| So, at eleven years of age Marcel Vogel got a chemistry set, which a year later, he had parlayed into a complete laboratory. What had begun as a childhood fascination with fireflies was propelled by faith into the discovery, at the tender age of eleven, of a synthetic chemical compound, which produced a chemi-luminescence that matched the light of the firefly. Well before the advent of fluorescent lamps, Vogel had produced a set of phosphors, which produced light in a tubular form. Following the lead of his original vision, Vogel entered the University of San Francisco to study phosphor chemistry only to find that there was no established course of instruction. So, Vogel proceeded to teach himself by studying the available information, which he found primarily in translations of German scientific publications. In 1940 Vogel met Dr. Peter Pringsheim, a German refugee who was a professor at the University of California. It was with Dr. Pringsheim that Vogel completed his schooling. Two years later Vogel and Pringsheim published the book that Vogel's vision had foretold. The Luminescence of Liquids and Solids and Their Practical Applications has since gone through three editions and was translated into German in 1950. Vogel met the second requirement of his vision in 1944, when he established The Vogel Luminescent Corp. which developed, among other things, the red hue used in color televisions as well as fluorescent inks, paints powders. In collaboration with Ralph Flores and Dan Johnson, Vogel developed a magnetic coating for IBM's hard disks, which is still used by that company today. In the mid-1950's, Vogel sold his company and went to work for IBM full-time where his research was concentrated on pioneering innovations in magnetics, optic-electrical devices and liquid crystal systems. When Vogel retired from IBM after 27 years to form Psychic Research, Inc., his not-for-profit corporation devoted to the study of energies most often labeled "metaphysical," he has accumulated over 100 patents. Marcel Vogel's "transformation," as he put it, "from a rational scientist to a spiritual scientist" began at IBM during preparation for a course he was giving to fellow employees on "Creativity." While preparing the course, he came upon two intriguing articles about Cleve Backster's work with plants, one in Argosy Magazine entitled, "Do Plants Have Emotions?," and the other in Popular Electronics which included a wiring diagram for a device which could measure chemically-induced electrical reactions from plants. What Vogel discovered from early experimentation was that his instruments measured even greater response from plants when he thought about burning, tearing, or uprooting them than when he actually did so. | |
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