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New Energy Technology (PACE, 1990, 60 p.)
Fundamentals
The scientific basis for tapping energy in the vacuum
Harold AspdenDepartment of Electrical
EngineeringUniversity of SouthamptonSOUTHAMPTON SO9 5NHUnited
Kingdom
The thought of extracting energy from a hidden but active field
environment more plentiful than air or water is rejected outright by orthodox
scientists. Yet there are sound scientific reasons for expecting that we should
be able to extract "free energy" from that hidden field.
The Zero-point energy field
In 1987, a Senior Research Fellow at the institute for Advanced
Studies at Austin, Texas circulated a paper that had just appeared in the
Physical Review (1). It was entitled, "Ground state of hydrogen as a zero-point
state". It spoke of the energy of these fluctuations, but nothing in the paper
would excite the interest of a "free energy" enthusiast; the paper had to be
acceptable to a scientific community hostile to such ideas, otherwise it may
never have been published.
What is more revealing are the words in the special summary of
the paper that its author, Dr. Harold E. Puthoff, also distributed. Quoting from
the summary:
"One of the more bizarre predictions of modern quantum theory is
that each cubic centimeter of space, including that of the most pristine vacuum
of outer space, contains an enormous amount of untapped electromagnetic energy
known as zero-point energy (it is the zero-point from which all other energies
are measured). The amount of energy associated with this (usually unobserved)
background is conservatively estimated to be of the order of nuclear energy
densities or greater."
Dr. Puthoff goes on to explain how theorists have tended to
question the enormity of the energy density involved but how, over the years,
the discovery of the Casimir force and other effects have given the quantitative
verification. The Casimir force is a force found to exist between closely-spaced
metal plates. The force results from unbalanced pressures in the zero-point
field due to the presence of the plates. Dr. Puthoff's own paper announced
another indication of the physical reality of this "ubiquitous" energy field, by
showing how it accounted for the stability of matter at the atomic level. In his
summary, he commented on this with the concluding words:
"The significance of this observation is the understanding that
the very stability of matter itself depends upon, and verifies the presence of,
an underlying sea of electromagnetic energy of almost inconceivable magnitude, a
vast reservoir of random energy that is universally present throughout space."
Now, Dr. Puthoff is not alone in researching this subject. There
are many university scientists throughout the world who are working on the
underlying stochastic electrodynamics. Sadly, however, many of these researchers
are led to conclusions which are not to the liking of others in the scientific
community, particularly those who treasure the sterile mathematical abstractions
of Einstein's model of space.
One particular conclusion, which has been the basis of my own
interest for more than 30 years, is the realization that when an electron
responds to an electric field it moves exactly in such a way that it conserves
the energy involved in this process. The isolated electron or any such
fundamental charge does not, in my opinion, radiate energy. This is consistent
with quantum theory and the result deduced by Dr. Puthoff from the atomic
electron interactions with the zero-point energy background, but I see this in a
different context. It is the fundamental basis of the inertial property of that
electron. Its mass is nothing other than a measure of its response when affected
by an energy field. By conserving energy, that electron moves as if it has just
the mass or inertia that assures field fluctuations consistent with overall
energy conservation.
Obviously, this argument leads to a formula relating both the
mass and the energy of that electron with the propagation speed of the
fluctuation involved. It leads to:
E = mc²
but without requiring Einstein's theory. Though I discovered
this over 30 years ago, it was not until 1976 that I found a scientific journal
willing to publish such a claim (2). It was heresy to suggest that the famous
Einstein formula might have a simple physical basis unconnected with the
doctrines preached by Einstein. Such is the faith in Einstein's theory, that the
vast majority of journal referees will only allow publications to trespass into
relativistic territory when the scientific ideas advanced glorify Einstein's
methods. There must be so many scientists who have had their ideas totally
surpressed by the unfair attitudes of those who seek to preserve a status quo.
Yet any aspect of the scientific status quo is only worth preserving if it can
survive criticism. Sadly, that criticism is suppressed and the message to the
public is therefore clear: Einstein's theory has weaknesses which those who
speak for it cannot see, but yet they sense this, and their inbred instincts
cause them to fear the consequences of embroilment to the point where they are
ready to fight off any intruder.
I conclude this introductory comment by stressing that the
vacuum is full of energy ready to be tapped, if only we can find the right
techniques, and I express the view that those who control research funding are
ensnared by the adverse doctrines of Einstein's theory. How can one think
otherwise when, in 1988, a leading scientist, now retired from a lifelong
service at the UK National Physical Laboratory, in which he measured those
quantities that are so germane to Einstein's theory, time and the speed of
light, published an article in which he called Einstein's theory a "swindle".(3)
In an earlier article, again not written until after he was retired, the same
author, Dr. Louis Essen, the pioneer of the Caesium atomic clock, had declared
that the hope for the future lay in supporting those who reject Einstein's
theory and search for that hidden energy that pervades the vacuum state (4).
Is there an ether?
The orthodox scientist will tell you that there is no ether
because of an experiment performed by Michelson and Morley in 1887. A more
informed scientist might add that a further experiment performed by Trouton and
Noble in 1903 (5) is equally relevant in proving that there is no ether. To
these scientists one can now say: "Get with it, there is something wrong with
the theory of both of these experiments and a new experiment has now taken
over".
An experiment has been performed in the State of Washington by
E. W. Silvertooth, another retiree, but in this case from a senior position in
which he exercised his expert knowledge of optical systems. The experiment was
first reported in 1986 in the journal, Nature (6) and then more fully elsewhere
(7) in 1987. Silvertooth avoids the retro-reflections of the Michelson-Morley
experiment and uses a transparent photo-detector in linear translational motion
relative to the optical source to scan along a beam set up by interfering rays
coming through one another from opposite directions. He finds that the single
laser apparatus he now uses can sense, in an enclosed laboratory, our motion
through space in the direction of Constellation Leo at nearly 400 km/s. This is
what both Michelson and Morley, and Trouton and Noble were trying to do in their
experiments.
The Michelson-Morley experiment did not work because the
retro-reflection set up standing waves that were locked onto the mirror surfaces
and so their energy was dragged along by the apparatus. That energy affected the
speed of light in those standing wave components along the beam. Michelson and
Morley did not know about those standing wave properties, because standing waves
as such were only discovered by Wiener. The Trouton-Noble experiment did not
work because it assumed the Lorentz force law applies to non-circuital charge
motion, whereas it is empirically based on effects that demand such a circuital
charge motion. The experiment does not involve circuital charge motion.
These are, however, specialist points that are best discussed
elsewhere. From our point of view here it suffices to declare that Silvertooth
has detected our motion through the ether and so we can now begin to think of
the properties of a real ether in which those zero-point energy fluctuations are
seated.
1987 was the centennial year of the Michelson-Morley experiment.
It gave me the occasion of mentioning the Silvertooth experiment in a letter
published in Physics Today (8). It is claimed that Silvertooth's experiment has
been repeated by Marinov (9) and that the positive result is confirmed. Also, a
further repeat of the experiment is being considered at this time on the
initiative of Professor R. Monti in Bologna, Italy.
It should not therefore be too long before we see the
consequences of the detection of the ether rumbling through the orthodoxy of
modern science. Undoubtedly there will be efforts to patch up the relativistic
doctrine in some way, but by then the new research opportunities will have
outpaced mere theory and we will, I trust, have broken through into the new
world that recognizes the hidden energy field.
The Gyromagnetic anomalies
Magnetism is a phenomenon that features prominently in devices
aimed at extracting free energy from the vacuum medium. It has long been
realized that there are certain anomalies in magnetism evident in gyromagnetic
reactions.
The orthodox scientist will tell you that an electron is a point
charge that spins to set up a quantum of spin magnetic moment. How a point can
spin is something that stretches the imagination. It takes one into that fuzzy
and abstract world that exists only in the mind of the mathematician. How a
point charge can spin and yet set up a related magnetic effect that somehow
depends upon motion relative to the observer is even more taxing on the
imagination. For these reasons I say to the orthodox scientist: "Think again and
figure out something better".
The whole problem centres on the factor of two. When the
magnetism in a steel rod is suddenly reversed the rod has a tendency to rotate
about its axis. If mounted so as to rotate freely, the reversal of magnetism
produces a measured angular motion. This corresponds to exactly half that
expected if we suppose that magnetism comes from the orbital motion of
electrons. The factor of half or two, if the formulae are inverted, is anomalous
and has led to a fanciful relativistic based mathematical interpretation for
which the Nobel prizewinner Paul Dirac is famous.
Let us think again on this matter. When we consider how energy
travels between two interacting electric charges that are subject to an
instantaneously-acting electric field, we realize that energy has to travel a
certain distance commensurate with the distance between the charges in order to
feed the kinetic energy of those charges. This takes a little time and it is
convenient to imagine that the energy does travel at the speed of light. In this
way, it can be shown that the energy in transit accounts for the magnetic
interaction of two moving charges.
The key to understanding this process is to regard that
zero-energy in the ether as a source of energy locally. Thus, when the
instantaneous action between the two charges says that they have altered their
relative positions, owing to their motion, their kinetic energies adjust by
energy exchange involving the local zero-point energy background. Such energy is
"radiation" energy and it communicates momentum and so force in relation to the
energy involved as divided by the speed of light. The total energy in transit is
measured by the transit time and the rate at which time is the separation
distance divided by the speed of light. Accordingly, the overall force effect
that accounts for the electrodynamic action is related to the electrostatic
Coulomb force as divided by the speed of light squared and proportional to the
square of the separation speed.
The point of this argument is to show how vital that background
energy in the ether is to the physical justification for the electrodynamic
action. Now this ignores any reaction in the ether apart from its role in
providing an energetic environment and in determining the speed of light, but we
see ether as containing electric charge itself in some kind of neutral
composition. Therefore, this electrodynamic action between charges can never
occur in isolation without inducing secondary reaction either in the ether or in
any enveloping substance, such as by free electrons in the steel rod just
mentioned. Detailed analysis then shows that the optimum reaction will halve any
magnetic effect produced by the primary action. This brings us to a position
where the ether has to be seen as having special properties which enhance the
primary field effects just enough to keep the energy balance. The magnetic
energy is stored in the reacting system and resultant fields conform with the
unity state that we associate with a true vacuum.
In spite of this neutralizing action, we are still left with an
observable gyromagnetic effect that has double the magnetic strength for the
same mechanical action. This is exactly what is found if we assume that
magnetism in a steel rod is due to orbital electron motion.
In summary we can say that Dirac's spin interpretation cannot be
used to reject ideas about the orbital nature of ferromagnetism and that there
is an essential reaction density trapped in any magnetic field. The question
then is whether this energy can be extracted.
Well, of course, it can. Imagine that we supply current to
magnetize a solenoid. The energy fed into the inductive field is stored
somewhere and we do not go into that in detail in our textbooks. However, it
really is stored in that reacting charge motion that sets up the half-canceling
back-field. Thus when the solenoid is switched off it is this reacting charge
that feeds energy back to the solenoid circuit. Now ask what happens if that
reaction is in a substance and involves electrons in free motion. The energy of
that motion is part of their thermal energy. So if we switch off the solenoid
containing a core of such material we will actually extract heat energy from
that material.
So this tells us that if we energize a solenoid having a copper
core, say, the energy supplied to the coil will all be used to generate heat.
Suppose then that we extract that heat and use it efficiently for some useful
purpose. Suppose further that the solenoid itself is superconducting, meaning
that there is no continuous energy loss owing to ohmic resistance. Let the core
cool to its initial ambient temperature as this heat is extracted. Then let us
switch off that D.C. current, de-energizing the solenoid slowly so as to
minimize eddy-current losses. This will return all the inductive energy by
extracting it from the thermal activity of the electrons in that copper core.
The energy supplied in the first place was not wasted. It was
all available as heat output. Yet much of that energy is returned as electricity
when the solenoid is switched off and this energy comes from a cooling of that
copper core. We have "free energy" in the sense that ambient heat energy has
been tapped to produce a useful energy output.
The orthodox scientist and also the orthodox engineer will
suggest that this is not really practical but that is not our immediate concern
since we seek here to make a point of principle. "Free energy" can be accessed
by tapping the thermal background. Now let us go just a little further with this
argument and say that the magnetic field produced by the solenoid is so powerful
that when the energy is extracted from the reacting electrons in the copper core
the energy drawn out exceeds all the thermal energy of that core. What would
happen? Would the core cool to absolute zero, that is minus 273 degrees
Centigrade? Perhaps, but in addition could we not expect to find that this
process might well draw on that zero-point energy in the background vacuum
field?
I can only theorize about the answers to these questions but I
submit that one day, if we do get strong room temperature superconductors that
can withstand very high magnetic fields, we will get to those answers in a way
that could lead to practical devices. In the meantime, let us here remember that
orthodox scientists do use the technique of adiabatic demagnetization to achieve
supercooling to very low temperatures. What is proposed should not, therefore,
be seen as pseudo-science. Furthermore, it is known from experiment that the
application of short duration intense magnetic fields (several hundred
kilogauss) to copper cores can reveal that they have momentarily experienced a
near-molten state from which they were spontaneously cooled when the
magnetization pulse terminated. The technological challenge is to get that heat
energy out whilst the pulse is on and before the cooling phase begins as the
pulse subsides.
I could give many references that bear on what has just been
said, but will just mention one, namely my own discussion of this subject in a
book dated 1969 (10). The book aroused no particular interest, possibly because
its title was "Physics without Einstein", but in a world intent on discovering
new sources of energy it is surprising that what I said on this subject has not
been investigated or, at least, contradicted by now. I mention also that my
Ph.D., which was based on experimental research at Cambridge in England, was for
work on the anomalous magnetic reaction effects induced in ferromagnetic
substances. That research did not extend to the ideas just presented, but it
gave me a relevant scientific background and so a basic confidence in what I was
later to propose.
Conductivity anomalies
The scientific world has been shaken by the recent discovery of
"warm" superconductivity. Superconductivity at temperatures in excess of liquid
nitrogen temperature is a phenomenon that defies the orthodox scientific
expectation. The questions we should be asking are whether we are looking at
zero electrical conductivity or negative electrical conductivity. The latter
would imply a source of "free energy", whereas the former merely is a state of
no ohmic loss.
It is conceivable to have particles such as electrons or even
protons traveling through conductors and not causing thermal oscillations that
imply heat loss. Therefore, logically we must be looking at a system in which
there is a transfer of the heat energy associated with the random motion of the
atoms that make up the conductor to an ordered motion of the charges carrying
the current. Superconductivity sets in when the break-even point is reached and
more energy is fed from the thermal condition to the current condition than is
dissipated as ohmic loss and so fed back into heat.
This is how I, as a non-expert on matters relating to
superconductivity, must view the whole process. It follows that the question of
interest to me is what happens if those "warm" superconductors are operated at
much lower temperatures than that of the threshold level. My hope is that the
circuit might develop an EMF of its own and so supply "free energy" by feeding a
current which can be used in an ohmic load, energy which is sourced in the heat
of that superconductive element. This imaginary device would need to be cooled
down to prime it for operation and would need to have a current fed through it
also to prime it for operation, but, once primed, it could continue to feed
current to a load and at the same time cool itself to remain superconductive.
Indeed, to keep it operative and feeding current one would need to allow some
ambient heat energy to reach the superconductive element, but only at such a
rate that is needed to sustain the electrical output.
The orthodox scientist would say that this is a pipe dream
Certainly it cannot work according to the second law of thermodynamics, though
it does satisfy the first law. Be this as it may, in advising on entrepreneurial
activity into new and safe sources of energy, I would not recommend turning away
anyone who claimed that he or she could demonstrate a source of electrical
energy from a primed conductor system fed only on ambient heat.
One may also wonder whether what scientists regard as
superconductivity is really an essential preliminary to this prospect of "free
energy" from a conductor device. We know of thermoelectric phenomena in
conductors comprising junctions between dissimilar metals. In a sense these
different junctions exhibit positive and negative resistance. A positive
resistance produces heat in absorbing electrical power and a negative resistance
cools down in supplying such electrical power. By appropriate selection of
metals and operating temperatures of the junctions, one can wonder whether we
may be able to fabricate a circuit in which the negative resistance junctions
are more effective than the positive resistance junctions.
The result could be a solid-state device which can feed a steady
supply of electricity by drawing on heat at the ambient air temperature.
Another version of the same pipe dream? There are certain
scientific factors that need looking into from an experimental point of view,
but there is nevertheless a sufficient scientific basis in such a "free energy"
proposition to warrant the investment involved. It is probable that the Second
Law of Thermodynamics will not yield ground on the "free energy" issue, but we
must at least try to penetrate that barrier. At the very least I expect that we
will eventually discover thermoelectric techniques by which to derive electrical
power efficiently from low temperature differential and so gain our energy at
the expense of the atmospheric conditions.
Other developments
Space does not permit discussion of the possibility of deriving
"free energy" from special kinds of electric motor. Nor does it allow discussion
as part of this paper of the current interest in gyroscopic propulsion, which
brings with it the prospect of levitation and so energy saving in a new means of
transportation.
It is however, appropriate to mention that there is a scientific
basis for suspecting that energy can be transferred to and from that zero-point
energy in the vacuum field by techniques involving electric motor generators. In
evaluating any claims of "free energy" machines of this kind, one should be
prepared to give more credibility to the inventor who says his machine has also
the surprising property of being able to lose energy. By "free energy" we think
of a machine that is more than 100 per cent efficient, but we should also have
in mind the machine that is less than 0% efficient. A plausible machine would be
one that is reversible to work in either way, that is control the energy
transfer from and to that zero-point background.
The secret of such a device will surely be based upon the role
of that zero-point vacuum state in determining the Planck quantum of action.
This is what governs the quanta of energy radiation across empty space, the
so-called photons. It is also what sets the magnetic polarization on a per atom
basis of the ferromagnetic substances used in our electrical machines. However,
what "free energy" inventors must realize is that the ferromagnet is
intrinsically always magnetically saturated. All we do in magnetizing it is to
re-orientate the microscopic domains within the substance. This hardly affects
the magnetic energy density in these domains, at least for the level of
polarizing fields used in most practical machines. Consequently, there seems no
basis for extracting energy from that zero-point field.
This having been said, imagine that we do force a much higher
level of magnetization so that those quantized orbital electrons do draw on the
zero-point energy to help to power the forces acting between the poles of an air
gap. Having done this, imagine what happens if we tap that energy in the air
gap, using it to drive a motor, whilst the magnetizing current is switched on.
Surely those orbital electrons in the ferromagnet will make their own
contribution to the energy in the air gap, just as the supplied magnetizing
current will feed in some energy. Then, with the poles having moved close
together, let us switch off the current. I suspect that energy used as output
will then have transferred from those two sources, the magnetizing circuit and
the zero-point vacuum field, but only the part needed to sustain the inductive
reaction effects in the magnetic core will be recovered.
In summary, I subscribe to the view that there could be ways of
designing electrical machines which can transfer energy either way between the
zero-point vacuum field and our material environment. "Free energy" in this
sense is a distinct possibility and thinkers in this field should not be
deterred by the opinions of orthodox scientists who have heard of Einstein but
have not heard of that vast reservoir of zero-point energy.
References
This involves filing a patent application at a Patent Office and
it is here that you will be seeking professional advice on the preparation of
the patent specification. Then your problems begin to mount up. They are no
longer just technical problems or financial problems; you have to describe a
working machine even if it is only one you imagine and it has to be claimed in a
way that gives legal definition to what you have invented. That means that you
have to be able to explain to the patent attorney the underlying principles of
machine operation and how it works. It is his task to write a general
description in suitable style and structure the patent claims that will define
your monopoly, should the patent be granted.
Now a word of caution. Any suggestion that you have found a
really novel Earth-shaking energy conversion process will inevitably attract
suspicion, if not scorn. Unless you have a very thorough scientific training in
the subject involved, the chances are that what you see as an invention is
ill-founded. The odds of success are such that, before proceeding even to arouse
outsider interest in the project, common sense requires that you do some
experimental tests to verify the foundations of your proposal. Without such
evidence or an adequate scientific argument, you have no way of giving the
patent attorney the information needed to proceed with a patent application. I
will assume, however, that you have overcome that hurdle and can proceed with
the patent process.
By filing an application for a patent you:
(a) create a legal priority date for your rights,(b) put on
public record a declaration of what you believe you have invented and(c)
initiate a process by which you can have an official assessment of the novelty
of your invention.
What does that all really mean? Well, it assures that if your
patent specification is published your contribution will, at least, be of
historical record in public archives. It may not mean fame and fortune, but your
contribution is published. It means also that if anyone else tries to patent the
same invention at a later time, the fact that your "priority date" is earlier
will be effective in limiting that rival action. Of more practical importance is
the official patent search that will determine how novel your invention might
be.
That search is very important to you and it is particularly
important for you to know the result early enough to allow you to determine
whether to extend your patent coverage to a multiplicity of countries. You need
that information because it is a costly business and there is no point in
spending a lot of money on patents if your invention lacks novelty, because at
the end of the day your patent coverage could be worthless.
So that search data is important in giving confidence to backers
who might be putting their money into your project.
To sum up, you have to be able to support an initial patent
application to draw an official opinion on the novelty of your invention in time
for you to decide how to proceed in get tiny multi-country patent coverage.
The Patented Machine
It is all too easy to think that, if you are working on a
prototype machine and you have filed a patent application on that machine, then
you have patent cover. You must be aware of the possibility that the machine
design that you eventually settle upon and the patent claims to end up with have
not moved in opposite directions, leaving you with no real protection at all. I
suspect that there are too many instances where the patent expense has gone into
getting the same basic patent coverage in a large number of countries rather
than in filing, in just a few countries, a series of improvement patents that
keep up with the machine development.
The investor who puts his money into such an invention might
think the machine that evolves with that development is covered, merely because
there is a long list of national patent application numbers all founded on that
same initial patent application. Yet it has to be expected that problems
exercising more ingenuity will be encountered in that development. Therefore, it
must be expected that more inventions will arise. It may even be that the
official patent brings to light earlier proposals which stand in the way of a
patent grant, but nevertheless reveal ideas which stimulate improvement of the
machine in a way that is itself inventive. So almost inevitably, in the
electrotechnical field at least, one should be looking for a way of securing a
patent coverage involving several patents based on several inventive features in
the same machine.
If, therefore, you are inclined to think along the lines that a
particular patent covers a particular machine, you may easily misunderstand what
the patent system is all about. A patent gives you no rights to make any
machine, as such. It gives you, instead, the right to stop others from making
machines that are copies of your machine or machines of their own design, if
those machines happen to include an invention for which your patent was granted.
That invention is defined by the legal wording of the claims of your patent and
not by the technical description in the specification. If those claims as
granted turn out to be very limited in scope, the essential characteristic that
you think makes your machine work may not be protected. A single machine can
incorporate many inventions and so infringe many patents. So, my point is that,
if you are to spend a given number of dollars on patent costs, it can be better
to obtain five patents on improvements in, say, three countries than to settle
for fifteen patents on one supposedly basic feature, by spreading the cover to
fifteen countries.
The Strategy for Patent Coverage
A simple strategy is to solicit plant coverage in one country,
namely the US. This can be very rewarding from a license point of view if the
invention is a good one but there is always the risk that the patent may not be
granted and, if it is granted, it may be contested. A potential licensee during
the patent application stage knowing that you have "all your eggs in one basket"
in your US application, may be inclined to wait to see what emerges and whether
you are granted a patent at all. By having one or two parallel patent
applications in other countries, where different examiners judge your invention
and patents can be granted earlier, that potential licensee will be more likely
to come to terms at an earlier phase. Furthermore, there is less likelihood that
the validity of your patent will be challenged, whether by an infringer or a
potential licensee, if it is known that you have several patent applications
covering different inventions but all on a related theme of interest. The odds
of winning such contests, the time delays involved and the ability of the
respective parties to sustain legal expense over a protracted period, are all
factors that come to bear in these matters. It is generally better to sit as a
patentee holding several patents and patent applications on different but
relevant inventions rather than to have extensive world patent coverage on a
single invention. I still qualify this, by reminding you that I am speaking of
electrotechnological inventions. In the pharmaceutics, where a single drug
patent can cover the composition of one product, patent strategy considerations
are very different. We are here concerned with the invention we see as a
breakthrough in the energy field and especially one that emerges not from
research in the laboratories of a major corporation.
With a limited country patent coverage goes the risk that
competitors will be able to manufacture in many countries without worrying about
infringement of your patents. You may see this as a lost opportunity. So, let us
suppose that you have not sought coverage in Japan or Germany. Both are large
markets having extensive manufacturing bases and export capacity and offer great
potential for your invention. Patent filing in these countries could be
particularly advantageous if you have special reason for thinking that a
Japanese or German company is interested in your ideas. However, imagine that
you have sought protection only in the US and UK, for example. Your patent
specification will be published by the British Patent Office 18 months after
your initial filing date. This is a public disclosure of the description which
accompanies your claim for the grant of a patent. The ultimate grant process
takes appreciably longer, but that UK Patent Specification will give a measure
of your invention by showing the result of the Patent Office search. This can
help in interesting licensees. Now, imagine that you can attract some news media
publicity for your invention. It comes to the attention of manufacturers looking
for new products. A company in Japan or Germany searches the official patent
records and sees that the field is clear for local manufacture and sale at
least. They decide to build a machine incorporating your invention.
Remember here that it is often not the President or a Board
Director of that company that acts in response to your news coverage. If it were
that would be more likely to result in your being contacted with a license
opportunity in mind. The chances are that one of the technical employees of that
company will read about your device in some scientific journal. That may only
seed a technical idea in that person's mind. There will be no special interest
in glorifying your work and acclaiming what you have done as a great discovery.
Human nature amongst the technically minded can be such that they like to
exercise their own creative brain power and that can lead to second hand
versions of machines developing from your basic theme. They, in effect, have
jumped on your idea and, in the light of some special skill they have, or some
special knowledge they have about the technical trends, facilities, etc., within
their own company, the scene is set for something similar to your invention to
emerge under the house name of that organization.
From your viewpoint it matters not how the seeds you have sown
bear their fruit, just so long as something happens. The company, whether
Japanese or German, French, Swiss, etc. has no license from you and you have no
patent in those countries. Their machine is a commercial success. Your efforts,
even to attract a licensee in the UK or US, have failed and your own attempts to
build a prototype machine have no commercial pay-off. You have the satisfaction
that at least that UK Patent specification shows that you are the true and first
inventor and you may have a few newspaper clippings to show to your friends.
But, have you really lost out? Then ask whether it is likely that a Japanese or
German company, having succeeded in exploiting what is truly your invention, can
viably market such a product without wanting to export it to the US and Europe.
If they do then they need a license from you to sell in the US or UK No such
company can be happy about marketing a product in part of Europe without selling
it in the UK International companies cannot abide such distorted market
situations, when all that blocks them is a mere need for a patent license. If
they do take extreme steps to avoid selling their product in these two countries
you still have a course of action. You can point to the success of their product
elsewhere to justify the commercial viability of your invention. This will
surely attract a strong licensee interest by companies who compete with those
Japanese or German interests. There will be interest in obtaining an exclusive
license from you. These companies can contemplate worldwide marketing of your
invention if they have a license from you for the US and UK. Furthermore, should
the Japanese or German rivals have secured some specific patent coverage on what
they are selling, there is always the potential for a cross-license arrangement
favorable to your licensees, thanks to those key patents that you hold in the US
and UK.
Had you spent a fortune obtaining patents in numerous countries
you might not be much better off at the end of the day, given that your
invention succeeds. However, should the invention fail, then you will have saved
a very considerable outlay and your backers may still be around to invest in
your next speculative invention.
As a "free inventor" in the energy field, which particularly
includes an inventor in the "free energy" field, I would therefore save patent
expense by very restricted country patent filing and put my money into patenting
the succession of developments on the basic theme. Now, I have just mentioned
"free energy", that is energy that can come in abundance if we know where to
look for it and is free in the sense that it costs very little to transport it
or convert it into useful form. Hydroelectric power is "free energy" but there
are substantial costs in building a major dam and the available sites for such
facilities are limited. However, it would be an ideal source of relatively cheap
energy were it more accessible and plentiful universally.
So my comments now address the special field that many would
classify as "perpetual motion". It is generally known that Patent Offices turn
their backs on applications which they see as in this category.
The Perpetual Motion Syndrome
If you go to a Patent Office and offer a patent application
claiming perpetual motion, you will get the feeling that the official rejection
is telling you to get on your machine, set it going in a direction that takes
you well away from the Patent Office and keep going. The Patent Office is
staffed by reasonable people, but they are protected from wasting their time on
crazy ideas, thanks to the rules and regulations prescribed. So my task now is
to tell you how that great discovery of yours which does smack of "perpetual
motion" might be navigated through Patent Office channels to secure a valid
grant.
Here, again, I am saying what I would do myself, in the light of
my patent knowledge, but I confess that, so far, I have not had the opportunity
to practice what I am now about to preach. That great new "free energy"
invention is something I have to look forward to having under my control.
However, I have heard of others who believe they have made such inventions and
who have tried or are trying to get patents and are running into difficulties.
There is a whole field of activity that is excluded from
patentability by law and the way that law is interpreted. The wording of the law
differs from country to country but the effects are much the same everywhere.
To be patentable the invention has to apply to something having
technical qualities in an engineering or scientific sense. It must be of use
industrially and one can exclude accountancy methods, methods of calculation,
mere theoretical ideas and scientific principles, as such. What we are concerned
with is something that is rejected on grounds which were expressed in earlier
British law by words which referred to the patent application as: "frivolous
because it claims as an invention anything obviously contrary to well
established natural laws".
The operative law today is consistent with that governing the
grant of European Patents by the European Patent Office in Munich, Germany. The
guidelines for examination actually specify that a perpetual motion machine
should be rejected for being alleged "to operate in a manner clearly contrary to
well-established physical laws."
Now, here I want to point out something very important. The
guidelines go on to say "Objection could arise only in so far as the claim
specifies the intended function or purpose of the invention, but if, say, a
perpetual motion machine is claimed merely as an article having a particular
specified construction then objection should not be m ace. "
What this means is that your patent application must not claim
perpetual motion, but if the claims are founded on a legitimate technical device
which can function without breaching the bounds of well-established physical
law, then even if those claims could include a perpetual motion device as well,
you may still secure a grant.
Let me put this in a different way and in a slightly different
technical context. Suppose your machine, in your opinion, defies one of Newton's
laws of motion and offers the potential of easy interplanetary space travel. You
would be foolish to claim a space craft based on a description of a machine
design which obviously does not operate in accordance with accepted Newtonian
law. In this extreme situation, you could however, claim a machine, the
essential part of which has exactly that construction, but provided your patent
puts the emphasis on the utility of that machine as a device for testing
Newton's laws. With an appropriate wording of claim, the use of the same machine
for transportation purposes could be covered anyway. The grant of the patent is
then justified, unless what you write is truly frivolous. Obviously, if you can
actually demonstrate the working machine to the Patent Office examiners, it is
clear that you exceeded some boundary beyond which those Newtonian laws might
not reach. Then, I feel sure that any such machine that obviously has practical
utility will become patentable; the fields in which the accepted physical laws
are well established have merely been restricted and so the law is not breached.
On the more direct subject of the "free energy" machine, there
are two laws of thermodynamics which will usually apply. The first law requires
that energy should be conserved in any physical process, and I suggest to you
that a "free energy" machine, which ostensibly does not comply with accepted
physical laws, must draw on energy from some source. If that source is known and
catered for in your patent description then so much the better. It will, in my
opinion, either be the thermal energy of the system or the zero-point vacuum
energy that prevades the vacuum field. For reasons of my own, I suspect that the
surplus energy in the zero-point field can only materialize as matter, e.g.,
creating protons in a stable situation or leptons (such as electrons or mu
mesons) in a transient fluctuating situation.
So your "free energy" source is likely to be energy drawn from
the thermal state of the machine or its environment. There are magneto-caloric
effects operative in this way in certain magnetic apparatus. Cooling by
adiabatic demagnetization is well established in physics.
The next hurdle is the second law of thermodynamics, which is
generally the one that most critics would say was standing in the way. No
machine should be able to run on heat energy unless that energy is degraded from
a higher temperature to a lower temperature. This is a law waiting to be broken,
in my opinion, unless that machine is a pure heat engine. From a formal point of
view it should only be seen as a law that is well established for heat engines,
as such, but when one comes to magnetic machines, the only thermodynamic law
that seems of any relevance is that first law relating to energy conservation.
So my perspective on this subject is that "free energy" sourced in the thermal
background is a worthy subject of research.
A perpetual motion machine that runs by cooling down and, in
doing useful work, regenerates heat sounds absurd. If you sit back and think
about it, it makes no sense at all. Why should physical phenomena combine to do
nothing but spin wheels forever, just because somebody has put together an
electro-mechanical contraption of some kind. It is truly absurd. However, just
remember that we are sitting on an Earth that spins and that has a magnetic
field. We look at a sun that spins and feeds heat energy into space. Many
physicists believe that on a cosmic time scale of tens of billions of years
there is a slow resonance effect by which the processes that power the stars are
regenerated as the universe expands and contracts ad infinituum. We ascribe to
God the power of setting up that kind of perpetual motion, but still try to
justify as much as we can to pure physics. God is not a factor in the governing
equations of physics. Why then should we be so sure that a small "perpetual
motion" machine can never be built by human hand?
I could, of course, go on to talk about the more general
features of the patent system. There are tactics in licensing that even apply to
a single national patent that arises once a prototype device can be shown to
work. Suffice it to say that the patent system, unquestionably, can help the
free inventor striving to make a break-through in the energy field, but it can
eat up financial resources unless you are
careful. Maxwell's lost unified field theory of electromagnetics and gravitation
T. E. BeardenA.D.A.S.P.O. Box 1472HUNTSVILLE,
Alabama 35807United States of America
It is revealing to discuss the basic genesis of modern
electromagnetic theory starting with Maxwell's original theory expressed in
quaternions (1) (2) (3).
Most of us are familiar with four fundamental equations of
theoretical electromagnetics, universally taught in Western universities and
colleges as "Maxwell's Equations". (See Table 1) It may come as somewhat of a
surprise, at least to the casual scientist or engineer, that these equations
never appeared anywhere in Maxwell's fundamental "Treatise". (4) (5). In fact,
they are entirely due to the interpretation of a single brilliant man, Oliver
Heaviside (6) (7).
The Early Struggle in EM Theory
Maxwell wrote his first paper on electromagnetics in 1864 -
during the time of the US Civil War, and the paper was published in 1865 (8). At
that time, the modern form of vector analysis had not yet been completed (9).
The prevailing mathematics available for use in deeper electrical physics was
the quaternion theory founded by Hamilton in 1843 (10). Hamilton's quaternion
theory was the first significant nonarithmetic mathematical system (11).
Maxwell's original expression of his theory was written in
quaternions and quaternion-like mathematics. It attracted singularly attention
(12), and was considered only speculation until Heinrich Hertz discovered
electromagnetic waves in 1885-1888 (13) (14).
Indeed, early on, mathematicians strongly attacked Maxwell for
his - to them revolutionary and startling concept that energy could exist in a
massless wave and travel through space (15). While that concept is considered
self-evident to today's scientist and engineer, it was considered incredible and
starting when Maxwell proposed it.
TABLE 1:DIFFERENTIAL VECTOR FORM OF
HEAVISIDE/MAXWELL EQUATIONS
Maxwell's equations (Gaussian units):
Combining these equations with the Lorentz force equation and
Newton's Second Law of Motion is thought to provide a complete description of
the classical dynamics of interacting particles, and electromagnetic fields.
Two vectors, not interlocked.
a. Two vectors which are not interlocked by the medium (abstract
vector space), simply pass through each other and do not interact. They cannot
be said to have a common resultant, except fleetingly.
Two vectors, interlocked.
b. Two vectors which are interlocked by the medium (abstract
vector space) do not pass through each other but do interact. They can be said
to have a common translation resultant externally. However, internally they must
be said to produce a stress in the medium (abstract vector space).
Figure 1: A serious flaw exists in the application of the
abstract vector analysis to physical systems. Only when the local gravitational
effects are fleeting or negligible, does this flaw become negligible - and the
