Hi All. With all the learned bloviating on this topic, I'm surprised no one has yet addressed the critical issue with secrecy and invention. It's not the patent office; in fact, a VERY large percentage of patents grant and you can find abundant examples of prior art in the field Mark Goldes is prospecting in. The few occasions that patents aren't granted are either political ( the debacle concerning Robert Park and Randy Mills chemical patent comes to mind ) or just simple ignorance of how the patent office works ( inventor doesn't understand it, and hires bad counsel ). It's worth reminding everyone on the first point, that Randy received his "free energy" patent for the water heater, and was rejected on the chemical patent, for which he was willing to provide actual samples for testing. You may have whatever opinion of Randy you like, but rejecting that chemical patent on the eve of granting was a remarkably cheap shot.
No, the real issue is much simpler, and can be seen in every institution where the command and control of the organization is from top to bottom, WITHOUT FEEDBACK. For it is the most difficult thing in the world to do an experiment which invalidates a few years of work, and accept those results. It's almost impossible when substantial sums have been invested. There is just no business incentive to do this, and every incentive to shut up and let the boat continue on it's way. I can point to no better example of this than the rather spectacular failings of the current administration, which by their own admission prizes loyalty and message control above all else. When there is never heard a discouraging word, the skies are not cloudy right up to the inevitable T-storm which floods the ranch, drowns all the cattle, and strikes dead the rancher. It's a paradox of sorts that to be an effective inventor one must combine an insane sense of optimism ( 1000 failures and yet persisting ) with an equally insane sense of pessimism ( for only you can prove those early attempts WERE failures ). It's another paradox that if you are public about those 1000 failures, and get success on 1001, no one will believe you. And conversely, folks will line up for miles to get behind someone who never admits to making a mistake, despite abundant real evidence to the contrary... Does any of this apply to Mr. Goldes venture? Beats me. I'm only making a general comment about secrecy and invention, so please don't confuse the above with a critique. He does seem willing to admit to past mistakes, which is a good sign IMHO. But he's also not the inventor. His trolling of the list has given me a few chuckles, and I feel he should be indulged in this. I wonder if in exchange Mark would do us the courtesy of announcing on the list when his applications actually publish? ( NOT to be confused with when his patents grant ) At that point some discussion can occur which is more in line with the vortex list. K. -----Original Message----- From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 05, 2004 11:29 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Secrecy for a short time, it might be wise. Nick Palmer writes: > engineerable" by a competitor but this is not important. As long as you keep > the THEORY behind the construction of the machines secret (unless it would > be very obvious to infer it from the machines themselves) . . . The machine would be an expression or embodiment of the theory. The machine describes the theory to an engineer or physicist more clearly than any paper could. As far as I know, all machines in history have been easy to reverse engineer, because the level of elite knowledge in one society is seldom very different from the level in other, competing societies. People generally learn things at about the same time. No individual is ever more than 10 or 20 years ahead of everyone else. (Not in technical knowledge, but you could argue that Francis Bacon was 300 years ahead of his time in his philosophy of science, and 400 years ahead in his ideas about society and race.) The British used steamships in the Opium War against China (1840). Within a few years a handful of Chinese experts were able to build their own steamship, even though they have no direct access to the British ships. By around 1855 Japanese experts also built working steamships, soon after Perry "opened" Japan. The US gave the Japanese government a miniature steam railroad, but I do not think the people who built the steamship had access to it. I think they did have some textbooks. The main thing they had was the knowledge that such machines exist. To give another example, within the month of the atomic bomb explosion over Japan, Japanese scientists knew a great deal about nuclear weapons from their investigation of the fallout. If they had been given free access to materials and equipment I expect they could have replicated within a few years. Of course the U.S. banned nuclear weapons research in occupied Japan. By the way, most magnetic motor researchers emphatically disagree with what I just wrote. They often claim that a theory is essential, and they have that theory. For example, here are quotes from J. Manning: "The Coming Energy Revolution:" "Also, standard mathematical calculations didn't work with the VTA. In 1991, Sweet produced a math theory for the VTAan 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. . . . Sweet also frustrated his fellow researchers by keeping secret his most important processhow 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." p. 76, 79 I think that is nonsense. I also think the descriptions of Sweet's machine and its various accomplishments are nonsense. For example, it reportedly exploded at one point, and another time it became an anti-gravity machine (that is, it lost weight while operating). In any case, the machine was not replicated, so for all practical purposes it never existed as far as I am concerned, even if it did exist in the physical sense. - Jed
