Chronovisor

This article is about the alleged time-viewing device attributed to Father Pellegrino Ernetti and the DARPA Project Pegasus adaptation. For the alleged time-viewing apparatus described in Dan Burisch's testimony, see

Looking Glass device

. For the gifted P-52 Orion device performing an analogous function, see

Orion Cube

. For the recordings of Jesus claimed to have been made by the device, see

Chronovisor recordings of Jesus

.

The Chronovisor is an alleged device purportedly built in the early 1950s by Italian Benedictine priest and classical philologist Father Pellegrino Ernetti (1925–1994), claimed to be capable of receiving and displaying visual and audio recordings of past events by detecting residual electromagnetic traces he theorized all events leave in surrounding space. The project involved collaboration with twelve prominent scientists including Enrico Fermi and Wernher von Braun, and the device was allegedly used to view several historical events including a performance of Quintus Ennius's lost play Thyestes in 169 BC and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The Vatican ordered the device dismantled to prevent its misuse; a photograph Ernetti attributed to the Chronovisor's output, purportedly showing the face of Christ, circulated in print and online. Father François Brune publicized Ernetti's testimony in The Vatican's New Mystery (1996/2002).

Origin: the Ernetti-Gemelli discovery

Two-page spread from La Domenica del Corriere (2 May 1972) presenting Father Pellegrino Ernetti's alleged Chronovisor and the "photograph of the face of Christ".

The discovery underlying the Chronovisor was accidental. Ernetti and his colleague Father Agostino Gemelli were studying Gregorian chant at the Catholic University of Milan in the 1940s, experimenting with a microphone to analyze the specialized harmonic properties of sacred plainchant. During this work, a voice was isolated from the recording that Gemelli identified as his deceased father — describing a transaction in ordinary commercial terms, consistent with Gemelli's father's vocation as a cobbler. The two priests concluded that physical objects around a speech event absorb and retain the electromagnetic impression of sounds made near them, and that with appropriate technology these impressions could be recovered.

Assembling a team of scientists — said to include Fermi — by 1952 the group produced a flat-screen "chronovision" image of the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. Ernetti also reportedly used the device to watch Mussolini's speeches and to observe performances of ancient Roman plays no longer extant. He released a photograph purporting to be a Chronovisor image of Christ on the cross, which was published widely in Italian newspapers in the 1960s and became a sensation; subsequent investigation suggested the image closely resembled a carved statue of Christ in a Spanish cathedral, and skeptics concluded it was a photograph of that statue. Ernetti never recanted and maintained his account until his death in 1994. The Vatican allegedly issued a statement that any attempt to use the device — or any device to "look or listen through time" — would result in excommunication, though no verifiable Vatican document to this effect has been located. A variant tradition recorded by Father François Brune dates an initial human-built version earlier still, to the 1930s–40s, attributing it to two Vatican priests and engineers rather than to the Ernetti–Gemelli team of the following decade.

Project Pegasus adaptation

A distinct Chronovisor variant was developed for DARPA's Project Pegasus (1968–1972), per Andrew Basiago, operating through an octagonal array of bismuth crystals that channels an electromagnetic signal to generate a holographic projection of a past or probable-future event — allowing the viewer to observe from within the projected scene rather than on a flat screen. The device is physically distinct from the Val Tec transit system: the Chronovisor provided temporal observation without physical transport, while the plasma confinement chamber and vortal tunnel system provided physical transit through time-space. Historical events witnessed through the Chronovisor include the signing of the United States Constitution, Abraham Lincoln at the Gettysburg Address, and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

The first Chronovisor image Basiago witnessed in Project Pegasus was the signing of the United States Constitution, viewed from what appeared to be a window-side position in the hall: Benjamin Franklin was visible on a divan, approximately twice the apparent physical size of George Washington. Basiago initially mistook it for a closed-circuit television performance before a technician explained it was the actual historical event. The adapted technology transferred from the Vatican through the CIA into DARPA's black-budget programs. Basiago frames the Chronovisor as one of Project Pegasus's two core technical activities — the other being the Tesla-derived plasma-confinement teleportation tunnel — and states that the Chronovisor component was initially developed at Bell Labs before being elaborated into the program's more sophisticated viewing system.

The DARPA device operated from an installation at the General Manufacturing Company — the map-making facility of Standard Oil — in Convent Station, New Jersey, where the crystal array was suspended in the ceiling of a dedicated chamber. The device functioned in two modes: viewed from outside the holographic field, past or future events appeared inside a cubic volume of light; when a child participant stood within the field itself, they were physically transported to the depicted event — effectively making the observation device a transit device. Participants were trained by Pavlovian conditioning not to look upward at the crystal array during activation, as its output was described as capable of causing permanent blindness; Basiago has noted that he now has 20/700 vision and attributes this to Chronovisor exposure. In summer 1971, Basiago was sent to Ford's Theater on April 14, 1865, approximately six or seven times via this system — on one trip encountering his own image walking through the theater from a parallel jump, completing a self-encounter loop.

The Chronovisor's stated mechanism bears conceptual resemblance to the Project Looking Glass ERB devices described by Dan Burisch (both view past or probable future states). Tony Rodrigues describes a timeline-viewing device at a Moon base during his age regression return from Ceres, applying the popular term to it: "they had a device known as a Chronovisor. And what a Chronovisor did was look at probable futures." Whether Rodrigues was identifying the specific Ernetti/DARPA device or using "Chronovisor" as a colloquial label for an SSP time-viewing device of separate origin is not established in his account.

See also

• Philadelphia Experiment
• Gettysburg photograph (Basiago)
• Chronovisor recordings of Jesus
• Project Pegasus
• Project Looking Glass
• Looking Glass device
• Time-viewing device
• Time travel conspiracy theories
• Time travel (SSP accounts)

References

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