Text: Floyd Sweet - Solid-State Magnet Pioneer "There is suppression launched against any free-energy inventor who succeeds or is very close to succeeding." -Ret. Lt. Col. Thomas Bearden "Let us all use the knowledge wisely." -Floyd Sweet and Thomas Bearden The late Floyd "Sparky" Sweet created a breakthrough magnetic solid-state energy generator. For complex reasons, he did not develop his device into a commercially viable product. However, as a magnetics specialist with a distinguished industrial career, Sweet was not a man whose technical claims could be easily dismissed by critics. Sweet's story is important for three reasons. First, creditable witnesses saw his invention convert the invisible energy of space into useable amounts of electric power‹without fuel, batteries, or connection to an outlet. Second, he was subjected to the same kinds of harassment that the inventors we met in Part I had to face, including threats on his life. Third, and most important, Sweet's research has inspired the work of other space-energy inventors, some of whom may well produce a useful stationary-magnet device. FLOYD SWEET AND MAGNETS Floyd Sweet (1912-1995) grew up in Connecticut, in an era when radios were home-built crystal sets. At the age of nine, his intense interest in how things work was directed into building and disassembling radios and other electrical apparatus, such as a small Tesla coil (see Chapter 2) energized by a Model T spark plug. When Sweet was eighteen, a family friend helped him find work at the nearby General Electric plant while he went to college. He got the nickname "Sparky" after he disconnected some wires one day, which resulted in an instrument exploding in a spectacular spray of sparks. Despite this incident, his employers were pleased with his work especially his intuitive gift for coming up with answers to electrical problems. Sweet stayed with GE after completing his education. He worked in the company's Schenectady, New York, research and development center from 1957 to 1962‹a dream job in which he could use a well equipped laboratory to follow his hunches on intriguing magnetics projects. That line of research fascinated him. In 1969, he obtained a master's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. By the mid-1970s, Sweet and his wife, Rose, had moved to the Los Angeles area to enjoy semiretirement. Besides serving as one of GE's preferred consultants, Sweet designed electric equipment for other customers. Floyd Sweet was more than a professional scientist who worked with magnets. He had a passion for magnetism, and for the concept that the entire universe is permeated with a magnetic field. Once he fully retired in the early 1980s, he would have happily spent many hours each day building a device that could tap into the energy of that magnetic field. But Rose fell ill, and was an invalid for the last seven years of her life. This demanded Floyd's attention and forced him to dip into their savings. He also had to cope with his own ill health, including a period of near blindness. Despite these problems, he worked on his device when not preparing meals and tending to his wife's needs. SWEET'S VACUUM TRIODE AMPLIFIER: DEFYING CONVENTION For decades, new-energy researchers talked about the possibility of treating a magnet so that its magnetic field would continuously shake or vibrate. On rare occasions, Sweet saw this effect, called self-oscillation, occur in electric transformers. He felt it could be coaxed into doing something useful, such as producing energy. Sweet thought that if he could find the precise way to shake or disturb a magnet's force field, the field would continue to shake by itself. It would be similar to striking a bell and having the bell keep on ringing. As usual, Sweet-who said his ideas came to him in dreams‹ turned for inspiration to his expertise in magnets. He knew magnets could be used to produce electricity, as we learned in Chapter 4, and wanted to see if he could get power out of a magnet by something other than the standard induction process. That process involves either moving a magnet past a wire coil of conductive wire, such as copper‹or moving a coil through the field of a magnet. This changing magnetic field causes an electric current to flow in the copper wire. What Sweet wanted to do was to keep the magnet still and just shake its magnetic field. This shaking, in turn, would create an electric current. One new-energy researcher compares self-oscillation to a leaf on a tree waving in a gentle breeze. While the breeze itself isn't moving back and forth, it sets the leaf into that kind of motion. Sweet thought that if space energy, discussed in Chapter 4, could be captured to serve as the breeze, then the magnetic field would serve as the leaf. Sweet would just have to supply a small amount of energy to set the magnetic field in motion, and space energy would keep it moving. By 1985, he had come up with a set of specially conditioned magnets, wound with wires. To test his device, Sweet discharged a current into the wire coil around the magnet. As a result, the coil disturbed the magnet's field. It was as if Sweet had snapped the magnet's field out of position to set it in motion. Sweet then connected a twelve-volt lightbulb‹the size used in flashlights‹to the coil. If the device was producing electricity, the bulb would light. The results were more than Sweet expected. A surge of power came out of the coil and there was a bright flash from the bulb which had received so much power that it melted. Years later, Sweet remembered that Rose had seen the flash and called out, "What did you blow up now?" The inventor was baffled by the dazzling flash of light‹why so much energy? He returned to his workbench to make further models. Needing a theory to explain his startling discovery, he remembered hearing about Thomas Bearden, retired Army officer and nuclear physicist, and John Bedini, an electronics expert, on a local radio show. Sweet called Bedini, who arranged for Bearden to visit Sweet. Bearden saw the curious device pull nearly six watts of electric power out of the air with only a tiny fraction of a watt going into the machine. Bearden ran tests to his heart's content, and was delighted to see a little unit embodying the unorthodox concepts that he had written about over the years, the concepts behind space energy. He called Sweet's assembly of magnets and wire coils the Vacuum Triode Amplifier (VTA). Bearden decided that the device was serving as a gate through which energy from space was being herded into a electric circuit. The most amazing aspect of Sweet's device was that it put out so much more power than it took in. How much more? In a 1988 model, Sweet found that 330 microwatts‹330 one-millionths of a watt‹of input power made it possible for the VTA's wire coils to put out more than 500 watts of usable energy, or about one and a half million times the input power. The VTA's Special Effects and Difficult Development The VTA turned out to have some very odd effects, but Bearden's research background prepared him for that. So in 1987, Bearden asked Sweet to perform an antigravity experiment. Bearden calculated that the six-pound machine would levitate when about 1,500 watts of power were drawn out of it, but that the magnets might explode at about the same power level. He warned Sweet to limit the output to no more than 1,000 watts. A VTA would be placed on a scale so that its weight could be carefully monitored while it was hooked up to a box of lightbulb sockets. Screwing bulbs int o the sockets would draw off the power. About a week later, Sweet excitedly read off results over the phone to Bearden‹who was home in Alabama‹as Sweet screwed in ten 100-watt bulbs, one at a time. The device gradually lost weight until it was down to 90 percent of its original weight. For safety reasons, Sweet and Bearden stopped the experiment before the device could begin to hover or fly. Why did the VTA lose weight? According to Bearden's theory, gravity becomes a pushing force rather than a pulling force under certain conditions. Bearden also says that space energy has a pressure, referred to as energy density. If the pressure above an object is decreased while the pressure under the object is increased, the object will be drawn upwards. The VTA may have changed the energy density by drawing on space energy. The technology could sometimes do spooky things. Walter Rosenthal of California, a test engineer who has helped many struggling inventors test their devices, recalls an incident that Sweet had told him about. The incident occurred while Sweet was trying to document his antigravity experiment: "The machine's weight was observed [to be] decreasing with an increased load [of lightbulbs], in a quiet orderly fashion, until a point was suddenly reached when Floyd heard an immense sound, as if he were at the center of a giant whirlwind but without actual air movement. The sound was heard by Rose in another room of their apartment and by others outside the apartment." This experience has been confirmed by a Canadian space-energy researcher, who heard a similar whirlwind sound during one of his experiments. Another unusual effect of Sweet's VTA was the fact that it produced cold, instead of the heat usually generated by electric equipment. The inside of the VTA was as much as twenty degrees cooler than the surrounding air. The greater the load put on the device, the cooler it became. When VTA wires were accidentally shorted out, they flashed with a brilliant burst of light, and were found to be covered with frost. One time, a brief contact with the equipment froze some of Sweet's flesh, causing him pain for about two weeks afterward. Sweet discovered other interesting effects. But development of the VTA was slowed by trouble with materials and processes, and by financial entanglements. Sweet had to find magnets that could hold the self-oscillation effect. That required magnets with force fields that didn't vary much across the face of the magnet. Also, standard mathematical calculations didn't work with the VTA. In 1991, Sweet produced a math theory for the VTA‹an engineering design model that showed how factors such as the number of turns of wire in the coils affected the device's behavior. Producing this theory was an important step. Without it, other researchers would not reproduce Sweet's work. Sometimes it was difficult for Sweet to reproduce his own work. As with first models of any new technology, the VTAs he built were very unreliable. For example, at times their output went down at night and picked up again during the day. Sometimes, they just plain stopped working for no apparent reason. But when the VTA worked, the power it put out for its size was unprecedented. Sweet Challenges the Laws of Physics Bearden contributed to the theory that explained Sweet's invention. Much of the theory that Bearden used to explain how the VTA worked came from advances in the field of phase conjugate optics, a specialized study of light used by laser scientists and weapons researchers. Using information from this field, Bearden said that the VTA was able to amplify the space energy it took in. The science establishment requires that an invention be explained by accepted laws of physics, and so much output from so little input seems to violate those laws, which do not allow for such a thing. However, Sweet and Bearden recognized that these laws apply to ordinary, or closed, systems‹systems in which you cannot get more energy out than what you put in. Because the VTA allowed energy to flow in from the vacuum of space, it was not operating in a closed system, but in an open one. (See Chapter 1 for a discussion of closed versus open systems.) A VTA operating in the flow of space energy is like a windmill operating in the wind. Both receive excess energy from an outside source. But since neither operates m a closed system, neither violates the laws of physics. In 1991, a paper by Sweet and Bearden was read at a formal gathering of conventional engineers and physicists in Boston. Neither Bearden nor Sweet were able to attend‹Bearden was called away on business, and Sweet was recuperating from heart surgery. Walter Rosenthal went instead. The paper said that the VTA had the signs of being a true negentropy device, or a device that was able to turn random space energy into usable electricity (see Chapter 4). How did this work? It helps to think of a handful of marbles on a tabletop. You can either roll them all in one direction, or you can scatter them in all directions. If you scatter the marbles into a reflector, the reflector will roll them back to you in an orderly fashion. Although the language they used was quite technical, what Sweet and Bearden basically said is that the VTA was able to take energy "marbles" and keep rolling them back and forth, building energy as they went along. After Bearden's paper was read, Walter Rosenthal stood up and startled the audience of skeptical engineers: "I have personally seen Floyd Sweet's machine operating. It was running . . . those small motors you saw in the video. It was jump-started with a nine volt battery. There was no other electrical input required.... There was no connection to the power line whatsoever." And, no, there were no moving parts. Although most of the audience listened politely, it was too much for one engineering professor. He stalked out of the room, saying, "To present such a remark at an engineering conference is the height of irresponsibility! It violates virtually every conceivable concept known to engineers." SWEET IS THREATENED Could activity at the Sweet home been secretly watched by strangers? Sweet told the story of a time in the late 1980s when a man accosted him as Sweet was leaving a supermarket. Sweet remembered the man's expensive-looking shoes, and the fact that he was immaculately dressed. But in the stress of the moment, Sweet couldn't focus on much else. What made the inventor nervous was the photograph that the man held, a photograph showing Sweet at work on his tabletop-model VTA‹in the supposed privacy of Sweet's own home. In what Sweet said was a remarkably clear photo, he was sitting in the dining room on the second story of the apartment building where he lived with Rose. "He walked me all the way to my building, telling me what would happen to me if I didn't stop my research," Sweet recalled. "How they took that picture through my window, I'll never know." As Sweet remembered it, the man claimed to be connected with a conglomerate that did not want the VTA to come onto the market at that time. He told Sweet, "It is not beyond possibilities to take you out of the way." Sweet said that afterward he called the FBI in Los Angeles. He believed that two agents staked out his house for a couple of weeks, but that nothing came of it. Around the time of the photo incident, Sweet was getting telephone calls and death threats from strangers. He said there were "people calling at all hours. The police put a tap on my line and over a six-month period, over 480 calls came in from all parts of the United States. But they were from pay stations." Thus, the police could never find the callers. Early in the VTA's development, someone broke into Sweet's apartment and stole his notes. He then began to code his notes. Sweet temporarily stopped work on his invention, out of concern for his ill wife. "They must have known I stopped; they didn't torment me any more." FOLLOWING IN SWEET'S FOOTSTEPS On July 5, 1995, Floyd Sweet suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of eighty-three. A couple of weeks before his death, Sweet said that the automotive industry was testing his power unit for use in cars, and that they had a unit running for 5,000 hours. He said he was dealing with people at General Motors, but no one has been able to confirm Sweet's claims. The VTA itself is bogged down in legal problems. But Tom Bearden, who put much of his own time and money into the project, hopes that the VTA can be resurrected so that the world will realize what a pioneer Floyd Sweet was. And despite the confusion surrounding Sweet's affairs at the time of his death, other researchers are continuing this line of research. Confusion and Secrecy The automotive industry may not have been the only potential investor that Sweet was dealing with. At the time of his death, there was some confusion concerning the rights to Sweet's hardware and papers, held by Sweet's second wife, Violet. Bearden says that Sweet signed a number of agreements with a number of backers, and that some of these people have claimed rights to the invention. At least two of these investors say they want Sweet's laboratory equipment, inventions, and technical papers to go into a proposed Floyd Sweet Museum so that other researchers could study the technology. Walter Rosenthal is trying to help all parties work towards an agreement. Despite Bearden's urging, Sweet never had the VTA certified by independent testing. "He feared that his life would be snuffed out immediately if he even attempted such a thing," Bearden says. Sweet also frustrated his fellow researchers by keeping secret his most important process‹how he conditioned the magnets that are at the heart of the VTA. Did he pump the magnets with powerful electromagnetic pulses to shake up their internal structure? He refused to give details, and said it wasn't likely that other researchers would learn his secrets: "The odds against them finding out is like trying to open a safe with 100 dials set from zero to a hundred, without knowing the combination." Sweet not only feared for his life, but once said he feared that if he described how he made his device work, unscrupulous people would build models without giving him his due. He was also concerned about what would happen if the VTA was widely sold everywhere at once, replacing many other electric devices. "If it all came out at once, the stock market would collapse.'' he said. "The government doesn't want it." To be fair to Sweet, I would point out that he is not the only inventor who has been uncomfortable in disclosing key aspects of his work. Other Researchers and the VTA Other inventors are trying to carry on Sweet's work. The VTA is well-known on computer bulletin boards that list "free energy" as a topic of discussion. Experimenters scramble for details of how the device was built. One researcher who has claimed some success is Don Watson, a self-educated inventor from Texas. Watson says he has built a working device similar to Sweet's VTA, which he works on at night after working during the day as a telephone systems installer. In Somerset, England, electronics expert Michael Watson (no relation to Don) built a replica of Sweet's VTA, but claimed no success in the experiment. Despite that, he says, "In my opinion the inventor of the VTA, Floyd Sweet, has made a scientific discovery of [the] greatest importance." Watson thinks that attempts to reproduce Sweet's results may run into problems because the type of magnets Sweet used are no longer available. But he says, "The important point about the VTA is that a form of magnetic instability exists that can act as a significant energy source." When this fledgling space-energy science reaches maturity, what could the VTA do for the lives of the rest of us? Bearden speculates that the new physics will change our lives in undreamed-of ways: "By mastering, controlling, and gating the vast, incredible energy of the seething vacuum [of space], we can power our automobiles, flying machines, and technology inexhaustibly. Further, it can be done absolutely cleanly; there are no noxious chemical pollutants. With practical antigravity, ships can be developed to cross the solar system as readily as one crosses the ocean today.... The inexhaustible vacuum fills every system, everywhere, to overflowing." Despite the difficulties that Sweet ran into in his attempts to perfect his invention, he helped science take a leap into the future. It perhaps could have leaped further if he had cooperated more freely with other researchers in the last decade of his life, and if he had been tidier in his business dealings. But Sparky Sweet deserves praise for charting a new course. In the next chapter, we will meet other energy innovators who have discovered the power of magnets in motion.

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