The congressman, the Pentagon and the water car: it wasn't Stan Meyer's

In 1984 Rep. George Hansen of Idaho was convicted of hiding loans, among them $135,000 from three Virginia men who wanted the Pentagon to test a "water-powered car". It gets told as a Stan Meyer story. The trial record, printed in the House Ethics Committee's report (H. Rept. 98-891), says otherwise: the car was "invented by a man in Australia", and the testimony names him, Stephen Horvath of Queensland. Stan knew Horvath's patents and said in 1989 that they needed distilled water with chemicals added; his own claim was voltage on plain, unprocessed water. Different man, different country, different idea. The editorial and the record are on stanslegacy.com.

About the voices. The narrator is NeuralStan, an AI voice the archive uses for its made films. Where you hear Stan Meyer, it is Stan: every word of his is cut from an original recording, and nothing he says was synthesised.

Sources

• Stan Meyer · house meeting, New Zealand · 1989
• The Marion Star, 9 July 1984
• US House Ethics Committee, H. Rept. 98-891 (1984) · public record
• "No action now", The Marion Star, 9 July 1984, p. 4, with the archive's note on the trial record — stanslegacy.com
• House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, In the Matter of Representative George V. Hansen, H. Rept. 98-891 (19 July 1984), part 5, printed p. 21: https://ethics.house.gov/committee-reports/matter-representative-george-v-hansen/
• Stan Meyer, house meeting, New Zealand, 1989, part 1, at 28:37 — stanslegacy.com
• Stephen Horvath, US 3,954,592, Electrolysis apparatus — stanslegacy.com