Irv Farmer was a short, skinny white man with sandy colored hair in his late twenties. He had studied physics at Berkeley and worked in a laboratory near Southbridge, Massachusetts. He met and became friends with Hank Jeter there. The two decided not to tell anyone and spent several months investigating what they called the Irvhank Effect on their own time. Eventually they built a device that could generate a weaker but much broader ranging effect. Their calculations indicated it would prevent nuclear weapons from detonating but allow a nuclear reactor to continue to operate.