The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1902-01-04
THE LIFTING TRICK.

BILE DOdIlnS mouse on St. CnarleS
street. "Our purpose was to obtain
sore accurate, intelligent data on a
ve,y mysterious phenomenon, and we
keft careful record of everything we
di6 Some of the results were very
surprising. We began by lifting a
living person. One of Our party lay
dovn at full length on an extension
tahe, and two of us stood at each side,
onrpsite his shoulders and knees. At
a o;yen signal all five took ten deep
brea.hs in unison, then each of the
four at the sides placed one finger of
the light hand under the PROSTATE
m.si2s body and lifted, meanwhile
-l.ssSdNg our breath. In the majority
Of trials, say three out of FIVE, he came
UP without perceptibie effort, and sew
eral times he was lifted as high as
we could stretch our arms. There is
absolutely no sense of weight, and
the thing is so absurdly easy that
each man at the table is bound to feel
vaguely suspicious that he has been
tricked and that the others really do
the lifting. 1 fell so myself until
common sense convinced me that it
was utterly impossible.
1.-The lightest of Our subjects
weighted I49 pounds, and no four
people on earth could ordinarily lift
a man Of that size on their finger tips
without visible strain. We tried
great many variations, but the plan
have described was the only one
that proved generally successful. The
essential point seemed to be to secure
certain rhythm in breathing, and
whenever we hit the lift was made
with unfailing certainty but if any
one of us broke STEP so to speak,
the experiment failed. We were all
deeply in earnest, so we had no trou-
bic on account of gigg1ing or hyster-
les. was lifted repeatedly myself,
and the feeling is indescribable.
Floating in water is as near as I can
come to it.
"After a great many experiments
with living people, continued the
speaker, 1--WE tried inanimate objects.
We took square iron plate, weigh
ing 1874 pounds, formerly used in
hearth, and placed it on stool. Four
of US stood at the corners and went
through the same routine that I have
already described = breathing in
unison and then suddenly lifting. To
our great surprise, this experiment
proved fully as successful as the other,
and in 40 record trials the plate went
up 26 times. Such a test, by the
way, is dangerous, because if there is
the slightest catching of a breath
while the heavy object is lifted in the
air it instantly comes crashing down
with its full weight. Several of lis
- ssssx i5t1s7ss n -
iron siaD, and that suggested another
and very interesting device.
"We took large spring steelyard,
graduated up to 200 pounds, and
made it self-registering by attaching
a bit of pencil to the pointer and put
ting slip of paper over the scale.
Then we hooked it into ring in the
floor and fastened the other end to
the under side of short plank. The
plank was supported across a couple
of chairs, and we tried lifting it ex-
actly as we did the iron slab. That
put tension on the steelyard, and
the effect was exactly as if we were
lifting something that grew heavier
and heavier the higher it went. Our
breathing had no effect whatever on
the spring, but the apparatus, while
crude, was valuable in showing our
normal lifting power. We found we
were unable to get above II pounds
without clearly perceptible effort, and
to register 20 pounds required pro-
nounced exertion. Of course, we
could push the board up on our four
finger tips until the pointer stood at
100, but that was a gymnastic feat
that strained every muscle. We
found that the raising of the 1874
pound slab required infinitely less ap-
parent force than the registering of
10 or IL pounds on the steelyard.
That disposed of the theory that the
weight was SO divided we did not
feel it.
"Now, how is one to account for
all this? To me it is unaccountable.
1t looks like a clear inversion of the,
law of gravitation, and the -.e,-can
ments are so simple tt the slightest
pie who aresy recall very strongly,
{, psl1dfSS' sl1dS mind the deviation trick OF
Indian jugglers. have never seen zen
the thing myself, but Professor Ed
rrard Baldwin, who is known as an
elrnoser of spiritualistic humbuggery,.
once gave me a graphic description OF
| | aperformance which he witnessed at
P6mbay. The fakir, who was very
I'D stuck four swords in the eartn
and had a young fellow lifted up ana
hid on the hits, two under his shonl-
ders and two under his calves. ne
was stretched out rigid about yaro
above the ground. The fak1r then
withdrew the swords, one at tine'
and the assistant remained in the an
without visible support. Baldwin ae,
clared it was trick, but admitted
that he couldn't see through it.
"Still it was really more lnexpllca
bic than our own experiments. Cn'
might say in regard to lifting llvln'
person that some sort of electric sym
pathy was established, that the pne;
nomenon was in some way due 10 an
NAL magnetism, but how about u
e iron plate? The metal has certai
fixed gravity, and how that gravit
can be modified or overcome by any
n thing we might do, no matter VIVA
IS a problem that battles conJectuI,
Our rhythmic breathing undoubteal
E, was a direct bearing on the result
because we are unable to accompn'
d anything without it, but why
s have pretty fair Imagination. put