“World-Changing Energy Source” by Tom Valone, PhD

A Review of Breakthrough Power by Jeane Manning and Joel Garbon

Published in Infinite Energy magazine, December, 2008

There are very few books on the market today that document the struggles and trials that
energy inventors have been through as they pioneer new energy inventions. Breakthrough
Power by Jeane Manning and Joel Garbon is one that stands out ahead of the crowd.
Starting with an autobiographical “Jeane’s Journey” the book switches to the second
person after that chapter and talks about reclaiming decision-making for the
breakthroughs that are needed. I liked the gray definition boxes, such as the one for
“leverage” and how renewables could be viewed as a “huge and effective crowbar” to
overcome the inertia of the polluting sector. It was also great reading short biographies of
many scientists, physicists, and inventors who I know personally. This book serves as a
good historical record of our society’s transition from a petroleum-based based economy
to a diversified one.

The short story about one of my heroes, Hermann Scheer, a Parliament member from
Germany, chair of the World Council for Renewable Energy and author of Energy
Autonomy, was very gratifying mainly because, as reported in New Scientist (May 21,
2008), Scheer explains in his own words that,

“Ten years ago, I called for a programme to install solar panels on 100,000 roofs in Germany, so that we
could have mass production as soon as possible. I wanted it in my party's programme in the 1998 elections.
Even Greenpeace said my plan was unrealistic, and my colleagues asked why we should be more radical
than Greenpeace. But I persuaded them, and the programme was implemented within four years. In 2000,
with colleagues, I launched the Renewable Energy Sources act, which ensures that independent producers
generating excess electricity can sell it to the grid at a guaranteed price. Now renewables account for nearly
15 per cent of electricity generated in Germany.”

Thus Hermann Scheer is a suitable roll model they begin with for the numerous other
radical energy pioneers introduced in the Manning-Garbon book. Another roll model
given a chapter in this book is Nikola Tesla who struggled with Edison and Morgan to
bring AC electricity to the world. However, when the concept of Tesla’s wireless power
is reviewed, the authors forgot to mention that recently at least eight scientists have
written scholarly articles and patented updated inventions following Tesla’s wireless
concepts, all of whom contributed their writings to my book, Harnessing the Wheelwork
of Nature for the section, “Principles of Wireless Power Transmission.” Suffice it to say,
as Dr. Jim Corum pointed out at a 2003 Tesla Conference and Exhibition which I
coordinated, all of Tesla’s wireless claims have been verified and proven to be accurate,
including the above 95% efficiency of the earth-ionosphere cavity for resonant low
frequency wireless power transmission. A single example of the 2007 MIT experiment
which powered a light bulb at five meters away is at least mentioned in the Manning-
Garbon book.

In the section devoted to T. Henry Moray, the reader is left with a very good history
summary but without a scientific important detail that all of Henry Moray’s devices used
radium, as admitted in the original copies of his book, The Sea of Energy. Missing from
this important biographical section is any update on recent work, except to mention
Moray King’s book, The Energy Machine of T. Henry Moray. However, Paul Brown
presented his updated solution to the Henry Moray “nuclear battery” at the First
International Conference on Future Energy in 1999 which I coordinated. In researching
the secret to Moray’s device, Paul was the most courageous inventor that I have ever
known. When he discovered that “The Moray Device and the Hubbard Coil Were
Nuclear Batteries” and published it in 1987, I was amazed. I remember having dinner
with him in Ottawa in 1988 as he explained all of the historical evidence he had
uncovered. This was detective work at its finest. However, when Paul proceeded to
improve upon their work and patent it in 1989 as the “resonant nuclear battery,” I realized
the entrepreneur in Paul was now maturing. Paul had merged his small company with a
publicly trading Peripheral Systems, Inc. and began appearing in Fortune and Business
Week. However, after experiencing personal threats including having his mother’s “car
bombed” he dropped out of sight for several years. Only with the subsequent
encouragement of friends did he later resume his research and start lecturing again, this
time on tritium batteries. When I saw Paul at a 1997 conference in Colorado, he was
approached by a couple of businessmen who alerted him to the brand new Bell Labs-
Lucent Technologies patent #5,642,014 (June 24, 1997). Called a “Self-Powered
Device,” the Bell inventors had brazenly referenced Paul’s lecture on the tritium battery
concept, which they proceeded to patent. What was also unusual about the application
was that it was designed solely for a watch battery that would last 25 years. Instead of
going for more powerful designs, that perhaps would disturb major economic controlling
interests, Bell Labs chose an almost innocuous application that surely would not displace
any existing businesses. To me, this shed a light on the problems Paul suffered in Oregon
with “Solving the Worldwide Need for Reliable Cheap Power” as the title of a 1989
article in Business Magazine indicated as his intentions.

Breakthrough Power does include many interesting reviews of modern researchers’

efforts and updates, such as Dale Pond’s work to revive the Keely technology and
Baumgartner’s construction of Schauberger’s implosion generators. The Magnetic
Pioneers section is very good, with details of the Floyd Sweet work, as well as the
Muller, Flynn, Searl, Gray, Coler, Johnson, Teal, Francoeur, and Wesley Gary motors.
The references to zero point energy is a little scarce with mention of myself and Fabrizio
Pinto but appears in many places throughout the book, as does the phrase “free energy”.

The sections on the “water is hot” and “better than fire” review the cold fusion,
electrolysis, and hydrogen experiments in a succinct manner. The reported confrontation
of Dr. Randell Mills with the Patent Office over an allowed patent, due to the interference
of Robert Park from the American Physical Society, is historically accurate and valuable
for its record of such a travesty of patent law. I also experienced a similarly deliberate,
overpowering lobbying effort of Robert Park in 1999 which somehow forced the Patent
Office to fire me for making plans for a Conference on Future Energy at the Commerce
Department auditorium. Both events were orchestrated in the same way by Park to cause
public pressure due to his column “What’s New” that is a scathing critical review of
anything that Park objects to, along with his insulting phone calls to upper management
of government agencies, complaining about cold fusion and perpetual motion. While the
Mills’ attorneys were unsuccessful in appealing the loss of their patent, I had to fight for
six years to regain my job at the Patent and Trademark Office in 2005, after the arbitrator
was convinced of Robert Park’s influence on my dismissal.

Breakthrough Power also includes an interesting section on “singing water” which

includes lots of inventors such as Andrija Puharich, Stan Meyer, Dan Dingel, P. M.
Kanarev, Roy McAlister, R. Santilli, Yull Brown, and Peter Graneau. Another
worthwhile section covers “solutions” with Nanosolar, Peter Hagelstein, Ed Sines, Paulo
Correa, Chukanov, Ken Shoulders, John Hutchison, GreenPower, Infinia Corporation and
the Air Car.

The section on “who hijacked the energy revolution” is focused on John Bedini,
Francisco Pacheco, W. Lambertson, Gene Mallove, Gilles Saint-Hilaire and Eric Lerner.
My only criticism is that Dr. George Miley’s work at the University of Illinois fusion lab,
published in peer-reviewed journals on the same plasma focus fusion research as Eric
Lerner is omitted, even though both authors saw Miley’s presentation at the Second
Conference on Future Energy in 2006. The proton-boron basis for this type of fusion,
being four times as energetic as regular D-D fusion, is also very attractive since it creates
a high energy beam of charged particles, which are easily converted to electricity,
without a steam generator like the Tokomak style of hot fusion. My institute has
advocated Eric Lerner’s focus fusion research and even drafted an illustrated business
plan for him that is still posted online at www.integrity-research.org .

With chapters on “You can reclaim choice” and “What you can do” the Manning-Garbon
book is a motivational manual for the coming energy revolution, which is also the title of
an earlier book by Jeane Manning. I like the extra effort put into adding an Appendix 1
for a draft of proposed energy legislation and an Appendix 2 to report on the very unusual
invention of Wilhelm Mahorn in Germany who has a self-running de-moisturizer for
basement walls that has installed about 20,000 of them under the name of Aquapol. This
is a book that should be on every Infinite Energy readers’ bookshelf and much credit is
due the authors for compiling such a large amount of interesting information on such a
vital field of interest for our society.