seems to hybridize some of his more conventional jet engine work with the beginnings of his more visionary musings:

This auction presents that other side of Decker's work -- one which might never come to literal fruition, that nevertheless found a sure and certain route to literary fruition via the influence it would seem to have had on Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, who was known to pay odd tributes to particularly influential authors and/or thinkers by naming planets, ships, starbases and such after them, but rarely so extravagantly as naming not one but TWO (2) high-ranking star fleet officers* after someone!   Now if that's not making a name for oneself in one's field then I don't know what is. Of course when it came to things like anti-matter and warp drives, the field didn't have a heck of a lot of competition in those days.

Indeed, the true crowning glory of this work is that it is a treatise on Anti-Gravity with an especial slant towards building spaceships with magnetic drives, and it was published more than 50 years ago!

* Matt Decker, Captain of the U.S.S. Constellation in the original series' "The Doomsday Machine" episode, and another William Decker, son of Matt, who took command of the Enterprise in the movies,  when Kirk's 5 year gig was up.

Categories: Engineering, Physics, Relativity & Geometrodynamics, Space Travel, Militaria, Trek Trivia