THE FUSOR REACTOR: Philo Farnsworth
Furthermore, ITT formally and publicly announced that the Fusor project was “a failure … a dead-end”. Dr. Farnsworth suffered another stroke on a plane ride back home.
COOL DOWN
During his long recuperative period Farnsworth decided that the Fusor should be privately developed to its complete perfection. After all, the Fusor was Farnsworth’s own creation, why should he not pursue the course alone? Dr. Farnsworth tried to obtain his patents back from ITT. Considering their public announcement of his “dead-end” he believed they would be more than happy to sell him back the “wasted” patents. Since the Fusor was “a miserable failure” it would be he (not they) who be taking the loss by buying back what was considered worthless on the academic market.
He therefore contacted ITT and honestly announced his hopeful intentions. The answer came with quick, cold, and ready calculation, negative and impersonal. Under no circumstances would they ever release to him the right to pursue the Fusor project. Moreover, ITT legally warned Farnsworth that it would dominate all of his own private Fusor research forever, despite its “infeasibility”. ITT cut all formal financial ties with Farnsworth and left him virtually bankrupt in 1966. Several Farnsworth patents yet maintain the entire ITT operation to this very day. In quick, methodically accurate legal moves, ITT asserted its complete ownership of all Fusor applications for the future. This curious response surrounds. a device which is declared a “dead-end”!
In July 1969 Farnsworth built a small Fusor lab in a Brigham Young University cellar room. With privately purchased equipment he continued his research with generous University support. Suddenly, however, creditors began crowding him on every side. Furthermore, it was impossible to obtain the necessary fuel materials. Deuterium and tritium gases were already regulated by legal means, and he was barred from purchase. During this time an offer came to him from SONY. By now he was unable to continue. Physically ill and emotionally scarred from his dealings with both RCA and ITT, he died in 1971. ITT sent nothing to his poor widow.
LIGHTS OUT
There are those noble individuals in whose hearts ride the dreams of whole societies and futures. Most younger academicians will not even recall Farnsworth’s project. These individuals will usually protest that such a claim is not “scientifically possible”. They arrogantly base their confident refutation on the vacuum of the critical piece of information: the Patent Record itself. Such scientifically biased refutations are patterned personality reactions, based on incomplete knowledge. Only suspicion best explains the cavalier manner in which the term “pseudo-scientific” has been flung about in the academic-industrial world these days. It is indeed marvelous that the phrase makes its appearance, after, always after a threatening scientific achievement has been scored by private researchers.
There are deeply entwined reasons why few have ever heard of Dr. Farnsworth’s Fusor System. These reasons exceed the modern academic censure of this possibility. ITT now holds the Farnsworth patents, and bears the social debt of responsibility for suppressing Fusor Technology. ITT will not release them to public domain for licensing. ITT maintains this stance despite the twenty-year statute of limitations normally granted to United States Patents. Since 1982, the patents should have been fair game. ITT yet conspicuously withholds the rights of all privateers from formally developing and marketing the Fusor device. This is indeed an awkward poise for a device, which is “a miserable failure”.
What threatens traditional financial dynasties more than a new discovery? Regulating what discoveries are “permissible” precedes what regulators decide is “allowable knowledge”. In other words, the control of discovery precedes the control of knowledge. The control of knowledge precedes the control of awareness. And the control of awareness prevents new discovery on behalf of those whose financial interests are potentially threatened at any moment.
Fundamental natural discovery is the force around which corporations scurry, fearing the often-violent social and economic changes, which have historically followed the appearance of new discovery. To be ignorant of fundamental scientific discoveries is to be ignorant of both the present world condition and the future world-direction. Fundamental revolutionary technology represents a complete elevation of society into a new consciousness and world-condition. Fundamental revolutionary technologies such as Dr. Farnsworth’s Fusor have been deliberately suppressed. We do not know with certainty the actual depth and extent by which the commands of suppression are dispatched. We do not know how far government agencies are involved in this process of suppressions. What we do know for certain is that a degenerate technology, a distorted and synthetic fragment of lost science, now guides the course of world history.
Technological revolution is real revolution. It is that which the dynasties most dread. Deferring potential technological revolutions infers control at the fundamental level: at the patent Office, at the market place, in the very courts of government. Deferred technology maintains the financial stability of a few “old families” at the expense of humanity at large. Science, the servant of providence and humanity, has lost its first love. It has lost its way because its ways were deranged by excessive and unwarranted financial involvements.
But, where is the knowledge of lost technology? Where does this knowledge reside? How does the knowledge surface? Who are the ones through whom the lost information is socially regained, proliferated, and acquired? Look in the patent archives. You will find them all safely, and legally, preserved. Hot fusion was achieved, scrutinized, judged, condemned, assassinated, buried, and censured. It is an episode, which is now “forbidden” to mention. It is remarkable that individuals in the fusion research teams across the world are even aware that their goal was realistically attained in 1965. Thirty years ago.
Among the incredibly prolific patents of Dr. Farnsworth remain two working designs for achieving practical nuclear fusion: patents 3.258.402 and 3.386.883 as found in the Registry. The patents themselves are textbook lessons in the fusion art. The designs of the device, which attained sustained fusion, is elegantly simple and can be examined. Such technological options, as global property, must be cultivated among disadvantaged nations. New technologies must never again die on Puritanic shores before visiting the other shores which lie beyond these national gates.