The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time by Preston B. Nichols and Peter Moon is the first book in a series detailing fictional time travel experiments at the Montauk Air Force Base at the eastern tip of Long Island as part of the Montauk Project. The 1992 book and its follow up books are written in a first person style and have been classified as science fiction. The real photographs of the base and crude drawings of the project electronics in the book contributes to the authentic feel prompting the project to assume a cult status whereby websites declare it is true or false. Using a time travel theme, the characters alter history with visits to Jesus Christ, as well as altering the outcome of American Civil War and World War II battles. Book details The Philadelphia Experiment The book's narrative is centered around the Montauk Project, which is believed to be an extension or continuation of the Philadelphia Experiment (also known as Project Rainbow), which supposedly took place in 1943. Sometime in the 1950s, surviving researchers from the original Project Rainbow began to discuss the project with an eye to continuing the research into technical aspects of manipulating the electromagnetic bottle that had been used to make the invisible, and the reasons and possible military applications of the psychological effects of the magnetic field. A report was supposedly prepared and presented to the United States Congress, and was soundly rejected as far too dangerous. So a proposal was made directly to the United States Department of Defense promising a powerful new weapon that could drive an enemy insane, inducing the symptoms of schizophrenia at the touch of a button. Without Congressional approval, the project would have to be top secret and secretly funded. The Department of Defense approved. Funding supposedly came from a cache of US$10 billion in Nazi gold recovered from a train found by U.S. soldiers in a train tunnel in France. The train was blown up and all the soldiers involved were killed. When those funds ran out, additional funding was secured from ITT and Krupp AG in Germany. The experiment comes to Long Island Work was begun at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York under the name Phoenix Project, but it was soon realized that the project required a large radar dish, and installing one at Brookhaven would compromise the security of the project.