William W. Coblentz was an Ohio farm boy turned physicist, and he loved experiments. In 1905, he joined the National Bureau of Standards, then a new agency that aimed to formalize standards for the nation’s measures and products, and which built the government’s first physical science laboratory. Coblentz was especially fascinated by radiation, and by light. He founded the Bureau’s radiometry section, devising tests and tools to detect and measure electromagnetic radiation. His light experiments ranged from astronomical infrared spectroscopy, to speculations about solar panels, to studying fireflies and glowworms to determine what made them work.
Sometimes accomplished scientists feel secure enough in their positions that they branch out into riskier topics, areas of research they may have been reluctant to share with colleagues in their younger days. Coblentz decided to take his chance on psychic phenomena. It was a topic that had interested him since childhood, when his father told him of an encounter with a “fortune teller” who accurately described “his home surroundings, e.g., the kind of house he lived in; and foretold how many times he would be married and how many children he would have.” The young Coblentz was hooked.
As a scientist, Coblentz kept meticulous, lively laboratory notebooks. One of those notebooks, which accompanied him on an expedition to observe a solar eclipse on Sumatra, includes scientific data and touristy detail in equal measure. On one page he obsessed over the failure of his equipment to accurately measure coronal radiation at the moment of the eclipse’s totality. On another, he’s a happy traveler in Kyoto, Japan, cautiously eating something he can’t identify: “rectangular sections of a whitish substance (Flour? Cheese?)” It was tofu.
So in 1910, when Coblentz turned his attention to psychic phenomena, he did so with experimental instincts already well honed and a professional’s understanding of the importance of careful documentation. The spark was an unexpected invitation by a group of physicians and other “serious minded people” to their “trumpet circle,” a kind of séance led by a medium who claimed the ability to channel voices of the dead through a trumpet-shaped cone. Coblentz, charmed by their “frequent flattering references” to his own “latent psychic powers,” decided to attend and record his observations. He did so without half measures. He joined the American Society for Psychic Research and attended an annual meeting of the American Spiritualist Association, collected “all the advertisements I could find” on magicians’ paraphernalia, chatted with the magicians themselves, and pored over both published research and popular books that claimed to unmask “how ‘perhaps’ it is done.” As he worked, he carefully recorded his findings.
Coblentz asserted a “mainly utilitarian” object in these investigations, considering, for instance, how useful a police detective might find the power of clairvoyance. He framed psychic phenomena in scientific terms: The clairvoyant mind was as sensitive as a photoelectric cell, the “stimulus that excites clairvoyance” perhaps “vibrational” in the manner of “incoming radiant energy from the galaxies.” And yet, he felt, at times psychic phenomena seemed beyond the boundaries of scientific inquiry, their nature so little known that perhaps he lacked even the basic knowledge needed to test them. When, for example, he witnessed a spiritual materialization, with “ectoplastic fingers, hands and arms, extruded through the fabric of a curtain,” he realized that what he had seen seemed “preposterous.” But he felt the more reasonable conclusion was to accept such phenomena as “belonging to an unexplained reality” rather than denying they had occurred.
Despite his careful notetaking, most of what Coblentz observed would be impossible to reproduce precisely. From his deep conversations with impressively trustworthy mediums, to the voices of spirits and their ectoplasmic forms, to stunning demonstrations of clairvoyance and telekinesis, and even Coblentz’s brief experience serving as a medium himself, you maybe had to be there and see it for yourself. But there was one physical product of those investigations, one uniquely well suited for inclusion in a manuscript collection: pages of automatic writing. And Coblentz saved a small pile of it.
Believers assert that automatic writing is produced by spirits who take control of a human hand and cause it to move without its owner’s conscious control. Coblentz was normally right-handed, but his automatic writing emerged from his left. “The hand and arm,” he wrote, “swinging from the shoulder, displayed a will of its own and often imitated the writing by making a series of helical scrolls upon which would be superposed fairly legible letters and words.” Sometimes the spirits wrote in German script, or inserted French-language phrases. And sometimes Coblentz reported “flashes of light” sparking from his fingertips, wrist, forearm, or elbow as he wrote. Researchers can see the result, if not the process: pages of loopy writing with more carefully written translations in the margins: “He says he has been here before,” “mother says: I am glad I can do this much,” “I am glad to write,” “Jacob Coblentz… I am here.” On one sheet, written on the official letterhead of the Department of Commerce and Labor, is the name of physicist and Smithsonian Secretary Joseph Henry, who had passed away nearly four decades earlier. We can touch this evidence, at least. But does it prove anything?
It’s clear from his unpublished memoir that, on balance, Coblentz did find his observations convincing. Still, ever the good scientist, he laid out a summary of his conclusions, which suggest that he viewed his work as contributing to an emergent science of metaphysics, “a part of the reality” researchers must seek to understand. And would it have been so hard to imagine science eventually bringing the spiritual world within its grasp? Coblentz, after all, had spent his boyhood on a farm without electricity. Things can change quickly. Researchers, however, can judge for themselves whether the documentation Coblentz left behind stands the test of time.
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“an encounter…” William W. Coblentz, “Chapters in the Life of a Researcher,” 1949, page 20, box 3, William W. Coblentz Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
“On another…” William W. Coblentz, “Solar Eclipse; 1926 Expedition to Sumatra” journal, entries of January 14, 1926, and November 27, 1925, box 1, William W. Coblentz Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
“He joined…” Coblentz, “Chapters in the Life,” page 276, box 3, William W. Coblentz Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
“He framed…” Coblentz, “Chapters in the Life,” pages 274-275, box 3, William W. Coblentz Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
“he felt…” Coblentz, “Chapters in the Life,” page 281, box 3, William W. Coblentz Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
“Coblentz reported…” Coblentz, “Chapters in the Life,” page 286, box 3, William W. Coblentz Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
“On one sheet…” Automatic writing sheets, February 3, February 10, February 17, and February 24, 1915, box 2, William W. Coblentz Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
“summary…” Coblentz, “Chapters in the Life,” page 294, box 3, William W. Coblentz Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
“boyhood…” Coblentz, “Chapters in the Life,” pages 67, 98, box 3, William W. Coblentz Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Coblentz quoted from Man the Unknown (1935) by Alexis Carrel.