Hi Ken,
Gambler are you? Since you take the safe ground you must be offering good
odds, yes? :)
"Bottom line?": I believe that Gary was not a fraud. He seemed to work hard
at providing a logical progression of thought from the first principle of
operation leading to the application of that principle in devices. He was
unusually forthcoming with technical details (in the Harpers article),
explaining his concept and devices quite thoroughly, albeit in 'quaint' terms.
Fraud usually involves a convoluted thought process (what some people call
'eccentric') with 'out of the air' base assumption statements that can not
be substanciated, and use of the familiar 'undisclosed secret' tactic.
He may have been wrong of course - that is a different matter entirely and
can only be ascertained by understanding HOW and WHERE he was in error. By
his own admission Gary can not be 'wrong' as such - he claims working
devices. He is either truthful or he is (was) fraudulent.
On the matter of not being able to extract usable work from a static field
- I'm personally undecided. Established wisedom (and yourself apparently)
says this is not possible and that the 'field' (magnetic, gravity, etc.)
must be moving or dynamic in some way. Whether a field is moving or not
(time dependant) depends on your point of view though does'nt it? It may
well be that under certain conditions it could be possible to extract
useful work from a system of apparently static fields. Then again maybe
not? Could it be that Gary's system created a condition whereby the
relatively powerful forces of the magnet could be made dynamic in an
economical way?
It is very interesting to note that Gary never speaks of his magnet systems
in terms of electromagnetics (in the Harpers article) - always in FORCE
terms. He thought in force terms. If you hold a magnet in your hand and
bring a piece of steel close to it with your other hand you will ONLY
experience the resultant interaction in FORCE terms. I believe this point
of view is valuable in attempting to reproduce Gary's work.
My attempt at reproducing the number 3 device in the Harpers article
resulted in failure. My experience from this attempt is that the balancing
act between the two magnets and the 'keeper' is very delicate, as Gary
openly stated. The system I tried used relatively small, powerful magnets
which I feel doomed the exercise from the begining. Gary used polarised
compound iron or steel magnets, probably large, probably weak by todays
standards. Large weakly polarised magnets would be far easier to deal with
in Gary's system. This fact in itself strongly indicates that Gary was not
dealing with keeper flux saturation as the switching element.
My experience indicates that the net imbalance in Gary's system was very
small. So small that it is easily overwelmed by the relatively powerful
forces around the magnets, therefore very difficult to find.
I have yet to retry the number 3 device - this is what I would do: Use
large magnets weakly magnetised. Magnets positioned as per article
description (repelling). Keeper size and position arranged so that when it
is on the 'neutral line' the beam magnet is neither attracted to nor
repelled from the stationary magnet through the full sweep of the beam
magnet. Position and dimensions of the keeper as stated is extremely
difficult to achieve and is, I believe, the trick to tuning the system -
forget all the fiddly pivots and pushrods, etc., that can come later. From
this position the beam magnet would be attracted up to the stationary
magnet when the keeper is ABOVE the neutral line IE: the keeper pole
polarity is opposite the stationary magnet hense attracting the beam
magnet. As the beam magnet approaches the keeper, the mutual attraction
pulles the keeper BELOW the neutral line hense repelling the beam magnet
away from the keeper/stationary magnet.
One thing that fascinated me when I was performing experiments with my
Number 3 setup was that no matter how I arranged the magnets and the
keeper, the movement of the beam magnet was always opposite that of the
description in the article. IE: when I moved the keeper above the 'neutral
line' of the stationary magnet, the beam magnet would be REPELLED down away
from the stationary magnet. In the article it is stated that when the
keeper is moved above the neutral line the beam magnet is ATTRACTED up to
the stationary magnet. This bugged the hell out of me because no matter how
I arranged the components my system would work opposite to the article
description. I later realised that this would be the case when small
powerful magnets were used. The keeper must be dominant in the force system.
If the device can be made to work it would produce very little power. Weak
magnets inducing a weak polarity in the keeper creating a weak force
imbalance. I could live with that.
Regards, Bill.