The blueprints for a strange invention that allegedly uses TVs and computers to control the human mind have been discovered.
The US patent, entitled Nervous System Manipulation by Electromagnetic Fields from Monitors, described a technique for influencing a person's body and mind using invisible electromagnetic (EM) fields from screens like computer monitors or old-style TV tubes called CRT monitors, which were common in the early 2000s.
The document details how very weak electromagnetic fields pulsing at certain slow frequencies can produce measurable physiological effects in humans. These pulses can stimulate the skin in a way that interacts with the body's sensory systems.
Some computer monitors and older TV tubes naturally emit pulsed electromagnetic fields when displaying flickering or pulsing images. In theory, this means it might be possible to influence a person's nervous system by controlling the pulses coming from a nearby screen.
The patent described embedding the pulsing in the video content itself or adding it to the signal, either as a subtle overlay or through a simple computer program. In certain conditions, even pulses too faint for the human eye to notice, known as subliminal pulses, could generate these effects.
Originally filed in 2001, the patent has resurfaced on social media and has been viewed over 200,000 times since Monday.
However, that patent expired in 2021, meaning it is now in the public domain. Anyone can freely use, copy, build, or improve on the technology without infringing the patent or paying royalties.
Its discovery online has already caused many conspiracy theorists to claim that unknown parties have been using screens to monitor and manipulate viewers since the television was originally invented.
The patent's creator, Hendricus G. Loos, a physicist based in California who also worked for NASA in the 1970s and 80s, even claimed that the signals could control human autonomic functions, such as heart rate or digestion.
The invention officially received a patent number from the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in 2003, being classified under 'magnetotherapy,' which includes devices using magnetic fields for health or physiological effects.
Researchers for PQAI, a nonprofit that builds AI tools to help the public search and understand patents, recently reviewed Loos's invention and noted that modern LED screens emit much weaker fields, so it might not work as well today without modifications, which anyone is now free to make.
Originally, the manipulation focused on old-style monitors that naturally give off EM fields when they display images. These fields were created by the way the screen refreshes or changes brightness.
Loos found that the key was to make the image on the screen pulse or flicker very slightly at low frequencies between 0.1 and 15 Hertz (Hz) - an internationally used measurement of frequency.
This could have been done with simple software on a computer using programs that adjust brightness rhythmically. Loos noted that you could also modify TV signals directly by embedding pulses in video streams or radio broadcasts.
The patent described how this process would immediately impact the skin of anyone within a few feet of the screens and the pulsating EM fields.
These invisible signals could be carrying in broadcasts on televisions, computer screens, and other portable digital devices
When more of the viewer's skin is exposed to the field, it builds up to excite those sensory vibrations, influencing the brain and nervous system without the target even knowing what is going on.
The pulses can be so faint that they can be considered invisible, with Loos thinking the method would work through hidden changes in videos or programs.
Diagrams filed along with the blueprints revealed how these hidden signals could be transmitted into the brains of people through TVs, portable digital devices, and even through the internet.
'You cannot flood a developing nervous system with artificial frequencies and expect zero biological effect. This isn't about fear. It's about physics.'
Loos, who died in 2017, according to the Orange County Register, filed several similar patents related to EM fields and nervous system effects starting in the 1990s.
Meanwhile, his work for NASA decades earlier focused heavily on cloud physics. Loos was named in multiple reports in NASA's planning for the Atmospheric Cloud Physics Laboratory (ACPL), an experimental facility created for low-gravity cloud studies likely for space shuttle and microgravity research.
Declassified CIA documents have previously revealed the government's attempts at perfecting mind control, often through the use of brain-altering drugs in the 1970s.
However, Congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee recently claimed that mind control programs were still in use today.
In November, he claimed, without evidence, that failed presidential assassin Thomas Crooks was psychologically manipulated online using techniques reminiscent of MKUltra, the notorious Cold War-era CIA mind control program.