Project Sanguine was a controversial program to develop a network of power stations, amplifiers, and 6000-miles of antenna cable to serve as a communication transmitter capable of sending signals to submerged submarines around the globe. Publically proposed in 1968, northern Wisconsin was chosen as a suitable site, with full operational deployment of Sanguine expected in 1975. The project generated a great controversy in the state and was met with vigorous opposition in Madison, where the state capital and the University of Wisconsin were located.
Navy tests in the 1960s had aimed to determine if service personnel who worked in close proximity to the hardware were exposed to undue risk, mainly from electrical shock, with no attention to possible effects of the electromagnetic fields on the general public or to the biotic environment otherwise. Why was it, then, that the Office of Naval Research in 1971 charged the American Institute of Biological Sciences to appoint a committee of biologists to investigate possible hazards? This presentation will offer explanations to this question in the context of the biological rhythms research in the 1950s and 1960s and the theoretical explanation for why even very weak ELF fields might present biological dangers to both vertebrates and invertebrates, when much stronger intensities at higher frequencies were shown to be harmless.
