Rigel, I have no idea what you meant/said about Papp. Feynman did not want to settle the law suit-- he was forced to by lawyers for Cal tech, He wanted to take the remains of the engine apart to find out how Papp had arranged for an explosion. Papp was a paranoid shizophrenic and a chronic liar and con man. I knew a doctor who once treated him for an obviously self inflicted gunshot wound. He claimed a hit man tried to kill him (apparently a very incompetet hit man). And BTW, there is no theoretical reason or experimental evidence whatever that one could expect to extract energy from so-called noble gases. Papp is sort of a lowest common denominator of gullibility. And so is that crook Rohner who still takes money for pretending to reconstruct Papp's emgines.
Papp and the Papp engine
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maryyugo, I meant that Papp was full of bullshaite. Sorry I was mumbling so -- no submarine no noble engine (well he built an engine) but no nothing at all . I wanted to drag Sherlock out of this thread and into the playground. This or another thread would be the place for it. (Sherlock get your assa-pedia) to the playground where we are talking about Papp.
Speaking rhetorically here. Why do we spend so much time telling the same people the same thing? Why not spend the same time on education?
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The train ticket part of the Papp submarine story.
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Papp was quite a character
Well, at least he did not think he was a candidate for the Nobel.
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Papp was clearly a charlatan, and according to all accounts the submarine escapade was an absurdly-executed fraud.
However, there was ample evidence that he was producing some kind of gainful reaction with his motor, and managed to exploit the phenomenon sufficiently to harvest enough speculative investment to keep him going. He was apparently unable or unwilling to bring the technology to market. Some people suspect the presence of an alpha-emitter within the combustion area that rendered the engine commercially nonviable. In any case, the published information is clearly full of red herrings, and the specific details of his claims are mostly useless, to follow or debate. Russ Gries found some interesting effects with his "Popper" replication apparatus, and I suspect much more could be learned from further replication research.
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Papp was clearly a charlatan.. However, there was ample evidence that he was producing some kind of gainful reaction with his motor.
So was he charlatan or had he real technology in hands? Apparently many people get confused with it.
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I don't know about the engine, but...
A useful scammer detector rule is to see how many world-changing but unverified/unverifiable (other than anecdotally) technologies an inventor has made. More than one should set off alarms.
It is not a perfect rule, but it works far more often than it fails.
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When you can't gaslight the living, defame the dead I guess
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So was he charlatan or had he real technology in hands? Apparently many people get confused with it.
It appears that he was a charlatan who also had real technology.
From what I gather, this is similar to Rossi's story: a kernel of truth is wrapped in voluminous bullshit, effectively confusing enough people who presume an either/or storyline.
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No idea of what is reality, but a good manipulator exploit what people tell him about their assumption, their ideas, their dream. He also can get inspiration from papers to build a soup of credible claims, credible technology, credible theories. He can exploits reality, imagination, goodwill and dreams. He can exploit theorists, experimenters, hobbyists, businessmen, confirming their beliefs, and assembling all in a coherent soup.
Another example: good disinformation is based on mostly real fact, mixed with few fake claims.
This is something to remind.
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ISTR that appendix A was the report by a Chemistry professor and a certified tractor mechanic, who measured the brake horse power. Hard to fool the latter!
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The last test that Russ Gries ran was the production of the feedback current test. This current is important to power the next firing of the alternate cylinder. The Papp engine always has an even number of cylinders that alternately fires with one powering the ignition of the other in succession. Russ saw no feedback current. Russ used no radioactive elements in the current pickup electrodes.
On the other hand, Bob Rohner uses thorium 232 in his current pickup electrodes and Bod sees a feedback current. Joe Papp used radium in his pickup electrodes and he gathered enough feedback current to fire the alternate cylinder with excess current left over.
External Content www.youtube.comContent embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.See 18:00 of the Bob Rihner video demo for a demonstration of the production of the feedback current.
Russ wanted to have more children at the time so he gave up the Papp engine experiments. He was not willing to use radioactive elements to activate his pickup electrodes (apply a positive charge bias) for fear of reproductive problems that those radioactive elements would cause.
Without the production of a overunity amount of feedback current, the Papp engine does not self power itself.
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Eric (et all).
I looked at the link you provided on I-energy (well I saw it years ago and a refresher is not a bad idea). Maybe we could have a thread and put this to bed once (well it will not be for all) Papp interested me for sometime. So I went to the links in the article.
https://www.google.com/patents/US3670494.
I think I am turning (like a zombie) to a ahhhahhh a skeptic. NEED BRAINS.
Just so whomever is Sherlock ( but seems knows of MaryYugos posting style . This the the place. Not the BG thread.
And for the record Papp it is bullshaite. Okay'm?
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I looked at the link you provided on I-energy (well I saw it years ago and a refresher is not a bad idea). Maybe we could have a thread and put this to bed once (well it will not be for all) Papp interested me for sometime. So I went to the links in the article.
Done.
The Papp patents stand out for being improbable candidates for teaching someone skilled in the art how to make a working noble gas engine. What initially piqued my interest was the witness testimony discussed in the Mallove article (linking again for context). And that Mallove is a pretty smart guy, even if he was attracted to technologies that would be too fringe for most people. And the testimony of Mike McKubre concerning Bob Rohner's related device.
That generated enough interest for me to labor through the Papp patents and to read up on the history from other sources. I have my own thoughts on how the Papp engine might have worked, if it ever did, and one reading of the patents is that they are the product of an unbalanced mind that tried a bunch of stuff and stumbled onto something that worked without having a systematic theory for why it worked. I suspected that Feynman couldn't get past the theory gibberish and as a consequence wrote off the Papp device prematurely, failing to do sufficient due diligence to fully and adequately debunk it, an effort that would at any rate probably have been given up following the lawsuit.
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Eric,
Thanks for the thread. I look at articles an try to drill down, if they are interesting. So the patent that was linked was to Pappy's use , but then (with regards to looking at patents) I have a lot of time on my hands to follow links. I asked you how it could have worked and you provided a plausible answer. Since we now have a Papp spot...
Maybe there is some new knowledge here. It's a better place than the BG thread that is for sure. I did not want to get even near either the Sub or Feynman. But (regarding the Sub) who knows ?? in the early 60's-80's cavitation is one of the most protected of areas with regards to weapons. So going back- it would seem that he had non-noble gasses (air) or had a nuclear source. That engine had to leak- maybe he had it surrounded by methane.
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Yes the sub was a footnote in the absurd. My understanding and knowledge on propeller design is very old (over 2 decades) it is still a secret (AFAIK). Back to the Papp engine. IE magazine is not very credible to me, but a damn good read. I read it but consider the bias in the article. I do that here (bias) also. How that engine produced kinetic energy (if it could have worked at all) is beyond what I understand. It would have to be nuclear at this point, non chemical. But that is the thing with these historic records. It is hard to challenge them after so much time has passed. I have not either seen or heard of a noble gas engine with out oxidizer.
//As an aside, look at the back of the Kursk (after is was raised or
razed
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How that engine produced kinetic energy (if it could have worked at all) is beyond what I understand.
For the benefit of new readers, I'll restate the mechanism that seems plausible to me here: We can gather from the patents that Papp placed radioactive elements on the electrodes (e.g., thorium). When the electrodes discharged, this might have increased the activity of the radioisotopes, causing prompt particles to ionize the inert working gas without heating it up significantly.
But that is the thing with these historic records. It is hard to challenge them after so much time has passed.
There is a danger in revisiting these old historical episodes that do not have much basis in scientific fact. My hope is that as with the Rossi affair, if enough information can be gathered together in one place, it will provide a disinfectant if needed along with a sense of what the relative likelihoods of various possibilities are.
