The Inflection
Transcript
We must part against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. When we think about classified government secrets, we usually think about military operations or intelligence gathering. But what if I told you that right now, today, there are over 5,000 patent applications being held under secrecy orders by the United States government? Inventions that could potentially transform our world, locked away from public view under the authority of a law most Americans have never heard of. Today we're talking about the invention secrecy act of 1951. The inventors who've had their work suppressed and what this means for technological progress in energy and propulsion.
Charles Nelson Pogue was a Canadian inventor in the 1930s. He filed a series of US patents for a miracle carburetor, often referred to as the Winnipeg carburetor, that would allegedly enable a car to attain 200 m per US gallon. When this invention hit the news, oil stocks crashed immediately. As expected, large oil companies were not pleased. They immediately began lobbying Congress for help.
Congress went on to pass the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951. Under this act, the US government can review any patent application and if it's deemed to affect national security, issue a secrecy order with the stated purpose of preventing technological innovations that could threaten national security from falling into enemy hands. On the surface, that sounds reasonable, but here's where it gets concerning. The problem isn't with the legitimate classification of certain patents. It's with the government's clear overclassification of any invention that may affect the wealthy and very influential corporations.
Once the secrecy order is in place on a patent, the inventor cannot develop their invention, cannot speak about it publicly, cannot show it to potential investors, and cannot even file for a patent in another country. Violation of a secrecy order can result in criminal prosecution, fines up to $10,000, and up to two years in prison. After having his inventions patents classified through this secrecy act, Charles Nelson Pogue quietly withdrew from the public. In 1977, Tom Ogle accidentally reinvented a technology very similar to that of Charles Pogue when he removed the carburetor on his lawnmower and ran a hose directly from the exhaust into the carburetor intake jet. Done out of curiosity, this apparently allowed the lawn mower to run for over 96 hours straight.
Tom Ogle had been shot in the stomach in April of 1981. He survived the attack, leading to widespread speculation that the shooting was an assassination attempt linked to his invention. Unfortunately, Tom Ogle died on August 19th, 1981 at the age of 26. Autopsy reports said his death was an accident after a night of excessive drinking combined with prescription painkillers. John Surl was a British inventor who claimed in the 1960s to have developed what he called the SURL effect generator, a device that supposedly produced free energy through rotating magnetized rollers.
While Surl's claims were never independently verified and remain highly controversial, what's interesting is how aggressively his work was shut down. His home was raided, his equipment was confiscated, and he was eventually imprisoned. Whether his device actually worked or not, the response was disproportionate for what was essentially an unproven scientific claim. Stanley Meyer claimed in the 1980s and 1990s to have invented a water powered car using a device he called a water fuel cell to split water into hydrogen and oxygen through a process called electrolysis. Then using the hydrogen as fuel to power the engine.
He demonstrated this invention on a dune buggy, claiming it traveled over a 100 miles on one gallon of tap water. On March 20th, 1998, Stanley Meyer and his brother sat down for dinner with investors. Upon striking a deal over dinner, they all toasted in celebration. Shortly after, Stanley ran out of the restaurant and collapsed on the ground. His last words to his brother were, "They poisoned me." His death was ruled to be from an aneurysm, but this excuse was less than convincing to those who knew him and witnessed the event.
Floyd Sparky graduated MIT in 1969 with a master's degree in electrical engineering. He went on to become a renowned electrical engineer and magnetic specialist and was best known for developing the vacuum triode amplifier or VTA. The VTA reportedly produced over 500 watts of output from just 330 microwatts of input, over a million times the input power. The device was said to harness energy from the zero point field with selfosscillating magnets that continued to vibrate without external power after activation. The VAT was no bigger than a deck of playing cards as he filmed demonstrations of this device powering multiple light bulbs and various electric appliances in his garage.
Claims were that the device would produce whatever amount of energy was needed without drawing or requiring any additional energy input. In 1995, shortly after a visit from two mysterious gentlemen in dark suits, Floyd's sparky suite collapsed in his home. His wife immediately called for an ambulance. Responders would not allow her to ride with him to the hospital. She never spoke to him again.
His death was recorded as a sudden and severe heart attack. All records of his inventions were confiscated by anonymous government officials and once again another technological breakthrough was buried. The Invention Secrecy Act gives the government legal authority to suppress technological innovation indefinitely without public oversight and without compensating inventors. Over 5,000 patents are currently under these orders, and we have no way of knowing what they contain. Maybe they're all legitimate security threats, advanced weapons that truly should be kept secret.
Or maybe some of them represent suppressed solutions to our energy crisis, our climate crisis, and our technological limitations. The very existence of this law means we'll never know what we're missing. And that might be the most troubling part of all. Thanks for watching. If this topic interests you, let me know in the comments what you'd like me to cover next.
And remember, sometimes the most important technologies aren't the ones we have.