Hirsch versus Farnsworth

[Verp]

CVD diamond doped with iodine only needs a 60-volt differential to emit electrons. I would think a setup for coating something with iodine-doped diamond would be easy for a fusor builder to make. I need to do more research to find out the details of the process, but it has similarities to an operating fusor. If I remember correctly, methane is ionized and sputter coats diamond onto the target surface. The hydrogen is thought to keep the carbon bonds at the right angles to form the diamond crystal structure, rather than the graphite structure. I think it can also be done using a carbon ion source in a rarefied hydrogen atmosphere. Doping the diamond with iodine is probably done by simply introducing the right amount of iodine into the mostly vacuum of the sputtering process.

Rod

[Richard Hull]

Adam is correct in his first post. The Hirsch fusor is a milestone in that is demonstrates how easy fusion is.

It must be kept in mind that Hirsch and Meeks created the Hirsch fusor as a superior demo device for the AEC. They wished to show the ease of fusion in a purely electrostatic system. They did not hold it out as a solution.

I have talked with Bob Hirsch on a number of occasions and He was fully aware that his system would have limitations that would keep it, as designed, from becoming "the solution".

The Farnsworth team spun their wheels from 59-63 on the electron multipacting idea and according to Meeks and Hirsch, the system failed in their hands and produced virtually no fusion. Thus, in late 63 they changed over to an ion machine with the negative central grid.

Simply reversing the polarity in a simple Hirsch fusor would make a nice space heater with no fusion. At least the Hirsch design makes a nice space heat with fusion.

Farnsworth's original electron centrated, virtual cathode design was an extremely complex device. It would be costly to replicate, I would imagine.

Richard Hull

[guest]

I don’t see the harm in allowing the members of the board to explore the possibility of making a multipacting Farnsworth stile IEC device. I feel confident that they can make their own minds up as to the level of difficulty involved.

I would like to point out that the creation of a Farnsworth stile IEC multipactor device has scientific merit, since there is no published data to support Hirsch and Meeks claims that the device is worthless; or Farnsworth belief that it was the way to go, the only way to really know is to try it.

[guest]

Well my schick rasor blades claim to have a dimond coating/edge.
that sounds like a easy way to test the dimond idea.

[DaveC]

I would tend to agree with Nathan's observation that it would be educational to build a Farnsworth type fusor to see how it differed in performance from the Hirsch -Meeks type.

That said, however, circumstantial evidence says to me that Hirsch and Meeks would not have been interested in some different way to do fusion, if the Farnsworth virtual cathode idea was working well. Usually in research you move from one successful stage to another in which case if Farnsworth's approach had worked, Hirsch and Meeks would no doubt have built on that concept to simplify it and inprove it. Rather they built a somewhat different device.

I try to form clear visual models of what is happening dynamically in the fusor, in order to tell what needs improving. We do tend here to go for higher voltage and current which is a kind of blunderbus tactic. Yet it does seems to work after a fashion.

Collision cross section data indicates that higher voltage, up to a point, improves the probability that a nucleus can be hit by another ion nucleus. One somewhat unspoken assumption is that the ions actually are well aimed toward each other. We are talking about aiming to pico meter resolution. Way below that of even high quality electron microscopes. Since even a mA of ion current is a veritable blizzard of ions/sec, the odds of a few actually colliding is reasonable.

In order to improve the odds, one could focus the beam with electrostatic lenses, to reduce the volume of the impact or cross through zone. With some high spatial resolution lensing, the interaction volume should be many times smaller than in the Hirsch fusor. The difference between using the virtual electron cathode....and an ion lens is chiefly in the utter simplicity of a tiny cloud of electrons causing the accelerating field for the ions. That is didn't seem to work, suggests that the virtual cathode at the fusor's electrostatic center, is not as effective in creating ion focus as a lens system farther out from the fusor center.

I can think of at least one quite obvious reason for this. The electrostatic fields inside the grid structure are rather complex. There is nothing simple about the equipotential contours. Without recourse to any computer modeling programs, anyone can see this for himself, by sketching in the equipotentials on a drawing of the grid cage electrodes. A 2d sketch is sufficient to get the idea.

There is a shallow potential well at the center of the typical grid cage, and it is rather broad. It seems to me that with the fields to localize electrons to create the virtual cathode being modest, not strong, the cathode would be diffuse, not highly concentrated.

Also, it has been observed that electrons do not follow field lines completely at energies above about 10 keV. The deviation gets worse as the energy increases. This occurs because of the electrons momentum. The same is true for ions at much lower voltages. With masses several thousand times larger than the electron, they also do not completely follow field lines.

Thus for a tiny negative poissor, though the potential energy is available, the ion has to navigate all the way to the tiny center to get the full energy boost. Many ions will be accelerated sufficiently to miss the sharply inwardly curving field lines and thus get only a portion of the full energy. By not arriving inside the tiny poissor volume, they miss many of the ions, resulting in low fusion/neutron counts.

Dave Cooper

[guest]

Hi Dave, I read your post and I agree with your conclusions. Here is what attracts me to the Farnsworth approach of using multipacting as opposed to the Hirsch Meeks direct ion acceleration approach.

In my opinion Hirsch and Meeks missed the point of what Farnsworth was trying to accomplish, which was to create a deep potential well using a virtual cathode. This has not yet happened. My friend who graduated from the University of Illinois a few years ago showed pretty conclusively that while there is significant evidence for multiple potentials wells they are relatively shallow in the Hirsch Meeks approach.

He and others at Illinois always thought that this situation had to improve in order to get the reaction rate up.

The Farnsworth approach creates a virtual cathode within the cathode sphere space, however I suspect that while the technique was sound, the humble quantities of secondary electron emissions of the Beryllium copper as compared to diamond, never resulted in the formation of a deep potential well, without this his concept would only generate some fusion, but not enough to drive the system efficiently.

Here’s the big picture in my opinion, Farnsworth new that the only way to breakeven with an IEC was to confine both particle species (electrons and ions) simultaneously, which is exactly what his approach tries to do, while the Hirsch Meeks approach totally ignores this.

If Hirsch and Meeks claims are to be taken at face value that they new their approach would have limited performance and would never breakeven, and that it would take a more sophisticated device to accomplish this, then why is there so much resistance to the possibility of investigating the more sophisticated and therefore complicated Farnsworth approach, rather than the simpler Hirsch Meeks approach?

By there own admittance, Hirsch and Meeks point out that the Fusor is just a demo device, nothing more.

So, the way I interpret what happened was that Hirsch and Meeks made their demo, because the Farnsworth approach had not worked just yet, the way that Farnsworth had expected. However abandoning the approach for a demo approach is not an evolutionary step, it’s a last ditch effort to save a program, and by the historical accounts that is exactly what happened.

Let me also point out that while Farnsworth did not have an engineering degree, he made incredible strides in vacuum tube technology, some of which are still incredible today.
Farnsworth deserves the benefit of the doubt since without him there probably would not be an IEC at all. Lets match history and patents between Farnsworth and Hirsch and Meeks and you can quickly get the picture that Farnsworth was not a quack or delusional, he new what he wanted the IEC to do, he just ran out of time and money to do it.

I can’t imagine Farnsworth making a more complicated device just for the hell of it; there was reasoning behind that complexity.

Of course this is just my interpretation of the facts and history.

[Richard Hull]

The title of this original thread above certainly expresses the impressions of the average person viewing this entire period of investigation from afar after having read most available material. But it was never a real battle between Hirsch and Farnsworth, certainly not from Hirsch's standpoint. It was instead diverging ideas which effectively created two parallel efforts in one program.

Having interviewed every living person involved in the project multiple times in person and over the phone, I know there are many untold stories publicly that are held privately and only released to a trusted interviewer with a promise of silence beyond that conversation. They are untold for a number of reasons.

1. Farnsworth was universally loved, respected and acclaimed by everyone on the team.

2. Farnsworth was kwirky and distant from the actual hands on part of the project for the most part after 1962-63. (project lasted until 68).

3. There was enough division within and without the project to hobble it from almost the onset.

4. As it was a livelihood for all concerned, the project plowed forward inspite of personality problems, corporate disinterest and cliquish behavior. The business environment in the 60's was a lot different than today. A boss one small step above you was a Godhead and not to be argued with if you valued your pension. (For his bosses backed him up to the hilt, mindlessly and regardless of circumstance).

5. Farnsworth was beholding to the "Admiral", (Fredrick R. Furth) who got the funding and was the real leader and mover and shaker of the entire ITT Fusion program. He totally believed in Farnsworth in 1959 when he obtained offical funding for the process.

6. Farnsworth brought in only trusted people to his group and then only with the Admiral's approval who viewed the entire project as totally "company confidential". (secret)

7. There were a number of firings of (short timers) who were the least bit slack including a Phd! This puckered the buttholes of everyone involved. The Admiral could chop you off at the knees in a heartbeat. He could blow into Fort Wayne and create a crap-storm for any one in the entire company who placed a stumbling block before "his team". He obtained near wartime "priority one" status for his highly isolated group in the Fort Wayne facility. While not autocratic, he was a mover and shaker and wobetide the idle, indolent or blockers. To everyone on the team he was loved and feared. He was the mother hen and the bathroom plunger that forcibly, on many occassions, unblocked the clogged drains of a sluggish corporate entity. The team was universally hated or at best mistrusted and misunderstood in Fort Wayne corporate management, but they anwered to New York and Corporate V.P. Furth flying in from NY was a constant thing. Furth was actually on hand so often in Fort Wayne that he retained an apartment there!!

8. Farnsworth would check in on the goings on almost daily, but spent vast amounts of time upstairs in his office on his monroe-matic doing theoretical machinations or on corporate junkets. (This was multiply verified)

9. When Farnsworth did get involved directly it was on more than one occassion to redirect a man's time often to a side project that made no sense. (several horror stories here) Then, several days later after the man was deeply involved with the side effort having accumulated parts and needed materials, Farnsworth would ask what he was doing. He would respond that he was doing as told earlier. Farnsworth would often reply "oh that....forget it......that was a bad idea. When several of these side endeavors were, indeed, taken to completion and the finished piece given or shown to Farnsworth, he thanked the person and the piece was never used or incorporated into anything! Many of these high priority items were still in cabinets on the last day of the project and shunted to the basement of the building for storage. So Farnsworth might be termed a bit odd and idiosyncratic in this respect.

Plus, it was generally agreed by ALL in the project that when Farnsworth operated any of the equipment personally and privately after hours, they feared for the equipment and often had a lot of repairs to do in the morning. So bad was this that two major players begged Farnsworth to call them in after hours if he planned on showing up in the middle of the night to run a system. They would get out of bed to join him for a run. (Farnsworth loved all-nighters).

On two specific occassions two different witnesses noted that Farnsworth would literally log in the notebook, NOT WHAT THE INSTRUMENT READ, but what he knew or felt it must read.

Many of you can't and will most likely never know the whole story or see the bigger picture. The perfesser (Paul) and I have strained like gearboxes after multiple interviews together and separately over the absolute reason for the failure of the project and there appears to instead be a vast number of small reasons coupled with bad timings and inter-corporate politics as to why the thing never went.

The bottom line is that in 63, even Farnsworth put his personal clique team on the negative grid machine.

Hirsch's arrival made real neutron numbers regardless of method.

The Admiral may have lost his confidence in Farnsworth, we will never know for he died shortly before my own and Paul's investigations began (1998). It is known that Hirsch's Phd arrival in 1964 did give ITT a place to hang their scientific hats. They and the Admiral had a man who would be immediately scientifically accountable, could write cogent, scientific papers and give the program a recognizable scientific leader. Hirsch realized that his presence cast a cloud over Farnsworth's leadership, but all titles remained the same and Farnsworth was the V.P of research and director of the project in Fort Wayne as he always was, but the NEW scientific director was Hirsch. I feel that the Admiral who was the former head of the prestigious NRL (Naval Research Laboratory) in DC felt more comfortable dealing with Phds as he had there. Certainly, from a cache' standpoint, a seated Phd on the project was a real plus. The increased numbers in neutrons not only from Hirsch's separate, parallel, efforts, but also from the Farnsworth team's machine, immediately secured funding for the effort for another 4 years. The Corporate bean counters and directors were ready to kill the effort in late 63 with no results and a recently fired Phd associate (remaning nameless). The Admiral knew this was near the end and so he hired a fusion Phd ASAP (Hirsch) to keep his and Farnsworth's dream alive.

From here it was more money than they had ever had and a string of successes, though minor by today's standards, until someone in the company said; "that is it"! "WE ARE NOT IN THE NUCLEAR BUSINESS".

Some of the above is new material for many, but believe me, there is much more that is known but that can't be spoken, which casts a number of different lights on the fascinating drama of Fort Wayne 1959-1968.

Farnsworth's original ideas can and should be investigated if that is where one's heart lies and with patience and money enough, it might be re-investigated. I personally feel, they gave it a good shot and came up with zilch, not based not only on the record, but the private conversations with the people who did the work down every day for 9 years down in the trenches.

Ricahrd Hull

[guest]

One world Richard, Chill.

By your own admittance the information you are providing is new, unseen or unheard.

I would assume that by now since you have had so much experience above and beyond all of us combined, that you would have at least one alternative concept for improving the fusor, whether it is feasible or not for the armature experimenter. So do you care to share?

If not, than don’t be surprised when the rest of us propose new avenues of exploration, even those that are historic in nature.


Nathan

[Adam Szendrey]

Thank you for that post Richard, i really appriciate that you wrote this down. I don't know if i am allowed to ask these questions but i do anyway.
Is it true that ITT cut all connections with Farnsworth in 1966?
Prior to that the company had recieved letters and phone calls from some of the Wall Street bigshots. And at the same time the fission business just started to develop.
Farnsworth had a heart attack during the Waldorf hotel conference about the future of the project. This was the point when Farnsworth had been relieved of the leadership of the project, and shortly after the team was dismissed. ITT had publicly announced that the project did not lead to any results and to start it was a mistake. Farnsworth read this on his way home on the airplane and suffered another heart attack.
During his recovery he realised that he must not give up. He wanted to buy his patents back, but the company did not want to sell the "useless" patents. In 1969 after recovering, he furnished a small lab in a small garret of the Brigham Young university. Research got harder and harder to conduct since deuterium and tritium was not accessible anymore by individuals. Then he recieved a very good offer from Sony, but sadly it was too late as he died in 1971 due to the torment of the past years.
My question: Is this all true? I read this in a book, i would believe it but i think you are the person to ask about the validity. Thank you!

Adam

[grrr6]

What exactly were all the incarnations of the fusor that they went through?

[Richard Hull]

Answering some of Adam's questions.

Farnsworth was medically retired from ITT in 1966.

The project head then became Robert Hirsch.

The "fission business" was an ongoing thing in 1966 and was rather well developed and not just starting up. Though the bulk of fission plants were, indeed, built later. One of the big reasons Farnsworth was funded so long was that every now and then news of Farnsworth's fusion work was allowed to leak and ITT's stock always shot up like a rocket. The company liked that a lot.

Prior to 1964, the funding for the effort was meager and half hearted, but nonetheless, there. 1966 and 67 were the biggest budget years although I have been unable to obtain actual figures in writing. It was George Bain, alone, who had a rememberance of a 4 million dollar figure in the 66 budget that leaves any feeling at all for how much was spent. This might not sound like much, but back then it was a gang o' bucks. (Bain was the head of all project engineering and had a EE Masters degree) Right after Meeks, George Bain was the longest fusor team member in the effort (59-68).

The team actually had two really good years after Farnsworth was out. It was ITT that really wanted the effort shifted and paid for in future by the AEC. Why should they fund further work? They owned all the patents. Let the government pick up the tab. ITT would would just collect royalties. Alas, AEC turned it down for a number of reasons, mostly political. Bob Hirsch learned a cricial lesson here and this inducted him into the beltway politics of fusion. He was so eloquent in his fusion proposal with the fusor that within a year of his failed effort and shuting down of the Farnsworth effort, the AEC hired him! He was becoming a policticized scientist. He would ultimately get mild revenge in 4 years when he was placed in charge of Nixon's Thermonuclear program under the AEC and canceled a few fusion programs of those who refused him in 68. Regardless of some mis-steps while head of the ITER, he never lost his dream, even to this day of IEC fusion.

Farnsworth tried, abortively, to start PTFA, (Philo T. Farnsworth Associates), in Utah after 1967 and even dragged a few of his old fusor group out there with him in 68, only to abandon them and their families there having prodded them to join him and to leave ITT, pensions and steady work back in Fort Wayne. (ITT only fired Furth over the fusion debacle) All of the others, good technical people, were simply reassigned to other departments within the Fort Wayne facility. Only two of the original team would stay on at ITT and retire comfortably in the 1980's.

Farnsworth and Gene Meeks did have offices in Brigham Young University, but only Meeks actually performed useful work there as he and Dr. Andrew Gardner (department head) kept a fusor from the Fort Wayne period (loaned by ITT) working in the college until it was dropped from the program there in 1972.

So, Meeks was the first man in with Farnsworth in 1958 at his home on State Street in Fort Wayne where they did the earliest work at Farnsworth's personal expense all the way through the fully funded ITT effort and he was the "last man standing" at BYU when the fusor fires were dropped in 1972. This is why Gene is so critical to any full understanding of the work and effort regarding the fusor.

Sony did make a serious inquiry, but when Farnsworth couldn't obtain the patents from ITT and Sony saw the sad state of the abortive PTFA, they left the field.

Never a well man, Farnsworth never recovered from the 66 depression and died rather young and burned out in 1971. Pem, his wife, is still kickin'.

Books can never provide the full depth and breadth of the story and one could literally be written of the 58-72 period by itself, but instead of a scientific tale, would be more one of human drama and tragedy tangled in corporate and scientific politics.

Thus far, I feel and get the impression from all I have interviewed "to a man" that the "book writers" only interviewed them once and never really understood the scientific mission or had an interest in fusion at all. Paul was the exception, I feel, and that is why his book is the best, however, even Paul did not tell all. (blessedly so)

I was given a rather special status amoung the group as I was not just looking for a quick rinse. I could, of course, "talk shop" on the scientific, engineering and philosophical level. It didn't hurt that I had a working fusor, either. Therefore, I had a lot more told to me than a "one-shot interloper" looking to "do a book". All ofthe book writers focused sharply on the television period virtually to the exclusion of the fusion effort which many seemed to have relegated to a weak, half hearted effort, placing a rather negative stamp on the end of their magnum opus. Much of what I have been told has often been told in the strictest of confidence.

Richard Hull

[Richard Hull]

I am never surprised by new avenues of research offered up anywhere, at any time, by anyone. I am however often elated, gratified, stunned, amused, or saddened. (full range of human emotions)

As a long time doer and grizzled engineer, I have seen countless suggestions offered up by countless individuals in countless situations in real science, amateur science, real engineering situations, and even in life situations. (not just on this list) The number of those suggestions that seemed reasonable were very few. The number that the suggestors turned into functional hardware can be counted on my fingers and toes! The number of those few, inturn, that bore fruit I can count on one hand. So forgive the natural and honestly acquired pessimism where an extremely complex path is chosen at the zero funded amateur level.

The only thing the amateur has going for him in most cases in verve, the willingness to move and, on rare occassions, the willingness to do. (these are among the most potent items leading to success) However, having seen it all before played out a gang o' times, I calmly fold my hands and say "show me" making sure I stand well clear of the suggested effort and allow room for the flurry of activity to take place about me leaving me in the dust. The fact that I say "show me" often infuriates many, for they are the non-hackers, the dreamers, and a bluff called is often embarrassing. I have, unfortunately, embarrased far more times than having been embarrassed in these matters. Someone please embarass me by the "doing". If your effort fails, I will not scold or cry "I told you so", but will be proud that the nerve and guts drove an individual to DO something rather than hypothesize.

I have few suggestions as I have been there and see no direction leading to fusion on-the-large. I see the need for 10 orders of magnitude improvement with one or two order magnitude possibly viable solutions which if tried would still leave us 100 million times removed from the goal.

I sort of lead this effort on this list, again, not to do power ready fusion, but just to do fusion with a thought to seeing how it might be improved. Seeing the vast gulf of ten orders of magnitude, being a reasonable engineer and finally studying natural fusion, then projecting forward, I still wonder how it might be done... no longer, just better, but at all for the benefit of man.

I will never let the dream go, but will continue to offer opinions here and work as I chose when I do, allowing others to "do" if they even choose to do so in their own manner. I will continue to hold the stary-eyed hypothesizer in the same venue as my own criticisms............ as only so much wind over the decks.

Richard Hull

[guest]

Amen brother, Amen.

Nathan

[Richard Hull]

Greg asked about various incarnations of the fusor in the Farnsworth effort. There were about 5 fusors with multiple variants within each class. Most of the real information on these efforts is sketchy and some of it lost forever.

The Hirsch effort which ran parallel from 64 on created 3 machines, again with minor subvariants.

Meeks, near the end, had his own fusor which was a special gunned variant called the mark two prime and to hear him tell it, the most successful of the lot.

There were countless test fusors cobbled up from pipe, Conflat unions and the like that were never designed to fuse, but test geometries and other ideas where plasmas were studied.

The very first fusor was a crude glass vacuum tube designed by Cyril Day (ITT's premiere tube designer) at Farnsworth's request. According to Bain, it never worked and was a totally abortive effort. The first funded fusor, and two others after it up to 1962, were all semi-bell jar fusors, electron multipactors, and never produced any neutrons, AMAZINGLY, and are what you see in the classic images of the team and or Farnsworth huddled around them. (opening page to the fusor.net forums). Somehow, they came to the conclusion, I am unsure, as are all the team members, who made the suggestion to go to the ion beam system in the 62-63 time frame. In the big warp core Fusor mark II. They got some neutrons, but not many. Subsequent variants did do better, but not as good as anything the Hirsch/Meeks effort produced. The variants were so thick and fast that not one single team member remembers all the numbers, all the variants or often even the results!!! the real notes were all retained by ITT in corporate held lab books. Such are the fading memories of even the best team members.

The cliques within the effort were almost never in total communication with results from fellow team members in the next room!! As sad state.

I have hand written notes, but they are not in my office and they are of what this or that person "thought" a certain photo of a fusor did or performed to. One member had a stroke and as he recovered, his memory got better, but many things were gone forever. Another member recently had a stroke and still can't talk in a normal manner. Fortunately, I had a couple of ten hour personal interviews with him and many, hour long, Q & A sessions via the phone before his recent misfortune.

I probably have not satisfied your curiousity, but did want to explain the muddled nature of the fusor ID system of which there appears to have been virtually NONE! Things happened fast there and a lot of variants were unnumbered or forgotten with the passage of time.

Richard Hull

[kbonin]

I have to toss a comment into the mix on modern fusor work - in following the conversations on this board (while my own project takes shape on the desk next to me, plasma soon!), I'm wondering how many modern projects are occurring that just aren't discussed?

Most people I know working in physics fields are patent junkies. Everybody dreams of figuring out that "trick" to acheive breakeven, and so keeps most of their ideas to themselves less they lose their ability to acheive said patents and the bags of money that would alledgedly follow such a discovery.

I wonder how many interesting ideas are being played with RIGHT NOW, likely by people reading this board (HI!) that will never talk about it?

And as a side note, to any such individuals - remember two things:
1) There are very cheap ways to get out of making royalty payments, "lead" poisining being the cheapest.
2) the modern patent office practice of allowing perpetually ammended vague filings means that any really important discovery will be disclosed as infringing on any one of dozens of Fortune 500 blanket patents - take a look at Cold Fusion filings to see whats in store.

I'm just glad theres an open forum for all this, so that maybe us amatures can someday figure out how to do more that scratch at the demo level. But in the mean time, its a fun hobby, and I'm getting to show my kids what the scientific method is really all about.

[Richard Hull]

Kerry raises an interesting and well understood phenomenon.

I call these folks the "Lone Wolf" basement bombers. They are often lurkers on such lists as this. They may even post. We have had two such folks that I am aware of here in the past.

In general, they work totally alone. They have just discovered the secret of the ages. They have a working model and either have a patent or are securing one. They would just like to share this fact with the populace sans details.

How many are here and lurking? Unknown.........Don't care.

Do they have the key? Highly unlikely.

Are they stealing our ideas or harvesting the brain power of the list for free? You bet. We are givin' it away. Right? They can have it.

There are subvariants to the above. Some are looking for investors (possible bunko artists) others just accolades, but the song is the same.

I am aware of a lot of these folks in the past having been dipped and stripped in the new energy world. Thus far, I am sorry to say, not one single thing these lone wolf guys came up with is on the market or ever reached the market. Very telling, very telling, indeed.

Oh, they were doers alright, just a bit paranoid and, always, self-deluded either through simple, innocent, ignorance or poor mental health. But, to the man, they had those patents and no one was going to cheat them out of a thing and they weren't tellin' nobody nothin'. "You just wait and see this baby go when it hits the market!"

Quote:

"I'm still a' waitin" (Yosimite Sam -Warner Bros. Cartoon)


Richard Hull

[jst]

Being in the software business, I think I can tell you the trend is away from the patent office anyway. Long before a patent application is ever processed anything new must be out in the market and old hat before patent/copyright ever apply in any meaningful way if ever; and before the competition copies the concept and applies the necessary twist to dodge copyrights.

We live in a world which will be increasingly like the StarTrek replicator. Almost everything that wasn't "canned" a very long time ago is a DIY project. "Patterns" for new things will be shared like recipes are swapped for hot chili... nobody does it exactly the same, but we all willingly borrow the parts...

When the first guy here announces he has broken even, we will all "borrow his pattern" build our own ( no doubt improved design... ) and off we go. I doubt if anyone will ever actually bother to mass market this stuff.

BTW, Never forget what happened to E. Fermi's patent applications...

[Richard Hull]

Mike, There is no proof extant that any Farnsowrth device even approached breakeven. In general, no fusion device has ever been there or even close to there on a usable, continuous energy basis. I have been bold enough in these forums to predict that there never will be.

There are many reasons to be here in these forums. They range from hoping to achieve the breakeven barrier or even self-sustaining fusion reaction at the top of the heap all the way down to just hanging out intellectually on fusion discussions near the bottom.

In between, there are folks making a cool looking demo device for a science fair, Folks contributing to the theory of fusion, folks musing over improvements, folks working at physically making improvements and folk who just want to be able to say that they have actually done fusion with their own hands. All of these folks are welcome and make for an interesting mix.

You have noted that we seem to be more interested in ease of construction than making a fusion device that is better or near breakeven. This perception is correct if you are talking about the "doers" and the "builders". This is because most of these folks are rather pragmatic and poor. These two qualities puts a rather sharp point on fusion work for many "doers". Such folks have limited funds and want to do fusion. They are pragmatic enough to see just how far off real efficient fusion is and to realize that breakeven is a dream that their purse can't even hope for. As such, they opt to build a real fusion device that does fusion as efficiently as their money will allow. This demands a hunt, not necessarily for the best fuel or process, but for a warranted success based on a budget.

There are, of course, constant discussions around the theory of fusion, how it might be done better and about the requirements for a viable power generating fusion system. These are just that... discussions. If power ready fusion is ever possible, it will most likely not be done by an amateur and not on a table top for the price of a set of new golf clubs as the current group of amateur fusors are.

So, you see, we are a varied bunch to say the least. The "doers", for the most part, are cash limited to workable, interesting fusion devices that prove that fusion can be done inexpensively, and by amateur hands. Others, not able or interested in construction, tend work in the area of theory and mental advancement of fusion concepts.

All of the foregoing doesn't obviate the chance of blind luck or stumbling onto something unexpected or unappreciated making a breakthrough. There is always room and hope enough for that in all our hearts. It is just that the best heads can't rely totally on that in the day to day work of fusion.

Richard Hull