EPRI e-NewsOutPost on the Endless Frontier ™
EPRI e-News on Recent Key Developments in Energy Science and Technology
By Paul M. Grant
No. 12, 24 October 1999
Retro Chautauqua
The summer of 1877 and the shores of Lake Chautauqua in western New York state
witnessed the beginning of an uniquely American experience. An Akron, Ohio
industrialist combined with a Methodist minister from Illinois to initiate a training camp
for Sunday school teachers whose program blended religious beliefs with popular culture,
politics and entertainment. Its methods soon became immensely popular outside the
confines of purely religious instruction, and evolved into what became known as the
Chautauqua Movement,1 and its success quickly spawned hundreds of similar
organizations throughout the United States. These “Chautauquas,” as they were
subsequently called, brought together elements of both evangelistic revivalism --
religious and patriotic in tone -- with the populist entertainment of a county fair. A
typical “travelling assembly” appeared in 1899 which featured William Jennings Bryan,
three years after his famous “Cross of Gold” speech, as its principal inspirational speaker.
As time went on, however, some Chautauqua imitations degenerated into a combination
of vaudeville and patent medicine shows.
Now, one hundred years later, the summer of 1999 has seen the resurrection of the worst
of such fringe Chautauquas, a “retro 2 ” version, if you will, in the form of Dennis Lee’s
traveling road show, “The Declaration of American Energy Independence,” a revelation
of divine origin publicly announced through a full page advertisement in the September
17 th issue of USA Today 3 . Unlike Bryan’s Gethsemane, his contains a cross made not of
mere gold, but of energy, moreover one erected by the electric utilities, upon which the
potential crucifixion of the American people is averted through salvation by Free
Electricity as preached by Mr. Lee, CEO of Better World Technology and the
International Tesla Electric Company.4
On the evening of October 22 nd , the Free Electricity tour arrived in the San Francisco Bay
Area at the Veteran’s Auditorium of the Marin Civic Center in San Rafael. Rather
reluctantly, your correspondent decided to trash his usual Friday evening with family and
drive the 80 miles north from his home in San Jose to take in the performance, which was
to begin at 7 PM.5 I arrived to find 600-700 people filling about a third of the huge
auditorium, rather more than I had anticipated.6 The stage was arrayed from end to end
with a variety of mechanical and electrical equipment – small electrical motors, pumps,
volt-amp meters (digital and analog), an oscilloscope, a small Briggs & Stratton engine,
even a bicycle – the sort of stuff you’d find in the average tinkerer’s garage or
basement…like mine!
Stage right and left contained a neon display in red, white and blue announcing the
energy independence of America to come as well as video monitors to display close-ups
of the “experiments” to be performed. At center stage was placed the largest apparatus of
all, an approximately one meter diameter by half-meter wide cylinder mounted on a
geared horizontal axle which might be best described as vaguely reminiscent of the rotor
of a “squirrel-cage” motor,7 later to be revealed as the prototype “free electricity
machine.”
A few minutes past seven, after a warning to the audience not to audio/video record the
proceedings (ignored by at least two individuals in the front row), Dennis Lee walked on
stage to mild applause.8 He has a pleasant appearance, about six feet (1.8 m) tall,
noticeably in excess of 200 pounds (90 kg), with reddish-brown hair and short, trimmed
beard, wearing a conservative brown business suit. His opening remarks dwelt on his
intention not to belittle, demean or offend anyone’s beliefs, especially those of any
scientists who might be in the audience (unfortunately, this promise was soon to be
broken), and upon their conclusion, the “demonstrations” of “free” or “almost-free”
energy began in earnest.
Your correspondent could quickly exhaust the reader’s patience and concentration by
detailing the inconsistencies, errors and “tricks” committed and employed by Mr. Lee in
the delivery of his free energy gospel, which lasted four hours with no break. Instead, we
refer you to several very thorough reviews,9 a few written within the last few days, which
explore the physics and economics of Lee’s assertions more than you or I have time or
energy to undertake for this issue of OutPost. Be forewarned, however, that
“professional” skeptics tend to be as guilty of achieving the same scale of excessive
ranting as pitchmen like Mr. Lee. The difference, of course, is that the conclusions and
opinions of the former are overwhelmingly correct!
Having said all this, I just can’t resist a few personal observations and remarks on the
events of last Friday evening.** Sorry about that.
Yull Brown’s Water Gas
This is certainly an oldie, but goodie.10 The late Prof. Brown’s “water” gas results from
the electrolysis of water, so I guess you could call it water gas, sort of, but steam it ain’t.
It’s a potentially dangerous mixture of H2 and O2. Or, as Mr. Lee states, “It’s taking H2O
into H-O-H” (hmm…there’s an O missing somewhere…oh well). At least he didn’t say
rocket fuel. Brown’s gas can be readily used in a welding torch, and you can indeed
“burn” it in an infernal (Mr. Lee’s term) combustion engine. In fact, Dennis Lee
demonstrated the truth of both these facts before our very eyes. He had a little trouble
with his two-cycle, one cylinder B&S engine, though. It sputtered on every occasion it
was started, three or for times in a row. The last time I detected four or five explosions
(sorry, implosions…again Lee’s term) before it began to die, whereupon Lee declared to
his assistants, “That’s enough, boys,” saying that the difficulty was due to the engine
having previously run on gasoline. Oh, I almost forgot. At many cities along the tour, he
was prevented from performing the Brown’s gas demo by the local fire department, but
hey, after all we were here in Marin County tonight! A little California inside joke, there.
Motor With a Brain
After cavorting about briefly in the manner of Oz’ Scarecrow, Lee exclaimed that the
reason electric motors were so inefficient was, that like Ray Bolger’s character, they
“needed a brain.” You power engineers listen up, now. Upon attaching a black box to an
induction motor-generator powering an incandescent lamp, it was noted the overall
current drawn was less. Gee, isn’t this called resonant reactive compensation of power
factor lag? I sure hope all EPRI members provide this service for their large industrial
customers or you might lose some business to the International Tesla Electric Company,
given deregulation.
Who Needs the Grid?
Speaking of Tesla, the Serbian-American pioneer of the polyphase ac system has been
adopted as Mr. Lee’s hero and model inventor whose best ideas were either stolen or
suppressed. Nikola Tesla was indeed a genius, but one who unfortunately did not age
well.11 One of the most fascinating of human beings, Tesla in his later years became
convinced that he could build a wireless power transmission system (and death ray to
boot) based upon high frequency combined with high power which reminds one
superficially of modern experiments with microwave beaming. Tesla was always vague
in describing his concepts, but most seem to have been based on variations of the “Tesla
coil” linked to what he felt were huge charge reservoirs contained in the ionosphere and
earth. He had always been attracted to high frequency effects, having as a younger man
performed spectacular stage stunts such as subjecting his body to tens of thousands of
volts at hundreds of thousands of hertz as part of his ongoing conflict with Edison over
the safety of alternating current (at the very high frequencies Tesla employed, the current
produced flowed harmlessly over the surface of his skin, nonetheless yielding startling
Frankenstein-like arcing and hair-erection effects).
Dennis Lee performed a trick far less stupendous, but still impressive to the uninitiated,
by passing miniscule high frequency currents through the air and/or floor between an
assistant connected to a Tesla coil or similar device, and a circular fluorescent tube held
by himself some three meters away, which became weakly illuminated when touched. In
fact, I do believe there was a single wire running between the two gentlemen that would
have additionally augmented the effect. Using neon glow bulbs, a spark coil and an rf
oscillator, my father and I pulled off this stunt for the neighbors – no wires, either – when
I was about ten or eleven years old.
The “Why” in Y2K
Just like you and I, Dennis Lee has his own theories and approaches to Y2K. With
respect to the latter, he pointed out a table lamp with a suspiciously large base that he had
lit at the start of the show. Hinting darkly at some underlying conspiracy, which was
soon to be revealed, Mr. Lee predicted most assuredly the lights would indeed go off a
few seconds after midnight, December 31 st , next. But, not to worry, his “Y2K lamp”
would remain on to illuminate your way to bed or barn for the evening milking, as an
assistant promptly demonstrated by yanking the cord from an adjoining socket. One can
seldom be sure without direct and unfettered examination, to my knowledge never
permitted with any of Mr. Lee’s onstage apparatus, but I think it’s a safe bet to assume
somewhere in the voluminous base laid a modern storage battery and ballast cell to power
the kind of efficient “tungsten-hued” fluorescent lamp utilities generally make available
at cost to customers under their demand-side management offerings.
What was perhaps more intriguing was Mr. Lee’s theory behind Y2K…the “why” in
Y2K, if you will. It seems there should be no significant interruption of power under any
circumstances because all utilities have “equivalent standby generation capacity.” Those
of you operating nuclear facilities will be interested to know that. It is therefore obvious,
to Mr. Lee anyway, that the utilities are conniving with the government to precipitate a
crisis on 1 January and beyond that will require federalizing the various state National
Guard units to keep order and prevent looting. Oh, incidentally, they’ll also confiscate
your guns to be on the safe side. No, I’m not kidding.12
Gilbert 1, Newton 0
A large portion of Dennis Lee’s free energy repertoire depends on tapping into the
“stored energy” of a permanent magnet, of course, without reducing the magnitude of the
magnetization, and the superior nature of the magnetic field over gravity.13 To
demonstrate his point, he dropped a magnet (a small one, probably of the “refrigerator
stick-up” variety) between outstretched hands a meter apart and then through a hollow
aluminum tube of roughly equivalent length. In both cases, the magnet fell as Galileo
would have had it. Then one of his assistants brought out a “special” magnet,
considerably bigger but still less than the 4 cm inside diameter of the aluminum (and
copper) tubes employed, touted as being able to “partially” defeat gravity. Outside the
tube, the magnet fell once more just as the Founder of Physics would predict, but inside it
fell ever so slowly…Lee counting “one thousand, two thousand,…” until at “six” the
magnet finally emerged at the bottom of the tube. The experiment was repeated several
times to thunderous applause, once with a video camera observing its descent to prove
“no strings were attached.”
OK. In almost every high school physics class today, this experiment is used to
demonstrate simultaneously Lenz’ Law and eddy current production. The dipole field of
the falling magnet, usually made from a high permeability alloy like SmCo or NdFeB
such as used in your Walkman headset, induces an electric current in the wall of the
metal pipe which in turn produces a magnetic field opposite to that of the magnet itself
thus slowing its fall. This effect is often called “eddy current damping” and has been
used to seismically stabilize sensitive instrumentation.
But it wasn’t over yet. There was a new surprise. Room temperature superconductivity,
right up my alley, never before demonstrated on the tour. Lee railed against the
physicists who claimed the “Meissner Effect (sic)” was necessary for magnetism to
ultimately defeat gravity, and ridiculed those “silly demonstrations” of the 1980s where
physicists poured liquid nitrogen over black pellets to make little magnets levitate. At
this point, I admit I slunk slightly lower in my seat looking nervously around me hoping I
wouldn’t be recognized from several TV appearances of the past where I had engaged in
just such foolishness. According to Dennis Lee, all this was totally unnecessary, one
could produce “room temperature superconductivity” simply by the proper juxtaposition
of two permanent magnets. Now he did admit they hadn’t things quite right yet, but they
were close…close enough, that he was willing to show a video of their progress and that
by the time they reached Dallas or Atlanta, they’d have gotten it.
When I saw what they had done, I could hardly contain myself. The video showed a
short cylindrical magnet “hovering” above what appeared to be two considerably longer
bar magnets. The difficulty they encountered was that the “levitated” magnet tended to
slip off the side and fall away. It is well known that you cannot achieve a stable static
positional state between two magnetic dipoles in repulsive superposition. This is called
the “Earnshaw instability.”14 There are some clever ways around it. For example, one
can connect as the bottom magnet an electromagnetic coil fed by a servo loop controlled
by a magnetic field sensor placed between it and the to be levitated magnet, but it’s clear
Mr. Lee and his associates haven’t figured it out yet. Maybe someone should send him a
copy of this OutPost.
The Free Electricity Republic
I will forego anything substantial to say about operation of the Free Electricity Machine,
Lee’s “Fourth Law of Motion,” the use of “reaction” and what appeared to be the
prospect of 400% (!) efficiency, except to mention it wasn’t demonstrated, only
promised, and for a price. Nor will I talk about his “shadow” billion dollar investor, and
the Israeli offer to electrify that country for free electricity, the 10 MW “Powerwagons”
on 18-wheeler flatbeds (Mr. Lee cracked, “The utilities always talk about wheeling
power. We’re really going to do it.” I don’t think the audience got it.). I mean, talk
about distributed generation…and for free! The reader can refer to the hyperlinks of Ref.
9 for all the gory details.
However, it was quite interesting that his buy-in conditions are slightly different for
California than the rest of the nation inasmuch as Mr. Lee suffered two years
incarceration in a state institution here in the early 90s for alleged questionable business
practices and the experience seems to have made him more cautious on this visit. What
you are given is the opportunity to sign a $200 dollar pledge which reads as follows:
The offeree of this Pledge, through a community cooperative effort, may (italics
mine) be entitled to receive free energy up to 15 kilowatts per hour & be a
partaker in proclaiming the love of God to the ends of the earth, for as long as
revenues are generated by selling energy as a commodity. Twenty percent 20 %
of the total income will be used to restore family values in America; to feed the
hungry, clothe the naked, take care of widows and orphans; to finance the
restoration of a Constitutional government in these united states (sic),and to
administrate this Pledge Program.15
By now I had some difficulty figuring out how you could generate revenue from a “free”
commodity, but after four hours my eyes were glazed over, my cognitive senses dulled
and my bladder full.16 Next week the Declaration of American Energy Independence
tour will swing back east with thirteen more cities to visit before the grand finale in
Philadelphia on November 10 th . Maybe one of them will be your burg. If so, please drop
in (you’ll need an admission slip obtainable from the International Tesla Electric
Company web site), take notes on this point, and then give me a call and explain it.
Lastly, we should note that Mr. Lee announced his first Free Electricity Machine will be
installed in the house of one of his community cooperative members next March and that
anyone who wants can visit, switch lights on and off, and observe which way the utility
electric meter is spinning. That is, if any of us can leave home given that by that time we
will no longer have any guns to fight off the National Guard sentry on our doorstep.
Denouement
Godliness and suspicion of government and large institutions are admirable American
qualities when exercised in moderation. When combined with pseudoscience, intolerance
and demagoguery, they become self-defeating and a threat to intelligent decision-making
within our democracy. Yet we are a free people with universal suffrage, so we must
stand by our beliefs and take our chances. Mr. Lee likes to remind his audience that by
offering the energy deliverance of man, he intends taking back the government of these
United States “for and by the people.” He would do well to recall another of Abraham
Lincoln’s most wise admonitions, one which will most assuredly lead to his eventual
downfall, “…you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”
73
References and Footnotes
**Late Breaking News: Check out Leander Kahney’s article, “One Man’s Power Game,”
on the Wired Wire Service website,
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,32085-1,00.html. See also the article in
The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, on the temporary injunction request by the State of
Tennessee enjoining sales of cooperative memberships by the International Tesla Electric
Company available for $1.95 at http://www.gomemphis.com.
1 The Chautauqua Movement is credited with bringing culture and the arts to the
American hinterland as the Frontier closed at the end of the 19 th Century. The travelling
component pretty much died out by the 1920s as a result of improved transportation,
communication and entertainment technology. A number of Chautauqua centers still
exist, and seven sitting Presidents have addressed their assemblies, beginning with
Ulysses S. Grant (a distant relative) and most recently Bill Clinton who used one to
rehearse for the debates of the 1996 Presidential Campaign. Visit
http://www.infoplease.com/ce5/CE010374.html. On a more personal note, the
Chautauquas were the inspiration for the sales and marketing recognition events initiated
by Thomas J. Watson in 1914 when he founded IBM. I was fortunate to have been
invited to address several of these gatherings on the topic of superconductivity.
Wherever they are held, the meeting room is still referred to as The Main Tent, even if
the setting is in the most plush auditorium provided by a five-star luxury hotel in Cancun.
2 Retro – a term defining a fashion and design trend of recent years attempt to revive
classic creations of the past, for example, “retro” was the inspiration for the shape of the
new Volkswagen Beetle. Often, as is the case with respect to the Chautauqua Movement
and Dennis Lee’s tour, the imitation is but a vulgarization of the past.
3 USA Today, Friday, September 17 th , 1999, p. 15A.
4 Relavent web sites: http://www.ucsofa.com/; http://www.teslaelectric.com/.
5 If truth be known, I have an older daughter, Deborah, a member of an interior design
firm with offices in Sausalito, a few miles from San Rafael, whom I had not seen for
several months. I called up Debbie, who’s single, and coerced her into a date with her
father with the promise of an unusual evening’s entertainment followed by dinner. We
didn’t get to dinner until half past midnight in San Francisco.
6 Debbie, because she’s an artist, naturally has a much deeper perception of people’s
“body language,” clothes style and behavior patterns than her physicist father, remarked
immediately on entering the lobby of the Marin Veteran’s Center, “Dad, half this crowd
are RV-ers, and the other half Marin/Berkeley refugees from the 60s. Some of them look
like they just took a bus from Telegraph Ave.” That wasn’t all. After the sales pitch
some four hours later, she said, “He’s got to be nuts. He’d make more money selling
Free Electricity tee shirts.” Now, there’s an idea.
7 I believe my description of the Free Electricity Machine is somewhat more charitable
than that of a reporter for the Akron Beacon Journal who wrote, ”It resembled a portable
toilet on a trailer on a hitch.” A pdf copy of the Beacon Journal article is available from
OutPost on request.
8 The applause grew more pervasive as the evening proceeded, especially when Mr. Lee
referred to the supernatural inspiration for his agenda and/or exposed the sinister motives
of the electric utilities and the oil companies. It was clear some of the audience around us
were Dennis Lee groupies from their comments on the show the night before in Reno and
their expectations of the one to come Saturday in Fresno. Remember the “perpetual
automobile” in the opening of OutPost 10, “Too Good to Be True?” Before Lee began
to speak, almost the same story was being told by the guy in front of me to his neighbor,
only this time it was General Motors and just the carburetor needed to be returned, not
the whole car. Some things never change.
9 Perhaps the most thorough and complete website chronicling the escapades of Dennis
Lee is that maintained by Eric Krieg (http://www.phact.org/e/dennis.html), whose
“day job” is as a self-employed electrical engineering software consultant. His personal
web page is at http://www.phact.org/e/ (see also http://www.phact.org/e/skeptic/). One of the
refreshing aspects of Eric (whom I’ve not yet met personally) is that he does not seem to
take himself as seriously as some other skeptics I have run into. The web site containing
the most recent review of the “physics” of Dennis Lee, by a retired high school physics
teacher (and one which saves me a lot of personal effort otherwise), is at
http://www.phact.org/e/z/leelee.htm. One very pertinent enclosure on this page is a
reprint of an article in the Yakima Herald Republic from Lee’s hometown on October
15 th . It can be found near the end of this site or at http://www.yakima-herald.com/cgi-bin/
liveique.acgi$rec=7745?home . It is the only report I’m aware of to date that
includes an interview with two former Lee acolytes, one an engineer who worked for
him and the other a Better World Technology dealer, containing their respective
recantations.
10 Go to http://www.phact.org/e/bgas.htm.
11 It is difficult to find an unbiased account of Tesla’s life and work. The best I’ve run
across is “Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla, Inventor Extraordinary,” by John J.
O’Neill, first printed privately but now available from Brotherhood of Life publishers,
ISBN 0-914732-33-1 (I got my copy at a little shop in the Haight-Ashbury). The author
is obviously a great fan of the Serb engineer and explores deeply the esthete nature of the
man, at the same reserving the appropriate caution about Tesla’s more extreme scientific
claims. A good read.
12 Those of you who bought EPRI’s Y2K target I’m sure will not be amused. Before I
forget, Mr. Lee went on to explain the argument of the anti-gun lobby that you don’t need
an AK-47 to kill deer, albeit jokingly admitting he knew some hunters who did. No, the
reason one needed an AK-47 was that the First Amendment guaranteed the populace the
right to outgun the military, this being the only way to assure freedom throughout the
Republic. Let’s see…I don’t think he’s sought to purchase a nuclear weapon…yet. If the
reader is interested in such issues, I recommend a thoughtful article published this past
September on the “keep and bear arms” aspect of the First Amendment in the British
magazine, The Economist (but of course no view from the Brits on Yank guns can ever
be trusted due to 1776 and all that). The article, “Guns in America: Arms and the Man,”
appeared in the July 3 rd issue, v. 352, p. 17.
13 On several occasions Mr. Lee remarked, “No physicist understands gravity. Just ask
one.” True, we have not yet unified the gravitational field with those derived from the
strong and electro-weak forces. Notwithstanding that, I think we have a pretty good
handle on the statics and dynamics of gravity in the realm of engineering and even
astrophysical usefulness, so this physicist is not too concerned about his current
ignorance.
14 Earnshaw’s Theorem and its consequences are well described in a delightful little book
I reviewed for Nature several years ago. It’s called “Driving Force: The Natural Magic
of Magnets,” by James D. Livingston, ISBN 0-674-21544-X. My review, “Fields of
Influence,” can be found in Nature, Vol. 380, 25 April 1996, p. 679 and on Amazon.com.
Incidentally, the reason you can stablely levitate a permanent magnet over a high
temperature superconductor, or any type II superconductor, has little to do with the
Meissner Effect. It occurs because the field from the magnet becomes “trapped” in the
superconductor and cannot move without application of force, an unique property of a
superconductor in the mixed state.
15 A pdf copy of this pledge and other contractual material may be obtained from OutPost
on request.
16 As my daughter and I left with Dennis Lee still carrying forth answering questions from
potential prospects, we ran into a camera crew sent over by a local TV station. The two
ladies comprising it seemed a little concerned about the demonstrated animosity by Lee’s
supporters to their presence. I wanted to stay and observe their attempted interview of
Lee, but Debbie would have none of it. Anyway, by this time the two reporters were in
the presence of a couple of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory physicists much
larger and younger than I. The following day one of them called me saying they had
been unsuccessful in getting Lee on camera.
Copyright © 1999 EPRI and Paul M. Grant
All Rights Reserved
--
====

The following is a report that ran in Charlotte

Alleged scam artist hits Charlotte

                      Good Morning America labeled Dennis Lee "a fraud" for
                      the invention he's trying to sell to consumers.

                      On Friday he's coming to Charlotte to sell a product the
                      experts say will never work.

                      Dennis Lee is in Charlotte promoting an invention he says
                      will keep you from ever having to pay for power again.

                      Dennis Lee was at the Independence Area on Friday
                      night. He was trying to sell a product that "creates
                      electricity"

                      The invention seems incredible, it's called a "counter
                      rotating device." or "crd." The device, Lee claims pulls
                      electricity from the air. A machine he might put in your
                      home for $275.

                      Is it too good to be true?

                      Dr. Bob Park, a physics professor at the University of
                      Maryland, believes Lee is a modern day snake oil
                      salesman.

                      "He showed pieces that he implied could be put together but he didn't tell us how they
                      could be put together," Park told Eyewitness News. "He didn't even show us how those
                      machines work. It was all double-talk. There is no validity to this at all. It is an absolute
                      scam, a bold face lie."

                      Ben Barry is a Charlotte architect and co-founder of B & Z Innovations, a company that
                      plans to market Lee's machine.

                      Lee has been in trouble for prior energy schemes, in California, Washington and
                      Tennessee.

                      However, Barry says Lee "would rather die than not fulfill his commitments" and his
                      machine works.

                      "Regardless of what you think about Dennis Lee or any of the people that were involved
                      with him," Barry said. "Facts are facts."

                      Facts which experts say have yet to be proven.

                      Independence Area said there is no reason to cancel Lee's show. Lee has not broken
                      any laws and the show will go on.

                      If you have questions about a product you've bought, and whether the company's had
                      past problems, call the Better Business Bureau of the Southern Piedmont at 527-0012.

The official copy of this is at:
 Alleged scam artist hits Charlotte

   Eric Krieg      eric@phact.org

http://www.phact.org/e/more.htm