article
Water-fuel technology
Unsigned, headed "Courtesy of Stan Meyer" · 1 August 1994
Indiana: water-fuel technology
Courtesy of Stan Meyer
The latest "International News Release" about the Water Fuel Cell technology (dated May, 1994) suggests that "Military funding is anticipated." This eight-page news sheet reports that Meyer has moved cautiously and quote Meyer as saying, "If any part was blocked by a foreign entity or patent-filing irregularity, the entire process could be blocked." The news sheet cites 13 U.S. patents ranging from number 3,970,070 (Solar heating system) to 5,293,857 (Hydrogen Gas Fuel Management System).
A picture of the Water Powered Car has the caption, "The water-powered dune buggy is now being retrofitted with an up-graded Water Fuel Injection System™ utilizing the latest E-Prom electronics computer technology to match the acceleration performance of gasoline-drive cars. Funding is being sought for the Water Fuel Cell International Product Development Center and Trade Center."
About this item
Fusion Facts was the monthly newsletter of the Fusion Information Center in Salt Lake City, begun in 1989 to follow cold fusion and widened to "new energy" generally. "Courtesy of Stan Meyer" means Meyer mailed them the release; the newsletter did not see the car or the cell. The picture it describes is in the release, not in the newsletter, which printed no photograph. The same text, without the dateline, ran again in the Center's other newsletter, New Energy News, vol. 2 no. 5, September 1994, pages 7–8. The Fusion Information Center's archive is kept by New Energy Times, and the original page is there in full.
The release itself is not in the archive, so this summary is the nearest thing to it. WFC's own price list describes the series: a "WFC International News Release" was a "yearly news update on Water Fuel Cell business and product development activities world-wide", sold at five dollars a copy, with the back numbers bound as "Historical WFC International News 'Releases of Review'" (WFC publications available). The Fall 1996 release, Technical Supplement Report, issue 11A, is the one Meyer carried to Europe that October (Fowler to the distributors, January 1997).
Why Indiana. Fusion Facts headed its items with the place they came from, and Meyer was in Grove City, Ohio. The likeliest explanation is that the release was mailed from Indianapolis. In 1994 WFC's Personnel and Education department was Dr Russell E. Fowler, 401 Rick Lane, Indianapolis, and the circular Meyer sent the distributors that March carries Fowler's Indianapolis address in the footer of every page, under the heading "Letter-News Release" (Meyer to the WFC distributors, 19 March 1994). The archive has not seen the May envelope, so this is an inference.
The patents check out. Thirteen is exactly the number of US patents Meyer held when the release went out, from the solar heating system, 3,970,070 of July 1976 to the hydrogen gas fuel and management system, 5,293,857, granted in March 1994, two months earlier.
The rest, in his own words elsewhere. The worry about a foreign entity blocking the patents is one Meyer put to audiences himself: "The greatest disservice that I would see is to bring up and show the technology, the viability of the technology, and that some foreign entity is holding up the blocking patterns and says … you cannot bring it into the economy" (the evening workshop tape). The E-Prom was already in the March circular, where the company wants engineers with "skill in E-Prom computer logic technology and computer chips". The Product Development Center is the campus in the investment portfolio, which was never built. The buggy was on show at the Solar Energy Expo in Ukiah, California, that July (Fill the tank with water). The archive has no record of military funding arriving.
The original
Provenance
- Shelf
- Press coverage
- Page
- 6
- Issue
- Volume 6, number 2
- Byline
- Unsigned, headed "Courtesy of Stan Meyer"
- Patent office record
- newenergytimes.com →
- Rights
- Fusion Facts is copyright 1994 by the Fusion Information Center, Inc. The archive reproduces only the item about Meyer, as a record of what was printed at the time, and claims nothing in it; the whole issue is in the Center's archive at New Energy Times, linked above.
- Caption
- Fusion Facts, August 1994, page 6, the item as printed. The dateline INDIANA is the newsletter's; New Energy News reprinted the item without it.
- Citation
- Fusion Facts, Salt Lake City, Volume 6, number 2, August 1994, pp. 6, by Unsigned, headed "Courtesy of Stan Meyer"
- Publication
- Fusion Facts, Salt Lake City
- Transcription
- The page image of the New Energy Times copy of the issue, checked against its text layer and against the New Energy News reprint.