1869 - 1958

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• Birth	5 Aug 1869	Waverly, Bremer Co., IA
  Gender	Male
  Died	18 Jun 1958	San Marino, Los Angeles Cty, CA
  	Cause: Generalized Arteriosclerosis
  Person ID	I129793	Brainard (Brainerd) / Foster / Fish
  Last Modified	27 Oct 2005 00:00:00
  Father	Theodore Weld GILLETTE, b. 23 Oct 1840, Oberlin, Lorain, OH
  Mother	Letitia Sofronia POWERS, b. 4 May 1843, Henrietta, Lorain, OH
  Family ID	F5523	Group Sheet
  Family 1	Julia Washburn SCRANTON, b. 26 Oct 1869, Litchfield, CT
  Married	28 Apr 1897	Philadelphia, PA
  Children	1. Edward Scranton GILLETTE, b. 3 Feb 1898, Philadelphia, PA   2. Louise GILLETTE, b. 1899, Rochester, NY
  Family ID	F1668	Group Sheet
  Family 2	Winifred ESSERY, b. 31 Mar 1885, San Antonio, Bexar, TX
  Married	1918
  Family ID	F47255	Group Sheet

• Notes

  Halbert Powers Gillette and Julia Washburn Scranton were divorced. WHO WAS WHO IN AMERICA VOL III 1951-1960 GILLETTE, Halbert Powers, Editor, engineer b Waverly, IA Aug 5, 1860 Theodore Weld and Laetitia S. (Powers) Graduated Hammond Hall Academy, Salt Lake City, 1886; E.M. School of Mines, Columbia University 1892. Assistant NY state engineer 1896-1898; contractor 1898-1902; Associate editor, 1903-1905 Engineering News; President Gillette Publishing company; Chief engineer of the Washington Railroad Commission 1906-1907. Member American Society of Consulting Engineers. Author: Economics of Road Construction, 1901 Earthwork and Its Cost, 1903 Handbook of Rock Excavation - Methods and Cost, 1904 Handbook of Cost Data, 1905 Concrete Construction - Methods and Cost (w/Charles S. Hill), 1908 Cost Keeping and Management Engineering (w/Richard T. Dana), 1909 Handbook of Clearing and Grubbing, 1917 Handbook of Electrical and Mechanical Cost Data (w/Richard T. Dana), 1918 Handbook of Construction Cost, 1922 Road and Street Construction (w/J.C. Black), 1940 ...also many articles on weather, climate and geological cycles, 1928-1948. Editor Roads and Streets Home: 1125 Oak Grove Avenue San Marino, CA d June 18, 1958. Other books written by HP: Gillette and Dana - Handbook of Construction Plant Gillette and Thomas - Handbook of Road Construction; Methods and Cost THEOSOPHY, Vol. 32, No. 2, December, 1943 (Pages 77-80; Size: 13K) (Number 97 of a 103-part series) SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE ELECTRONIC "CYCLES" FOR many years Mr. Halbert P. Gillette, of the Gillette Publishing Co., specializing in engineering books and periodicals, has made an intensive study of weather cycles. In the beginning his theories made such bizarre reading from the point of view of scientists, that little attention seems to have been paid to them. Essentially, they were based on theories of interflow of electrons between the earth, the sun, and the other planets. The real nature of electrons, and their ubiquity, now being better recognized, his ideas fall more into line with the thought of the day.(1) Mr. Gillette has sought to tie up his theories to the clay varves, or seasonal layers, in lake deposits. Among the most important of the cycles discovered, is one of approximately 605 years, subdivided into three equal periods of less importance. This is equal to 51 orbital periods of Jupiter. He believes that it represents the orbital period of Pickering's undiscovered "Planet P." Pickering's estimate of this orbital period was 656 years. Gillette claims that whenever a planet is in solar longitude either of 108 or 288 degrees, it causes a peak of a rainfall cycle, whether evidenced by rainfall records, tree rings, or varves. Such peaks coincide with sunspot maxima. In addition to the major cycle produced by each planet, it causes harmonic sub-cycles of 1/3, 1/9, 1/27 of the length of the major one, etc. The great maxima and minima of rainfall, of course, come when peaks and depressions of cycles and subcycles coincide. According to Gillette we are progressing toward a period of great drought whose apex will be 1984. Volcanic upheavals and compass variations appear to have cycles closely coinciding with the major rain cycles, he says. This coincidence of cycles is of vast importance in the occult side of nature; as is well known to Theosophists, the years 1897-98 signalized a coincidence of cycles, the longest of which was about 5,000 years, of such intensity that the entire world order was upset by it. Gillette goes rather far into an attempted correlation between human affairs and rain cycles, tracing the upheavals around the fall of Rome to an 1815-year rainfall cycle whose minimum fell in 774 A.D. From this he reasons that we are not likely to have a "Dark Age" of that nature again until about 2590. Certainly five or six hundred years more will see the extinction of most of the nations of the world as it is today. It is interesting to note that 14 of the 1815-year cycles would make 25,410 years, or within about 400 years of the great sidereal period of 25,868 years which signalizes world catastrophes and the ending of sub-race cycles. Gillette notes the probability of a major climatic cycle of that length. Another long cycle which he points out as recorded in the stones is of about 4,000,000 years; 4,320,000 is the Maha Yuga or summation of the "Four Ages," in Theosophy! One of the most important correlations discovered by Gillette is evidence of a circulation of electrons between the sun and the planets, with the poles of the earth acting as receiving centers. Every 24 hours, at the time when the north magnetic pole of the earth is directed most toward the sun, the earth's surface becomes most charged with electrons.(2) An additional evidence is the diurnal tide in the air, too great to be accounted for by gravitation, but which Gillette ascribes to the electronic magnetization of the oxygen in the air. This interflow constitutes the mechanism of the influence of the sun and planets upon the weather of the earth. Gillette remarks: It may seem incredible that a climatic cycle of great amplitude could be caused by a planet that is at a vast distance from the sun and earth. But if the cause is basically electronic, great distance is not necessarily a bar to great effects. We are so accustomed to regard astronomical effects as being mainly of gravitational origin that we are prone to think that increased distance from the sun necessarily causes reduced effects. But picture a stream of spiralling electrons moving from the sun toward a planet that attracts the electrons because it has an opposite magnetic field, and ask yourself why those electrons should become fewer the farther they travel.... It is possible that an electron-vortex between sun and planet may gain rather than lose ... because galactic electrons may be drawn into the vortex by magnetic attraction. Now far be it from us to encourage the practice of astrology; but we have here a rebuttal to one of the stock arguments against astrology -- that planetary bodies cannot affect one another strongly because of distance. Moreover, if we consider the vital effect of weather upon human affairs, and the direct biological and psychic effects of changing electric and magnetic conditions of the earth upon human beings, we have here a basis for a biological astrology of considerable possibilities. Or, let us say, for new sciences of astro-biology and astro-psychology. It would not have been Hermes, however, who would have considered these sciences "new." As repeated in The Secret Doctrine, the Book of Hermes says: The creation of Life by the Sun is as continuous as his light; nothing arrests or limits it. Around him, like an army of Satellites, are innumerable choirs of genii.... They fulfil the will of the gods (Karma) by means of storms, tempests, transitions of fire and earthquakes; likewise by famines and wars, for the punishment of impiety.... It is the Sun who preserves and nourishes all creatures; and even as the Ideal World which environs the sensible world fills this last with the plenitude and universal variety of forms, so also the Sun, enfolding all in his light, accomplishes everywhere the birth and development of creatures.... All these Genii preside over mundane affairs, they shake and overthrow the constitution of States and of individuals; they imprint their likeness on our Souls, they are present in our nerves, our marrow, our veins, our arteries, and our very brain-substance .... (I, 294.) Mr. Gillette borders on another "occult" subject with the following remark: An unexpected by-product of this galactic electron theory is an explanation of the sun's radiant energy. If the sun is bombarded by electrons moving in and adjacent to its orbit, it must be heated by their impacts. Let the velocity of the electrons approach that of light, let their number be sufficiently great, and it follows that the sun must become white-hot under their hammering. If we hold, as theosophists, that every "electron" (a highly metaphysical entity, by the way) has its own seven principles, then we must recognize that the measurable physical interchange of electrons between planetary bodies carries correlations that are mental, psychic, and spiritual as well. These are matters suggestive in view of the theosophical teaching about the sun's nature and function. In her first book, Madame Blavatsky showed that the sun is not incandescent: ...the materialists ... will some day find that that which causes the numberless cosmic forces to manifest themselves in eternal correlation is but a divine electricity, or rather galvanism, and that the sun is but one of the myriad magnets disseminated through space -- a reflector -- as General Pleasonton has it. That the sun has no more heat in it than the moon or the space-crowding host of sparkling stars. That there is no gravitation in the Newtonian sense, but only magnetic attraction and repulsion; and that it is by their magnetism that the planets of the solar system have their motions regulated in their respective orbits by the still more powerful magnetism of the sun, not by their weight or gravitation. (Isis Unveiled, I, 270-1.) In 1883, she wrote, "The fact is that ordinary science makes at once too much and too little of the Sun, as the store-house of force for the solar system, -- too much in so far as the heat of planets has a great deal to do with another influence quite distinct from the Sun, an influence which will not be thoroughly understood till more is known than at present about the correlations of heat and magnetism, and of the magnetic, meteoric dust, with which inter-planetary space is pervaded." (THEOSOPHY II, 448, fn.) In answering questions on the Stanzas in The Secret Doctrine, H.P.B. described the Sun as follows: The Sun we see, gives nothing of itself, because it is a reflection; a bundle of electro-magnetic forces, one of the countless milliards of "Knots of Fohat." ... The Sun has but one distinct function; it gives the impulse of life to all that breathes and lives under its light. (Transactions, pp. 116-7.) Mr. Gillette brings evidence for another important and somewhat Theosophical tenet, when he says: Coming back to the fact that planets cause sun-spots when they are in one of two longitudes 180 degrees apart, I can conceive of but one cause, namely that in those longitudes both planet and sun are in the center of a stream of galactic electrons. Since these longitudes, namely 108 and 288 degrees, are quite near the estimated orbit of the sun, I infer that the orbit has those longitudes. By spectroscopic observation ... astronomers have found that the sun is moving toward the star Vega whose longitude is about 284 degrees. Great exactitude as to direction of the sun's motion is not attainable by the spectroscopic method. If Mr. Gillette is even partly right, great physical changes must occur as the Sun moves through space, simply because of these electron streams. What of the many yet undiscovered streams of other energies that must be intersected as the solar system proceeds "into newer spaces of the cosmos"? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------ TWO (2) FOOTNOTES LISTED BELOW: (1) Roads and Streets, November, 1941. (2) Discovered by Mauchly in 1920. Dr. Halbert P. Gillette, a noted engineer and astronomer, who has spent many years upon the study of major weather cycles, found many different ones in the study of clay layers and other results of rainfall -- including tree growths. He ascribed these effects to unknown planets, one of them having an orbit of 221,600 years, and so down to one of 316.7 years.(3) (3) Engineering and Contracting, November, 1930.