Local inventor's claims inspire others to follow
Staff WriterThe Columbus Dispatch - Sept 20 2010
Stanley Meyer's patents have expired, making his secrets available to garage mechanics and underground inventors worldwide.
The Grove City man, who claimed to have discovered a way to make cars run on water, has inspired others who believe that water could one day replace petroleum and coal, ending global warming, oil spills and even world conflicts.
Mike Allen, senior automotive editor at Popular Mechanics magazine and a one-time college chemistry instructor, has heard from hundreds of inventors since Meyer's death in 1997. Many fear that their ideas will be stolen if given a thorough vetting and are loath to release details.
"It's a curious pastiche of people who want to believe, with a heavy leavening of charlatans who are trying to separate people from their money," Allen said.
Each time he debunks one of the inventions, "I am vilified and even threatened with death" by people thinking he's being paid off by Big Oil, he said.
Engineers and physicists agree that water molecules, given a large-enough jolt of electricity, can be split into oxygen and hydrogen through a process called electrolysis and used as fuel. But they denounce claims that it can happen as cheaply or efficiently as some profess.
Meyer, 59, worked out of his home on Broadway in Grove City's downtown. His dying declaration - "They poisoned me" - referred to European businessmen who had just toasted his success at a Cracker Barrel restaurant on Stringtown Road, said his brother Stephen Meyer, who also was there.
Grove City police could find no evidence of foul play. But some people still believe that Stanley Meyer was killed because of his invention.
Craig Westbrook drove with a colleague from Houston, Texas, to Washington Court House in February "prepared to spend $1 million," he said, on Meyer's computers, blueprints and dune buggy retrofitted with a water-fueled engine.
"We had money in the bank and cashier's checks," said Westbrook, an inventor. But the owners of Meyer's estate, who are descendants of a Meyer confidant, wanted $1.5million for less than half of the equipment and didn't want it to leave Ohio, said Westbrook, who left with nothing.
"I have no reason to try to fool anybody," said Wells, who befriended Stanley Meyer in 1985. "I am financing the thing totally by myself, and I've turned down millions of dollars.
"The validity is coming if people would just give me the time to finish," said Wells, who, like Meyer, fears for his safety. "First, they try to buy you; then, they try to kill you; then, they try to persecute you," he said of oil companies.
Sterling Allan is CEO of Pure Energy Systems Network in Utah, a clearinghouse for new-energy inventions. People should be open-minded, he said. "If where there's smoke there's fire, that to me alone says there's probably something to this."
F. Buckley Lofton, a mechanical engineer and business consultant from Hawaii, said he has refined Meyer's patents to create systems that generate 10liters of hydrogen a minute from tap water by using standard house current. Since 2005, he has sold his device to businesses and researchers from his home in Kailua-Kona, a region of the Big Island of Hawaii, he said. He declined to name them.
"Yes, Stanley's credibility is getting real reviews," Lofton said. "And those dismissing the reality of his work are starting to appear very foolish."