NICAP was founded on October 24, 1956, by inventor Thomas Townsend Brown. Brown was an inventor whose research into odd electrical effects led him to believe he had discovered a connection between strong electric fields and gravity, a type of antigravity effect. For most of his life he attempted to develop devices based on his ideas, trying to promote them for use by industry and the military. He came up with the name "Biefeld–Brown effect" for the phenomenon he had discovered and called the field of study "Electrogravitics" instead of being an antigravity force, what Brown observed has generally been attributed to the movement of charged particles that transfers their momentum to surrounding neutral particles in air, also called "ionic drift" or ionic wind. In recent years Brown's research has had an influence in the community of amateur experimenters who build ionic propulsion lifters powered by high voltage. There are still claims Brown discovered antigravity, an idea popular with the unidentified flying object (UFO) community and spawning many conspiracy theories. The formative period of NICAP was in 1956 when a small group of Washington, D.C., area businessmen and professionals headed by Brown, a Navy scientist, began organizing a national UFO group. Among the organizers were two people with past CIA connections: Nicolas de Rochefort and Bernard J.0. Carvalho. Most were doctors, lawyers, clergymen and scientists. By early January 1957, however, Brown had proved so financially inept that the board asked him to step down. Fahrney replaced him, then convened a press conference on January 16, 1957, where he announced that UFOs were under intelligent control, but that they were of neither American or Soviet origin. The press conference received major attention, doubtless aided by Fahrney's stature. (Wikipedia/Ridge)