Suppressed Inventions and Other Discoveries (83 page)

The Hendershot Generator

In the late 1920s there was considerable publicity on a device built by Lester J. Hendershot. Through inspiration and an unusual dream this inventor wove together a number of flat coils of wire and placed stainless steel rings, sticks of carbon and permanent magnets in various positions as an experiment. With later adjustments this device actually produced current. According to the reports the inventor had no idea how the device worked and it was often just a case of working by trial and error to get results. A number of persons speculated that the various magnetic currents of the Earth were used when the resonation of the device was turned to the proper frequency.

Temperature Change Wheel

Wally Minto donated a most remarkable design to the world in 1975. His unique unpatented wheel worked on a change of temperature—as low as 3 1/2°F—and was so simple that anyone with material and a welder could build a full scale model. Using any gas proof tanks around the outer form of the wheel, a simple pipe connection between the upper and lower tanks allows the needed exchange of gas. A warmer lower tank would lighten as the upper tank collected the vaporized propane—or low boiling point gas. While slow, the design gave considerable torque and held great promise for applications in backward areas.

It is interesting to note that some of these perpetual motion machines relied on heavy flywheels. Studies in the 70s concluded that flywheels were about the most efficient energy storing device available. Better than fuel cells, lead acid batteries, or compressed gas, the flywheel could carry the wasted power of high horsepower and save motorists big money.

In 1972 Lockheed reportedly found that an ordinary iron flywheel spinning at around 24,000 revolutions per minute in a reasonable vacuum (anti-friction) worked quite well. In fact, very little research money is required to quickly raise the efficiency of most current motor drive systems, and Cadac Ltd. of Auckland, New Zealand, has one in production in 1993.

Hot and Cold Engine

A sixty-five-year-old Swedish inventor made a major breakthrough in the thermo-electric engine field. Because wires of different metals produce electricity if they are joined and heated, there has long been a potential in this principle. B. Von Platen's secret breakthrough is said to give more than 30 percent efficiency in motors, and, with a radioactive isotope for power, it could free it from fossil fuels. In 1975 Volvo of Sweden obtained rights to his power unit.

Air Fuel

In the 1920s, a Los Angeles (Baldwin Hills) resident worked out a method to run an ordinary automobile on the constituents of ordinary air. Working out a system to keep his motors from melting from the high heat produced by the burning oxygen, he contacted the auto makers. General Motors, acting for the industry, eventually got controlling stock of the small company, and that was the end. A reader of M-J BSRA Journal recalled that the motor was warmed up on ordinary fuel and then switched over to air after it became hot.

Air Powered Autos

Air power was used to power rail locomotives and mining equipment for years before the so-called energy crunches. Like the steam engine, the air engine does not need torque converters (transmissions) and lasts for years engine does not need torque converters (transmissions) and lasts for years cylinder air car in 1931 and it supposedly had a cruising range of several hundred miles at lower speeds. There seems too few reasons why the air system wouldn't work very well in pollution sensitive cities. Air fueling tanks at the strategic spots would be simple.

In 1973 Claud F. Mead of San Diego, California, thought up a simple air car design. Using a scuba bottle full of air, he ran a hose to an air impact wrench. The wrench shaft was, in turn, hooked to the wheel of his small cart. By using a battery to pump up his tank, he was able to go some distance at speeds up to 50 miles per hour.

Air Powered Engines

Back in 1816 a Scottish clergyman, Robert Sterling, designed an external combustion engine that ran on hot air. Since that time, many experiments have been made trying to perfect his idea. In 1975 there was a breakthrough of some significance in the British Atomic Energy Research Lab at Harwell. There they came up with a working fluid pump which was nothing more than a container with an assortment of pipes and valves. This means that solar energy should be capable of pumping water—or your hot springs or hot air supply can furnish pumping power. A pistonless version of the Sterling motor was designed by the British Atomic Energy Research Lab. It was connected to a linear (nonrotating) alternator and could put out 27 watts of power a day on less than a quart of propane.

There have been a number of Sterling designs for autos. Some European firms have run these designs successfully, and such nonpolluting engines just hum along under a continuous (not instant) combustion. These engines are simple, non-polluting, and will run on anything from charcoal to sunshine.

In the 1930s in Wolvega, Holland, there was a twenty-one-year-old inventor who developed a piston engine which reportedly could run for three months before needing recharging. The engine was remarkable in that it ran on hot compressed air. Before he had a chance to market the engine, he was sent to a mental institution, and his working models disappeared.

In the 60s Louis Michaud designed a simple thermodynamic engine which resembles the internal part of a huge squirrel cage blower. Sitting so that the vanes were horizontal, this machine deflected the air flow path inward and upward to form a miniature hurricane action. Because this systern could, theoretically, produce or decrease different types of weather (change temperature and humidity and disperse pollution), it could be a very worthwhile system. Harnessing just a fraction of the energy potential from thermal changes on our planet would supply awesome power.

Hydrogen Car Engines

Many believe that hydrogen is the ideal motive force. Containing no carbon, H
₂
can be burned safely in any enclosure and broken up into safe components whatever the conversion.

A number of minor experimental successes proved the worth of these conversions over the years. Some simply hooked up a mixing chamber instead of a carburetor on their car, and they experimented with combinations of oxygen and hydrogen until successful.

In 1972 a UCLA team built an automobile to compete in a "clean air" race. Using a stock gasoline engine, they lowered its compression rate and made a few alterations to allow for a greater heat build-up. Next, they recirculated part of the exhaust gas to decrease the excess oxygen and slow the combustion process slightly. The result was a success. The only real problem was in the bulky, quickly exhausted tanks of fuel.

Billings Energy Research of Provo, Utah, solved the bulky tank problem a couple of years later when they built a hydride storage system. Hydrogen is chemically locked in powdered iron titanium and is released when heat from the engine's cooling fluid warms it. With this, or a less expensive Hefferlin System there is little reason for our continuing dependence on fossil fuels.

Justi and Kalberlah wrote in a 66 French bulletin that they could convert water to hydrogen and oxygen using DC current and simple nickel, double layer, porous electrodes. Their system could store the gases under 100 atm without a pump being used, and they attained a phenomenal 50- to 65-percent energetic efficiency.

In 1975 UCLA experimenters ran liquid hydrogen to a standard propane regulator and mixer atop a standard carburetor. In the carburetor they used water to lower combustion temperatures and to act as a combustion and backfire control. (An "approved" gas mixer or carburetor is necessary in California.)

Electrostatic Cooling

For some reason, when static electricity is played on a red hot object, it will suddenly cool the object. This "electric wind" seems to break up the insulatory boundary layers of air, and it will have numerous applications in our century.

The "tabernacle" [the famous Ark of the Covenant] of Moses in the Bible was said by Lakovsky to be nothing more than a large electro-static generator. While the friction of air against the silk curtains generated the static electricity, the box condensor stored this energy.

Steam Locomotion

Who could exclude the beloved steam car from a work like this! In 1907 a Stanley Steamer car travelled down a Florida beach at 170 miles per hour before a bump sent it out of control. Losing ground to the cheaper gasoline vehicles, a number of the old steamers were resurrected and run during the World War II fuel shortages. Even in the 50s a Stanley engine carried one researcher and his newer car across the U.S. for six dollars worth of kerosene.

The Doble Steam Auto was probably the first steamer of modern design. Instead of allowing the steam to escape, it recirculated it so that an owner conceivably could drive a thousand miles before refilling the twenty-five gallon water tank. With less than a minute warm-up owners could get performance equal to the best gasoline automobiles.

The amazing Doble engines were guaranteed for 100,000 miles, and some owners reported having got a phenomenal 800,000 miles from them. From his first auto show Doble got $27 million in orders. The War Emergency Board of the period (1917 plus) discouraged production completely, so Doble was forced to survive abroad building steam trucks for an English firm.

Steam power plants have been no problem. Kinetics Inc. of Sarasota, Florida, had a superb engine developed for cars of the late 60s.The GibbsHosick Steam described in Popular Science (February, 1966) was to use a tiny piston motor to give it impressive performance. A super efficient steam engine was developed by Oliver Yunick in 1970 (Popular Science, December 1971); another, the HBH in Popular Science, November 1971. One of the most advanced steam turbine designs came from the DuPont Laboratories in late 1971. They used a recyclable fluid of the freon family. Presumably it contains within its design no need for an external condenser, valves, or tubes. (Popular Science, January, 1972.)

Using more basic designs, Sundstrand Aviation put one of their steam power plants in a Dallas city bus. At the same period William M. Brobeck of Berkeley, California, with his assistants, equipped three Oakland Buses with similar "Doble" designs.

Lear Motors Corp. of Reno, Nevada, spent millions on advanced steam designs until it was apparent there would probably be little financial reward in the end. Steam Power Systems of San Diego was another principal experimenter during this period.

About as close as anyone came to putting a production model on the market in the 70s was the attempt by W. Minto. Using Swedish Sullair rotary compressors for motors, he mounted his system on a standard Datsun and got a contract for at least a hundred more. Later modifications included a gyrator engine, which was actually a pump motor working backward.

One of the few new steam engine designs able to be directly tied to the drive wheels of an auto is the KROV design of 1973. Claiming at least a one-third advantage in economy over conventional gas engines, all this engine needed was financing.

I recall that one enterprising gentleman sold a kit to convert gas engines to steam engines during the Second World War. He ran around Los Angeles in a converted Model A Ford until he dropped from sight. In the 60s there was a similar conversion kit put out by a small company in Oregon. Furnishing a smaller cam timing gear sprocket the size of the crankshaft sprocket and a modified camshaft, a normal "gas" engine could easily be converted. This company did not advocate using their units for any but stationary engines, but hinted at a new super fuelless steam power unit coming up.

Another Steam Engine

In the early 70s William Bolon in Rialto, California, developed an unusual steam engine design that was purported to get 50 miles to the gallon. The engine, which used only 17 moving parts, weighed less than 50 pounds and eliminated the usual transmission and drive train in an auto. After contacting Detroit interests, the inventor claimed he was required to sign forms releasing these interests from acknowledging his claims to the design before they would even look at it.

After a Sun-Telegram article on the project, his factory was firebombed to the tune of $600,000. After letters to the White House, the inventor finally gave up and let Indonesian interests have the design.

Aside from a token steam project by Ford, the steam auto was ignored right up to the time of various Senate pollution control committees of late 60s. Typically, the representatives of the auto industry alleged that steam systems were not dependable, safe, or necessary—especially since Detroit would soon have good minimal emission designs. So, without funding, the small experimenters of this period tended to fall into obscurity.

A notable exception was Bill Lear, who spent millions perfecting systems in his Reno plant. The complete lack of co-operation and interest from major industries or "powers" eventually discouraged him.

Diesel

Dr. Rudolph Diesel took the crude heavy fuel burning engine designs of those before him and refined them into the major engineering success of the 1900s. His invention immediately threatened the whole steam engine industry, and just as he was plunging into fame and success, he permanently disappeared from the ship on which he was travelling to Europe.

Electrostatic Motors

The modern world's first electric motor was an electrostatic motor invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1748. Through the years, little was done in this field until a Dr. Jehmenko came on the scene. This good physicist felt it was a "waste" not to be using some of the abundant free atmospheric electricity, so he built the most powerful Corona motor so far tested (1974).

He has visions of being able to put his Earth-field antennas on the tops of mountains, where electrostatic energy is particularly concentrated and use an ultraviolet laser beam to ionize the air and send the energy to receiving sites below. To run smaller motors, experimenters find that a few inches of needle pointed music wire will start a Corona. This wire is attached to at least two or three hundred feet of copper lead-in wire held aloft by a balloon, kite, or tower. Tolerances are critical on electrostatic motors, but they are simple to make.