A machine invented by Thomas G. Hieronymous in 1949 that was intended to combine psychic phenomena with electronics. The first in a continuing line of such inventions, it was to analyze the eloptic radiation of minerals, a radiation hitherto unknown. The machine consisted of a box containing some tunable electronic circuitry of the thermionic valve type and a plate on which the specimen was placed. It could be used either on the mineral or on a photograph of the mineral. The original Hieronymous design was improved by John Campbell, Jr., editor of Astounding Science Fiction, who founded a new division of parapsychology, Psionics. He claimed that his electronics worked satisfactorily with or without the power supply. The user tunes the circuit while stroking a plastic plate. When the correct setting, peculiar to each user, is reached, the plate feels sticky. Something is being detected that is outside our normal sensory experiences.
Hieronymous’s original machine and Campbell’s improved version have disappeared, but psionics, is still around. Several electronic machines have been devised in recent years that employ electronic circuitry (not without a power supply) to explore some psychical phenomenon. None of these machines and experiments, old or new, have so far convinced the scientific community, though it would be fair to say that some of the recent results have puzzled some orthodox scientists.