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 Msg  : 78 of 91                                                                
 From : derek@prz.tu-berlin.de              1:343/70.10     Wed 16 Feb 94 14:48 
 To   : All                                                                     
 Subj : Patent for "free energy" device                                         


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Copied (from: sci.energy) by Scott Parks using timEd.

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From: derek@prz.tu-berlin.de (Dirk Kuhlmann)
Subject: Patent for "free energy" device
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 22:48:45 GMT
Organization: PRZ TU-Berlin

I stumbled over this story a few days ago. Any comments, hints and
followups will be appreciated. Since the source (SCIENCE) seems
reliable to me, I wonder what came out of this story. According
to SCIENCE, 16. Nov. 1984, p. 817, Newman won the trial against the
patent office on 31 October 1984: "Newman persuaded the U.S.
District Court in Washington, D.C., to order that his
application be granted a full review by a new examiner - in
short, a second chance." If anyone is interested, I can post
this article in full length.

My questions:

   - Did Newman finally got his device patented?
   - Are there any people on the net who remember the story
     or who were personally involved?
   - Did anyone read Newman's book (Newman, Joseph; "The
     energy machine of Joseph Newman: An invention whose time
     has come". 5th ed. Soule (?), Evan R. (ed). 1987 $38.45,
     ISBN 0-961 3835-5-2, J. Newman Pub.) and can tell something
     about it? (It takes months to get this stuff
     over here)

---------------------------[ start ]-----------------------

Source  : SCIENCE, 10. Feb. 1984, pp. 571-572
Title   : Newman's Impossible Motor
Subtitle: The patent office does not believe that Joseph Newman has
          built a generator that is more than 100 percent efficient,
                   but New Orleans does.
Author  : Eliot Marshall

     At least one physicist in Louisiana swears that the CBS News
     anchorman Dan Rather was smiling on 9 January when he reported
     that an inventor near New Orleans has built a generator taht
     defies the second law of thermodynamics. Others did not see
     any smile. What they did see, to their surprise, was an
     earnest but fantastic news story that has been running on New
     Orleans' biggest television channel being repeated over the
     network news.

     The story is about an inventor, a self-educated Missisippian
     named Joseph Wesley Newman. He was pleased with the CBS broadcast
     because it make help him in a fight with the U.S. Patent and Trademark
     Office, which has denied him a patent on the grounds of his latest
     invention, "smacks of a perpetual motion machine", meaning by
     definition it cannot do what it claimed. On 25 June, the U.S District
     Court for the District of Columbia will hear a suit Newman has
     brought against the patant office arguing that his device does not
     aim at perpetual motion but converts mass to energy in a finite
     but very efficient manner. He simply wants a patent.

     Newman's invention is hard to describe, partly because its behavior
     seems to be at odds with the laws of physics and partly  because
     the details are being kept secret while the ligation goes on.
     Newman says his own theory of magnetism is "10,000 times more
     important" than the invention itself, which be built to demonstrate
     the concept. He claims to have discovered the mechanical principles
     of a gyroscopic particle of matter that orbits in a magnetic field
     much as an electron orbits in an atomic shell. Several readers of
     his theory say it is incomprehensible and would not get attention
     were it not for the illustrative devices. The patent Newman seeks
     is for an "Energy Generation System Having Larger Output than Input".
     Those who have seen it say it is a crude direct current motor
     powered by a bank of lantern batteries with a heavy, rotating
     magnet at its center.

     Readings of the machine's performance, like those of Dan Rather's
     expression, depend on the reader. As a result of the TV coverage,
     the people of New Orleans may be convinced that Newman has invented
     a simple device that produces more energy than it consumes and
     could end the world's energy sqabbles if only an arrogan
     scientific community would pay attention. That is Newman's
     message. It has been taken up and broadcasted in a sort of
     crusade by Garland Robinette, the evening news anchorman at
     the CBS affiliate in New Orleans, WWL-TV.

     Last autumn Robinette aired an eight-part series on Newman's
     device, charging that jealous academics and frightened
     executives tried to stifle information about it. Robinette
     concedes that his intense coverage of Newman's began on a slow
     news day when he was looking for a cute show-closer. He claims
     he was skeptical at first and saw Newman's invention as
     acuriosity. But the story. soon grew into a "monster that I
     couldn't let go" when New Orleans viewers, facing a 200
     percent increase in utility rates, demanded to know more.
     Furthermore, a Missisippi state energy offical and a credible
     scientist had recently vouched for Newman's claims. Robinette
     sais that since he began reporting on the invention, no one
     has come forward to rebut Newman. He cahllenges people to come
     to "get this story off my back".

     Newman has benefited from the television coverage and from
     several weighty endorsements. For example, the television
     engineers bached him. Last year, Robinette dragged two
     reluctant engineers on WWL-TV staff to Newman's garage in
     Lucedale, Missisippi., about 2 1/2 hours from New Orleans.
     They werde sceptics at first, but, after looking at
     oscilloscope readings and watching the machine recharge
     batteries, they agreed with their anchorman that the claims
     seemed valid.

     Engineer Ralph Hartwell described the tests he ran. When he
     arrived at Newman's House, he connected some weak penlight
     batteries he had brought along to a small conventional motor
     in Newman's back yard. It was allowed to run until the
     batteries were drained of power, taking about 1 minute. He
     then moved the dead batteries over to the smallest of Newman's
     demonstration motors, connected them as a power source, and
     started this motor spinning. It ran until it was time for the
     camera crew to leave, for something between 1 ans 2 hours.
     Finally, the batteries werdetaken fram Newman's machine back
     to the conventional motor and reconnected. This time the motor
     ran for about 3 minutes. Hartwell ran annother experiment on a
     large device and concluded that it also appeared to generate
     more power than it used. Other measurements were taken with
     oscilloscopes and current meters, but these raedings have been
     questioned. After signing a confidential pledge, Hartwell was
     allowed to examine the machinee's inner wiring. He is certain
     that there is no hidden sourche of energy. Although he feels
     uncomfortable about it, he says he could not disprove Newman's
     claim and would like to see a universtity run a controlled
     test.

     Newman's key endorsement comes from Roger Hastings, a
     solid-state physicist for the Sperry Univac Company in
     Minneapolis. A colleague who knew him as a postdoc fellow at
     the University of Virginia says Hastings was regarded as an
     adventurous and excellent theorist. Hasting's brother,
     ascreener for new ideas for Tonka Toys, met NNewman when he
     submitted an invention to Tonka. Although sceptical, Hastings
     (the physician) was persuaded to make a trip to Lucedale. "I
     used to teach physics at North Dakota University", says
     Hastings, "and we would get three or four people a year who
     had some kind of device that was going to save the world. I
     assumed it was the same." Newman talked Hastings into fly down
     for a visit anyway. He returned five times, testing and
     retesting the motors, unti he was satisfied that he had made
     no mistake. He eventually signed an affidatvit describing the
     invention in detail and stating unequivocally that it runs at
     greater than 100 percent efficency, producing more power than
     it consumes. "I'm sticking my neck out," he says, "because
     this is an important issue that should be resolved."

     Endorsements such as this are essential for the credibility of
     the pateht application. Although Newman has read the works of
     the great electrical thinkers Michael Faraday and James Clerk
     Maxwell, he is not proficent in math or physics.

     Newman is collecting seval more endorsements. He claims to
     have won the backing recently of, a German aerospace engineer
     and a liaison officer between the National Aeronautics and
     Space Administration (NASA) and the European space consortium.
     Gerald Miller, a mechanical engineer, student of advanced
     physics, and electical industiy consultant in California, das
     inspected the devices and says, "I saw things that i cannot
     explain in conventional terms." He found that the device
     produced more energy than it used, adding, "I am absolutely
     certain that there is no hidden energy source." Milton Everett,
     a mechanical Engineer and director of the biomass program for
     the Missisippi department of energy and transportation, says,
     "I think Joe has discovered something that the world is going
     to benefit from. It's nor a perpetual motion machine; it
     converts mass to energy." Excluding inverstors, Newman claims
     to have about 27 such endorsers.

     But there have been and continue to be prominent doubters.
     Oddly, TV anchorman Robinette has given little attention or
     credence to the only thorough analysis ever performed on
     Newman's device. It was aranged by Everett (before he became a
     full convert to Newman's cause) and was paid for by the
     Missisippi energy department. Two electrical engineers from

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 Msg  : 84 of 90                                                                
 From : derek@prz.tu-berlin.de              1:343/70.10     Wed 16 Feb 94 14:48 
 To   : All                                                                     
 Subj : 02:Patent for "free energy" device                                      


-=> Note:

Copied (from: sci.energy) by Scott Parks using timEd.

     Missisippi State University (MSU), - Karl Carlson and Donald
     Fitzgerald - tested one of the Newman's devices last March.
     The conditions were unfavourable, because the motor kept
     breaking down every "couple of minutes," says Carlson, as a
     huge spark from the induction coil shorted out a switch on the
     commutator. Thus, while it war fairly easy to measure the
     power going in, it was not easy to tell what was coming out.
     Newman has built a smaller, less quirky motor since then.

     The pattern on the oscilloscope at the output end of a cycle
     was difficult to read because as one observer says, the
     discharge spark appeared as "a bright flash" or "a mess" on
     the face of the screen. Newman sweeps this point aside as a
     quibble, saying it merely indicates his machine's tremendous
     power. The efficiency claimed for this device is anywhere from
     the impossible (slightly over 100 percent) to the fantastic
     (800 percent and up). A normal electric motor may be 80
     percent efficient, Carlson says, and transformers are
     generally in the 90's. Carlson and Fitzgerald found that
     Newman's machine was between 55 and 76 percent efficient,
     based on their reading of the most favourable oscillograms.

     They wrote that they found "an output which is definitely less
     than the input." However, they hedged by saying it was
     impossible to measure the mechanical energy lost in the
     machine, which could affect the rating. They declined to call
     Newman's invention a breakthrough but reported that it was
     remakably efficient given its "obvious crude configuration."
     In a standard tag line, they wrote that "further investigation
     is in order." Newman reads this qualified rejection as a
     qualified endorsement, explaining when it comes to praising
     new discoveries, academisc are mean. He speaks of Carlson and
     Fitzgerald with harsher adjectives.

     The physics faculties of Loyola and Tulane Universities, both
     in New Orleans, have protested Robinette's reports. Daniel
     Purrington, Tulane's physics chairman, says: "We all dispute
     it. A number of us have told him [Robinette] we think what
     he's doing is irresponsible. I talked to him for about 2 hours
     about the principles involved." Carl Brans, a theorist at
     Loyola, wpote Robinette a two-page letter of protest. "It's
     just sensational journalism. In our opinion, it's not worth
     the cost," to try to take the measurements that would end the
     discussion.

     David Keiffer, an experimental physicist at loyola,lon with
     other faculty member, offered to check Newman's device if he
     would bring it to the laboratory. (Newman's patent attorney is
     a physics graduate of Loyola.) But in the preliminary talks,
     Keiffer says, Newman insisted that he be present during the
     entire procedure. Then he and Keiffer got into an argument.
     Newman packed up and left, never to return. The Loyola
     physicist also sought to advise WWL-TV's engineers on testing
     the device, but this proved to be a touchy proposition,
     because WWL is owned by Loyola and was originally founded by
     Loyola's physics department. No one wanted the advice to be
     interpreted as pressure.

     "I have a fairly good reputation here," Robinette says of his
     science reporting, "and this thing just has the potential to
     make me look like an absolute ignoranmus. So I've tried
     desperately to disprove this and all I've done so far is get
     more and more people who are convinced."

     What about the negative conclusion reached by the MSU
     engineers? Robinette maintains (like Newman and Everett) that
     while the engineers were testing the machine, they agreed that
     it was producing more energy than it used. But "when they went
     bacl, they wrote an ambigous response that didn't say it
     didn't work and didn't say it did." Robinette mentions that
     the MSU engineers are retired, as though to diminish  their
     reliability. He finds it "very surprising that they never
     called to challenge his report, which gave the Newman-Everett
     version of events.

     Some who might otherwis voice scepticism seem to sypathize
     with Newman because of the way the patent office rebuffed him.
     In court filings, the patent office concedes that Newman is
     correct that it rejected his claims without fully reading the
     documents he submitted; that his application was handled by an
     examiner - Donovan Duggan - who seems to specialize in
     rejecting perpetual machines; that Duggan said he would not
     allow a patent on Newman's device, no matter how much
     supportive evidence was submited; that the office officials
     never tested the Newman device for efficacy and refused to
     observe oscilloscope readings of itsinput and output; and
     finally; and, finally, that the office issued a patent 1979 to
     a man named Howard Johnson for a perpetual motion machine that
     Johnson since then agreed is inoperable.

     If there were an association od militant patent rejectees,
     Newman's battle with the patent office could be its rallying
     cause. But there is no such association. However, Newman has
     done reasonably well attracting attention by himself,
     especially in New Orleans. In a few months, he will get his
     day in court.

     -----------------------[ end ]-----------------------------

  ______________________________________________________________________
    Dirk Kuhlmann
    Technische Universitaet Berlin   |    voice:     +49 (0)30 314-21238
    Prozessrechnerverbundzentrale    |      fax:     +49 (0)30 314-21114
    Sekr. MA 073                     |    email: derek@prz.tu-berlin.de
    Strasse des 17. Juni 136         |        or derek@cs.tu-berlin.de
    10623 Berlin 12        GERMANY   |s=derek;ou=prz;pd=tu-berlin;ad=de
  ______________________________________________________________________
--
______________________________________________________________________
  Dirk Kuhlmann
  Technische Universitaet Berlin   |    voice:     +49 (0)30 314-21238
  Prozessrechnerverbundzentrale    |      fax:     +49 (0)30 314-21114

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