The Integratron lives on in desert

Reading Susannah Rosenblatt’s “E.T., There’s No Place Like Dome” [April 20] recalls an interview I had with George Van Tassel, “Le Grand Papa” of flying saucers, in the spring of 1970.

Van Tassel each year since 1954 had staged a flying saucer convention at his Giant Rock headquarters, but interest had dwindled in them. “People see so many flying saucers, they’re not a novelty anymore,” said Van Tassel, who was then 60, adding: “Why, I just saw a monstrous saucer myself recently. It was 500 feet in diameter.”

He said he was concentrating on completing his 35-foot-high, 58-foot-diameter silver dome, his “time machine” he called an Integratron, where the Retro UFO Spaceship Convention will be held April 29.

Van Tassel claimed the Integratron “would add 50 to 80 years to the lives of 70- and 80-year-olds, and 20- and 30-year-olds will never grow old once they’re walked through it. I have no doubt that it will work. I’ve proved it out with experiments on mice.”

“Le Grand Papa” died in 1957. His silver dome has sat vacant in the desert ever since, “a monument to one man’s field

of dreams,” as Joanne Karl, one of three sisters who own the

bizarre structure, told Susannah Rosenblatt.

CHARLES HILLINGER

Rancho Palos Verdes

Hillinger was a Los Angeles Times staff writer from 1946 to 1992.