Jones Beene wrote:
Yes. It is a fascinating device, and definitely under-appreciated except by the cult-like following, which I mentioned (Hull's forum), but there is little evidence of any conspiracy to silence the technology.
No one said anything about a conspiracy. Vassilatos found gobs of evidence of suppression. Suppression does not equal a conspiracy. Countless technologies have been suppressed, often for long periods of time.
Suppression is conducted openly for reasons that everyone knows. For example, as I have often pointed out, the dairy interests in New York City blocked the use of pasteurization from the 1860s until 1917. They did this quite openly and they stated their reasons on countless occasions: they did not want to pay a few pennies extra per bottle of milk.
Automobile makers suppressed pollution control technology for decades, again because they said it would cost to much. They also refused to install seatbelts despite repeated recommendations by safety experts because they said passengers did not want seatbelts and would not use them.
The coal and oil industry today conduct an all-out no-holds-barred public effort to prevent the development of wind energy. Their most recent tactical was to try to have Congress pass a law that would essentially make it illegal to install wind turbines, and would force most turbines to be disassembled, supposedly because of the danger to birds.
Fake "research institutes" supported by the oil industry, GM and Ford have published countless attacks against hybrid automobile technology. They claim, for example, that hybrid cars cost more than Hummers and use more energy overall including production. This kind of nonsense is quoted by gullible people who know nothing about technology, such as George Will of the Washington Post.
Vassilatos wrote: "Farnsworth himself was made the focus of every corporate death-word. These outlandish accusations indelibly remain in newspapers from the time period." That is a clear-cut case of suppression, as clear as the Scientific American's attacks against cold fusion. The reasons may be different, but suppression is suppression.
Richard Hull, who runs the Fusor Forum, and is the leading expert on the Farnsworth Fusor - has a slightly different opinion on the "suppression" issue (that is was market-driven, and mostly due to the ITT merger, and the inherent danger of tritium - NOT any kind of mysterious conspiracy)
Frankly, I think that's silly. Conventional fission reactors produce plenty of tritium and other radioactive byproducts, but they are widely used. If the Fusor were to be properly developed I expect problems with tritium can be controlled.
... anyway, isn't G.Vassilatos a SciFi writer ?
I have no idea who he is. Anyway, science fiction writers often right, especially Arthur C. Clarke.
- Jed
