The Quest for Free Energy

From the dawn of the industrial revolution to today, enthusiastic inventors - from Nikola Tesla to Joseph Newman - have made the claim for free energy. So where is it?

Where I live, gasoline costs about $1.59 per gallon, electricity costs a little over 9 cents per kilowatt/hour, natural gas costs about 63 cents per therm, and home heating oil costs a bit over $1 per gallon. For an average family with two cars and teenagers who take hot showers at least twice a day, those fuel expenses really add up.

But it's an unnecessary waste of money, according to some garage-shop inventors, radically minded theorists, and others who thwart the conventional notions of physics and Newtonian laws. Free energy is all around us and readily available, they tell us. All we have to do is tap into it. And many of these tinkerers say they have tapped into it with various electronic contraptions that, they say, either produce more energy than they consume, or are able to pull free energy from the Earth itself. Nikola Tesla was a proponent of this idea of free energy from what he called the "aether," and there are dozens and dozens of like-minded people who have created hundreds of pages on the Web about these free energy sources. There are so many of them who claim to have working models, in fact, that it's a wonder all of the oil and utility companies are not out of business.

Here's a rundown of some of these energy "geniuses" and their inventions:

Nikola Tesla
In the late 1800s, Nikola Tesla, a Serbian-born scientist who conducted much of his research and experimentation in the U.S., invented alternating current (A.C.), the method by which we use electricity today. That's quite a legacy for a guy who's not very well known among the general population; it seems his accomplishments were largely eclipsed by those of this contemporary, Thomas Edison.

Tesla's radiant energy device was little more than an antenna stuck in the ground.

But later in his career, Tesla also dabbled in more esoteric fields of power generation. According to "Tesla's Fuelless Generator," on July 10, 1931, Tesla told The Brooklyn Eagle, that "I have harnessed the cosmic rays and caused them to operate a motive device. More than 25 years ago, I began my efforts to harness the cosmic rays and I can now state that I have succeeded." Then, in 1933, told the New York American, "This new power for the driving of the world's machinery will be derived from the energy which operates the universe, the cosmic energy, whose central source for the earth is the sun and which is everywhere present in unlimited quantities."

Tesla even obtained a patent for a "radiant energy device," we're told at "Nikola Tesla's Radiant Energy System." It was an electricity-producing device that consisted, more or less, of an antenna stuck in the ground. I could not discern from the site whether or not Tesla ever actually built the device or demonstrated that it worked, although doing so is one of the requirements for obtaining a patent -- at least it is today. And according to Tesla's Electric Car, he even powered an automobile with A.C. current, but no batteries. No one knows quite how the car worked.

Tom Bearden
Tom Bearden says it took him over 30 years to discover the "magic principal" of tapping the vacuum energy, as he explains in his paper, The Final Secret of Free Energy. It's difficult for the layperson to understand what Bearden is talking about in this paper or in an interview he gave in 1991, but the essence is that the classic electromagnetic model as it is generally accepted today is wrong. Free energy is available and attainable, according to Bearden. He seems to have a lot of theories, but again, there's no demonstrable proof. Come on, Tom -- where's the free-energy motor?

Joseph Newman
Inventor Joseph Newman of Castle Rock, Colo. says he's actually created that motor, and he's demonstrated it publicly -- even on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. According to The Energy Machine of Joseph Newman, "The Newman Energy Machine can and will run your home, business, and farm; provide the inexpensive energy to turn salt water into fresh water and a desert into an oasis; eliminate the need for pollution-causing conventional energy sources, reduce the cost of all produced goods, and turn the cost of your monthly electric bills from a deficit into a profit. This technology will totally decentralize our access to energy and literally change the world for the better."

Newman has even put his motor inside a sports car and says it runs on the current equivalent to that generated by a battery the size of your thumb nail. So if it works, why aren't we all driving them? Newman travels the country demonstrating his motor. In fact, his next demonstration is September 12 in Phoenix, Ariz. Keep checking with his Web site for demonstrations in your area.

John Keely
Keely was another inventor who, in the 1800s, experimented with power derived from the aether or ether. There seems to be a growing cult following of Keely that has a very visible presence on the Web at KeelyNet. According to his followers, Keely created such devices as: a machine to split the water molecule for the instantaneous release of tremendous pressures; an engine which was reportedly driven by the flow of aether into its components; an acoustic microscope capable of viewing into the molecular and atomic interstices of matter; a globe which could be made to rotate with no outside source of power as a demonstration of the aetheric flows into matter; a belt device which enabled the operator to induce levitation or gravity in a test mass.

More Free Energy
You didn't realize free energy was so easy to come by, did you? If you want more "proof," just ask these guys:

• The Adams Pulsed Electric Motor Generator. Robert Adams, a former Chairman of the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers, Inc., U.S.A. has built a motor that, he says, is "a device that converts the perpetual motion of sub-atomic particles, known in physics terminology as 'particle spin,' into conventional electric power. It is a widely accepted fact of physical law that sub-atomic particles are in a state of perpetual motion. Anybody who tells you that there is no such thing as perpetual motion is either ignorant or a liar." There's even a picture of Adams' motor on the site, drawings so you can construct your own, and an article on the "conspiracy" to keep the motor from the public.
• Free Energy Pages. Provided here are links to Web sites of companies working on free energy devices, and information on inventors like Newman and Searl who claim to have already built them. Interestingly, there is also a listing of prize offerings from various sources of as much as $100,000 to anyone who can actually produce a working free energy device. The question is, why haven't any of the above-named inventors cashed in?

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