Project Magnet

Magnet was the name of a Canadian research project. It was government funded, from 1950-1954, to investigate the possible correlation between the earth's magnetic field and the propulsion mechanism used in UFO's. Started by Dr. Wilbert Smith. He continued his research, with the government's permission until his death in 1962.

Project Magnet was considerably more substantial than the name might suggest, although it was never a large-scale secret government programme. Smith established an observation facility at Shirley's Bay, near Ottawa, where instruments were used to look for unusual magnetic, radiation, radio and other physical effects associated with UFO reports. The surviving archival material is unusually extensive. The University of Ottawa archives, for example, contain Project Magnet reports, correspondence, technical drawings, photographs and material covering the period from 1950 into the early 1960s.

Smith produced an important preliminary report in 1952. His conclusions went considerably beyond simply saying that UFOs deserved investigation. He argued that the evidence suggested that at least some UFOs were intelligently controlled vehicles and that an extraterrestrial origin was a plausible explanation. He also became convinced that their propulsion involved principles of magnetism and gravity that were not understood by contemporary physics. The surviving Project Magnet material shows that his original research proposal explicitly concerned unusual electromagnetic phenomena and the possibility of exploiting them technologically.

The project was eventually terminated as an official government-funded activity in 1954. Smith was nevertheless permitted to continue some of his investigations at Shirley's Bay using his own resources. Thus, there is an important distinction between Project Magnet as an official Canadian government project and Smith's subsequent personal UFO research, which continued until his death in 1962.

From Wikipedia:

Project Magnet was an unidentified flying object (UFO) study programme established by Transport Canada 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.

Sources: