Abstract

Known for over 150 years, the Faraday homopolar generator has been claimed to provide a basis for so-called "free-energy" generation, in that under certain conditions the extraction of electrical output energy is not reflected as a corresponding mechanical load to the driving source. During 1985, I was invited to test such a machine. While it did not perform as claimed, repeatable data showed anomalous results that did not seem to conform to traditional theory. In particular, under certain assumptions about internally generated output voltage, the increase in input power when power was extracted from the generator over that measured due to frictional losses with the generator unexcited seemed to be either about 13% or 20% of the maximum computed generated power, depending on interpretation. The paper briefly reviews the homopolar generator, describes the tests on this particular machine, summarizes and presents tentative conclusions from the resulting data.