jaw@ames.UUCP (02/26/87)
# "The mind of man is less perturbed by a mystery he cannot explain
# than by an explanation he cannot understand." -- Lenox Lohr,
# general manager, Century of Progress Exhibition, Chicago, 1933
David Mamet's play, "The Water Engine" (Grove Press, 1978),
is about such a character as inventor Joseph Newman. Produced memorably
as a National Public Radio Earplay, Mamet's tale of paranoia and sharks
in the patent business predates the Newman brouhaha by some years.
So it is with a sense of deja vu that we have read the coverage of
Newman's machine in Science and New Scientist over the past year. But the
controversy rolls on after the National Bureau of Standards tests, with
revelations reported in Electronic Design (Jan. 22, 1987 -- p. 16) about
oversights borne out in the December trial.
Herein editorial writer Carole Patton speaks of Unisys (nee Sperry)
chief physicist Roger Hastings' continued defense, consisting of a speech
he presented in August to the IEEE Tesla Society, where he delivered the
first scientific paper explaining Newman's unorthodox electromagnetic theory
(purportedly with some mathematical proof). With quips such as "Hastings
may become Joe Newman's Maxwell", the editorial presents new information about
a Hastings motor redesign, and whets appetite for more, hinting at a trial
transcript which would surely inspire a Hollywood screenwriter.
Now many of us know that Sperry was called Sperry Gyroscope during
WW2, so Hastings' interest in the "gyroscopic particle" theory is believable.
And Sperry has been involved with respectable research since (e.g. Unix buffs
should realize that the Welch in Lempel/Ziv/Welch was able to popularize
the LZ algorithm embodied in 'compress' only after a Sperry research center
was disbanded -- a neat way to bring heretofore proprietary work into the
public domain).
But there are so many loose ends. For example, what should be
made of the (unintentional?) NBS grounding and low-pass filtering of the 8
and 10 kHz power components in the Newman motor output? Or the Patent Office
admissions about some mysterious "extended battery life" tests? What do
other engineer/physicists think of Hastings' ideas? Why do reports
understandably dismiss notions of perpetual motion, but not that of simple
energy/matter conversion? (Remember the Migma man of fusion, redeemed from
the nether world of science crackpots at last report, or the nutty coverage
of anti-relativist Stefan Marinov in Nature and New Scientist?)
More to come, to be sure. But if you were there at the Tesla society
meeting, or have a copy of the Hastings paper, please post in this space
the stuff of a new episode in the perpetuum mobile saga.
-- James A. Woods (ames!jaw)