The Integratron is a delightful "acoustically perfect tabernacle and energy machine sited on a powerful geomagnetic vortex in the magical Mojave Desert." Aircraft engineer George Van Tassel began construction on The Integratron in 1954 based on designs provided to him by extraterrestrial architects. "The Integratron is a machine, a high-voltage electrostatic generator that would supply a broad range of frequencies to recharge the cell structure," the late Van Tassel once said. Today's Los Angeles Times tours The Integratron where the Retro UFO Space Convention will take place next weekend. From the LA Times (photo by Irfan Khan):
(Van Tassel) built the dome for $150,000 over 18 years starting in 1957, claiming that he was inspired by a predawn meeting with a visitor from Venus named Solgonda.
Van Tassel and his family lived in a hollowed-out chamber under Giant Rock, a seven-story free-standing boulder plopped on the edge of Landers three miles north of the dome.
He didn't complete the electrostatic device at the heart of the dome before he died in 1978, and his plans and equipment to finish the 50-megavolt Integratron disappeared soon after his death.
The outlandish dome and its unlikely location are "a monument to one man's field of dreams," said Joanne Karl, 51, one of three sisters who own the dome and have worked to restore it.
Link to LA Times article, Link to The Integraton home page (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)
