[NewCandle] Brown/Hutchison batteries

[Nick Reiter]

Hi Kyle,

I would share Keiths view personally about JHutch.  I
know him only to the extent of having spoken with him
a few times by phone in the late 80s and having been
maybe a little more familiar than most with the era
during which George Hathaway (Geo, you out there?)
worked on the replicatory attempts of the basic
"Hutchison Effect"

In a very small blurb, John is a bit eccentric but
otherwise not moreso than a half dozen other great boy
mad scientists and Tesla-philes I have known.  His
controversy lies more in his mercurial artists'
persona.  This was what made things difficult for
replication attempts in the early days.  While usually
our methodology would be to start with an effect
generated by a number of components going at once and
narrowing it down by taking red herrings away one by
one... John always prefers to just go with the tack of
add more=make new weirder neater different wowzer
things happen!  I like John.  He just runs counter to
what I do by nature as a scientist, both in my day job
and on the side.  OTOH, I do not think he has been the
victim of persecution by shadowy forces as he used to
portray.  But then again, real MIB reaction is usually
for straight people who discover truly strange things
and try to present them classically.

Brown's notions I believe tended to run toward high
atomic mass dielectrics.  Rochelle Salt is
piezoelectric, ferroelectric and chiral, but otherwise
I think its a fairly light molecule, like a tartrate. 
I tried growing some crystals a few years back.  TTB
was more into heavy nuclei AND high K.

Best,

n

--- "Kyle R. Mcallister" <mcallister at fdscience.org>
wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> Carnauba wax arrived today. So at least that's in
> the inventory now.
> 
> Alright, speculation for a moment. Anyone have any
> idea what exactly the 
> deal is with Hutchison? Is he just a looney, has he
> got something, or is 
> he a looney who has something? Keith, you seem to
> think he's on to 
> something. Any ideas as to what?
> 
> Probably no one will know unless this is tried. I've
> got the power 
> supply now, and the necessary ingredients to make C
> L Strong type 
> electrets, and the pseudo-electret Brown cells.
> Brown seems to have 
> liked using carnauba wax as a binder. Unless that's
> just what he had 
> available to him, it seems to tie in some sort of
> electret-like action 
> to the 'battery.'
> 
> He used various substances mixed into the wax,
> either tungsten carbide, 
> litharge (lead monoxide), and I've seen mentioned
> elsewhere, barium 
> titanate and lead zirconate tantalate.
> Hutchison uses Rochelle salts (no problem if we want
> to use that, it's 
> easily made)
> 
> Brown suggests heavy metal oxides or carbides. A
> recurring thread with 
> both, when thinking of barium titanate, Rochelle
> salts, etc., is that 
> these are ferroelectric substances. However, as far
> as I know, litharge 
> and tungsten carbide are not.
> 
> In my opinion, a few things are clear:
> A. the likelihood of this doing anything
> revolutionary are very small. 
> But this is not expensive to do, and given the
> possibility (and my own 
> curiosity) it is worth investigating in my opinion.
> B. Brown's work with petrovoltaics and this
> 'battery' thing are not well 
> enough investigated. Another reason to do so.
> C. We won't know for sure unless we try.
> 
> I'm gonna go shovel my driveway now, and think about
> this for a bit.
> 
> --Kyle
> 
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