Free electricity: fact or myth?

Just in the past week, I've seen or heard several references to the mythic magnetic power generator, a device that purports to produce "free" electricity.

The concept is fascinating. Proponents say these devices could create enough power to run the average home or business. Should that prove true, implementing the technology at homes and businesses across the United States could cast aside reliance on Middle East energy producers.

The latest reference comes from a tweet posted by Mike Stewart also known as @greenwind. Stewart gave heads up to a post by Tyler Thomas on articlebase.com that says, "Due to suppression of this idea from the big corporations, the plans for building a free energy generator which could change the world have never been out on the open."

That's not altogether true, at least from what I've been able to find in a rather unscientific search on the Web. There's a lot out there, most of it very grassroots, about the subject for and against it. Some deride the concept, while others hail it as the second coming and offer instructions on how to create a device.

Lutec Australia PTY Ltd. has been trying to get a product to market for years and at one point in a video posted to youtube.com said its magnetic generators would be available in 2008. That apparently never took place, and the company's current site, lutec.com.au, now shows nothing more than a picture of its latest prototype.

Scrambling across the Web for more references to this product will produce all sorts of hits. A circle of my friends and I from East High in Anchorage stay in touch via group emails and turn up this sort of thing frequently. A number of us are into clean energy and wild ideas.

The king of magnetic power has to be Joseph Newman, who appeared on the Johnny Carson's Tonight Show and multiple other programs with his free energy device decades ago. Newman lapsed into obscurity after his efforts to patent his device were rejected by the U.S. Patent Office and his creation was labeled a perpetual motion machine, according to wikipedia.org.

Who knows where the concept will go? I suspect a lot of static.

But I liked this quote from the narrator of a Lutec video post: "Come help us green up, and clean up, our planet."

Photo: Lutec Australia PTY Ltd. prototype.