Proposed WFC International Product Development Center

Proposed Water Fuel Cell International Product Development Center

A page of the Water Fuel Cell Investment Portfolio, Phase I & II — the prospectus put in front of investors while Meyer was raising money to build the centre. It is a legend rather than a list: forty-one numbered facilities, grouped by department, keyed to a site plan. Transcribed by the archive; the wording, spelling, capitalisation and numbering are the document’s own.

Executive Directors

• 1) VIP Area
• 2) Central Operating

Engineering Design Facilities

• 3) Electronic System Controls
• 4) Home Heating
• 5) Home Electrical
• 6) Water Purification Systems
• 7) Marine Applications
• 8) Auto
• 9) Trucks
• 10) Grain Drying
• 21) Space Deployment
• 22) Research & Development Lab
• 23) Advance System Design
• 24) Light Industrial
• 25) Medium Industrial
• 26) Heavy Industrial
• 27) Rocket Propulsion design Group
• 28) Material Assessment Group
• 35) Aviation Design Group
• 36) Naval System Design Group
• 37) Quality Control Assessment Group

Engineering Support Facilities

• 11) System Packing Specialists
• 12) Machine/Metal Shop
• 32) Testing Complex (A)
• 33) Testing Complex (3)
• 34) Testing Complex (C)

Recreational Facilities

• 13) Sports & Game Center
• 14) Cafeteria & Coffee Shop
• 15) Swimming Pool
• 16) Health Bar
• 17) Basketball Courts
• 18) Tennis Courts
• 19) Park Area
• 20) Cultural Arts & Entertainment Center

Data Processing Facilities

• 29) Telecommunication Center
• 30) Video Documentation
• 31) Technical Writing

Transportation Facilities

• 11) Railroad
• 39) Airport
• 38) Air Traffic Control Tower
• 40) Heliport
• 41) Trucking

The numbering

The numbers run out of order inside every group because they are not a sequence but callouts: each one marks a building or an area on a drawing, and the drawing is what an investor was actually looking at. That sheet is described from the other side in Stephen Meyer’s 2007 interview, where an investor in Lexington hands over the packet he was sent: “one of the newsletters that he received had this drawing. It wasn’t, of course, a photograph because the buildings didn’t exist yet, but the drawing showed large airplanes parked around a facility.” The aeroplanes are items 35, 38, 39 and 40 of this key.

Every number from 1 to 41 appears, and 11 appears twice — System Packing Specialists under engineering support, and the Railroad under transportation — so forty-two entries share forty-one numbers. One of the two is wrong and the document does not say which. Transportation also runs 39 before 38, and the three testing complexes read (A), (3) and (C), where (B) is plainly meant.

What the centre was for, and how far it got, is told in Meyer’s own words elsewhere in the archive. In the lab talk the plan is already taking form in 1987: “The product development center that Stan and Charlie were talking about is really taking form and we’re now proceeding to set up a corporate entity in order to finance the development of that center. We are preparing to sell stock with regard to this technology.” This portfolio is that stock sale. By 1989, in New Zealand, he says it plainly: “we are now setting up a product development center … in Ohio, by which we take our tech base and we’re now designing retrofit energy systems.” Nothing on this page was ever built.