SUPPRESSED INVENTIONS & OTHER DISCOVERIES
By Hal Fox
SUPPRESSED INVENTIONS & OTHER DISCOVERIES
A BOOK REVIEW
Johnathan Eisen, Suppressed Inventions & Other Discoveries, Avery Publishing Group, Garden City Park, NY, 546 pages, indexed, references, illus., c1999, ISBN 0-89529-809-0.
If you are an optimist, this is a book you won't want to read but you should. The prevailing thesis of this book is that many inventions, medical cures, many energy-related inventions, and other valuable discoveries have been suppressed. Some inventors have been threatened, shot, or killed. Here are the major section headings from the table of contents:
The Suppression of Alternative Medical Therapies
The Suppression of Unorthodox Science
The Suppression of UFO Technologies and Extraterrestrial Contact
The Suppression of Fuel Savers and Alternate Energy Resources
As an expert reporter on new-energy topics, this book review emphasizes the energy-related discoveries. The energy section begins with the story of Nikola Tesla, continues with the energy-producing invention of Lester J. Hendershot, T. Henry Moray, water as a fuel, Archie Blue, Francisco Pacheo, automotive developments (especially carburetors), Charles Pogue, and suppressed fuel savers.
While the author and his selected writings support the title of the book, they do so at the expense of occasional alternative explanations. For example, the failure of the automotive industry to adopt fuel-saving devices is adopted as suppression when it may be just management inertia, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The trashing of laboratories (many citations) may not always be from active suppression. Some embarrassed inventors, unwilling to admit to their investors, that they couldn't solve the problem they were so sure they could solve, trash their own laboratories and move on. Some deaths of inventors, such as T. Henry Moray and Nikola Tesla, may just have been from old age without outside help. Nevertheless, the author makes a strong point that there was, is now, and probably will be the suppression of inventions in the future.
There is no question but that inventions and discoveries have been suppressed. This author has been reporting for almost ten years on the partial-success in suppressing cold fusion. This suppression is briefly mentioned. The reader should feel indebted to the author and those who helped provide information for this book. Anyone who is working the in the fields of new medical or new-energy discoveries should treat this book as a text book on what not to do. All other readers should join in the sharing of information about new, proven technologies and new medical discoveries (even if they come from herbs and not from the pharmaceutical companies). The goal should be to spread information in order to minimize suppression.
New inventions cannot be suppressed if the information is shared worldwide on the internet. It is suggested that in the next edition of this book, the author adds a chapter on the value of dissemination of information. Much of the suppression of new inventions appears to be from the unwillingness of many inventors to share their information. Many inventions have been bought up and shelved due to greed and the fear of lose of existing markets. Many inventors died with their secrets because they were unwilling to share their secrets (usually for another type of greed: the fear of losing vast wealth). Some inventors just lacked the courage or the means to battle the status quo.
Recently, the medical establishment, through the Food and Drug Administration tried to force herbal remedies to be handled through the FDA and cause producers to spend millions of dollars to prove that a specific herb was beneficial. The hue and cry from producers, herbalists, and users plus the support of members of Congress (such as Senator Hatch) plus previous legislation in favor of natural substances, caused the FDA to back off. There is a real lesson there and a real lesson given to us by Johnathan Eisen. Individuals can be suppressed. It is much more difficult to suppress large groups, especially in free countries. It is much easier to suppress a secret. It is much more difficult to suppress shared knowledge. Buy the book. Sit down and read it. Then find a real invention or discovery that unbiased professionals will agree has commercial potential. The next step is to stand up and make your opinion mean something. Spread the word. Help get financial support for the invention. Help get political support. But make sure that you are not supporting some impractical idea. Example: anyone with a little working knowledge of internal combustion engines can improve a carburetor to get the extra miles per gallon. All you have to do is to make a leaner mixture. But most of the carburetor inventions would not allow you to drive from the hot desert to the cold ski slopes without considerable carburetor adjustments. Many of the better-mileage inventions are not commercially practical and were not suppressed, they died for lack of proper engineering support. There used to be an annual most miles to a gallon contest. Lean mixture, very careful acceleration, constant speed, hard tires, etc. and nearly all the entries could get 80 to 100 miles per gallon. Obviously, that is not a commercial method of improving gas mileage.
Here is another example of a highly-touted invention that today is commercially impractical: Tesla's world-wide broadcast of power. One could tap this energy from any place in the world, provided that you only used a small amount of power. Tesla calculated and stated that there could be enough power generated to complete with Niagara Falls. Today, Tesla's entire power output from tuning up the earth to ionosphere capacitor wouldn't power Salt Lake City. Tesla's idea was marvelous but impractical. Tesla's solution to use alternating current rather than direct current was an enormously more valuable idea. The widespread use of Tesla coils would disrupt enormous amounts of communication. Tesla coils and other arcing-type devices should only be used in a screen room which keeps most of the electromagnetic interference isolated.
Jonathan Eisen has done the world a great favor by writing this compendium of suppressed inventions. It is the kind of book that may cause some people to think. Thinking may not be popular, but it is important. Thinking people can be moved to talk action. In the case of suppression of inventions, the best place to start is with the biggest suppressor: The United States government. Anyone who develops a technology using government funds should understand that the government has the right to classify such work -- it is often desired for national security, such as with new weapons development. However, the government should not have the right to classify the work of inventors who do not use government funds. This is the most important place to begin to stop the unnecessary suppression of inventions! If you want to do something for your country, get the facts about the law that allows the government to suppress inventions -- then get on the internet and drum up support to change the law. You will become a hero.
www.padrak.com/ine/NEN_6_9_1.html
June 2, 1999.