Thomas Townsend Brown's Gravitator

Origin
Thomas Townsend Brown was an American inventor whose research into odd electrical effects led him to believe he had discovered a connection between strong electric fields and gravity, a type of antigravity effect. After fashioning an insulating block capped with electrodes on either end dubbed the “gravitator”, he tested his oddity on an x-ray vacuum tube. He recorded that depending on the orientation of the positive and negative electrodes, the mass present within the tube seemingly grew or shrank. He came up with the name "Biefeld–Brown effect" for the phenomenon he had discovered and called the field of study electrogravitics.

Instead of being an antigravity force, what Brown observed has generally been attributed to electrohydrodynamics, the movement of charged particles that transfers their momentum, also called ionic wind. Amateur experimenters and UFO conspiracy theorists alike have applied his research to their work.

Effects
Originally made just to study the effects of electricity, it started behaving oddly when released ions collected into cushions of electrostatic energy. They would repulse matter from each, effectively allowing objects to levitate through magnetism and retain those properties even after the machine was turned off. Problems began occurring when objects slowly started to crumble away or detonate from weakened molecular bonds within themselves.