raum & zeit 50/91: Stan Meyer makes water a fuel, by Ola Deräker

"Stan Meyer ermöglicht Wasser als Brennstoff", by Ola Deräker, Kungsbacka, Sweden. raum & zeit issue 50, 1991, pages 76 to 78. The scan the old site carried: the issue and the article. See The Griffin File.

This is the article that put the Griffin Report into print, and it is the reason the report has a name. The magazine's standfirst says the result may now be published, that the report had been in hand since the end of 1990 and until then kept under wraps, and that three high-calibre scientists sat on the commission sent from London to Meyer in the United States. Their finding, as the magazine gives it, is that the water fuel cell works and can go into series production. Deräker's report follows.

What it fixes

The scan settles several things the archive had only approximately.

• The dates. The British team visited Meyer from 19 to 22 October 1990. The archive had the month; this gives the four days.
• The signatories. Three men signed: Admiral Sir Anthony Griffin, on a long career in the Royal Navy and the civil maritime sector; Dr Keith B. Hindley, doctor of chemistry, head of Technology Detail Ltd of York, and a writer on technology for The Times of London, Die Welt and Weltwoche; and Michael A. Laughton, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Dean of Engineering at the University of London.
• A fourth man, in part. Leonard Holihan, head of the Advanced Energy Research Institute in London, was present for some of it. Deräker adds that Holihan had already visited Meyer the previous year and had been able to confirm then that the cell worked. That is a 1989 visit, earlier than the commission, and it is why Holihan introduced Meyer at the 1991 conference.
• What they saw. On starting, a flame of freshly made hydrogen within seconds, hot enough to melt a steel rod, from water split by a rapidly pulsed high-voltage field drawing current in the order of milliamperes, and without the heating of the electrolyte that ordinary electrolysis gives.
• The photograph. The article carries a picture of two of the commission in the buggy, captioned as Dr Keith Hindley and, at the right, Admiral Sir Griffin.

Deräker also counts twenty-five patents granted between 1981 and 1990, names the magazine's earlier Meyer coverage as issues 43, 44 and 48, and reports that, according to raum & zeit USA, Meyer had by then been granted personal protection by the state. That last is a claim of the magazine's, not a document.

The report itself is still not here. This article is a report on the commission, not the commission's text, and the magazine did not print the text. What the archive holds of Griffin's own writing is the 1993 Warsash lecture extract.

The article belongs to raum & zeit and is not reproduced here. The scan is linked above; this page is the citation and what it reports.