Why Stan Meyer turned to water: the winter Ohio ran out of gas

Why would a man in Ohio spend his life trying to run things on water? Stan Meyer told a room in Denver in 1997: during the Arab embargo, Columbia Gas called in the industrial leaders and told them their natural gas was being cut off, and he watched "some of the richest and most powerful industrial leaders in the state of Ohio popping pills." The background checks out. In the 1970s federal priority rules served homes first and industry last, and the Federal Reserve reported in February 1977 that natural gas supplies into Ohio had been curtailed every year since 1972. In the winter of 1977 Governor Rhodes declared an energy emergency and factories across Ohio lost their gas so homes could stay warm. Stan's first big project was heat, not cars: the solar silo in Grove City, in the local paper through 1976. Sources: Stan Meyer, Denver, 1997, at 27:36 and 28:28; Federal Reserve Beige Book, Cleveland district, February 1977; Grove City Record, 1976.

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 lecture · Denver, 1997
• Stan Meyer · The Grove City Record · April 1976
• The silo frame · The Grove City Record · July 1976
• Stan Meyer, lecture, Denver, 1997, at 27:36 and 28:28 — transcript on stanslegacy.com
• Federal Reserve Beige Book, Cleveland district, February 1977: natural gas supplies into Ohio curtailed each year since 1972 — minneapolisfed.org/beige-book-reports/1977/1977-02-cl
• Winter 1977 Ohio gas emergency (Gov. James Rhodes), contemporary wire reports; federal curtailment priorities, OTA 1975
• The Grove City Record, 1976 (solar silo) — stanslegacy.com