My father told me a tall tale the other night.
Late '70’s. Guy owns a chemical plant in a midwestern state. He is approached by a mysterious fellow who wants to show him an invention.
Now… given the Rashamon effect, I highly suspect the plant owner left out a detail or two when he told my father this one. Still, I’m mostly interested in how this stunt was pulled, given it actually happened. There are plenty of descriptions of ‘free energy’ scams on the net, but none of them sounds this impressive.
The ‘invention’ was a small opaque black box weighing roughly one pound. All on the outside is a switch and a wall socket-style plugin.
The stranger puts the box on a card table the plant owner provides, and proceeds to plug stuff into the box. Lo and behold, it powers everything from toasters to TVs. They leave a bunch of stuff plugged in, lock the room, come back the next day. Everything’s still going.
They do this for a few days, dragging the biggest equipment they can into the room, but it never runs out of juice. The stranger claims it’s all a simple chemical reaction in there - the ultimate battery, you might say - and has enough power to last a household for 50 years. They could be sold for a hundred bucks.
Of course, he won’t open the box. He wants the plant owner to help him mass-produce more boxes, and offers him a cut for roughly seventy thousand, claiming he needs money up front for ‘security’. Why? He’s pursue by various companies and the government, won’t stay anywhere but in the plant owner’s home, constantly on the run, and displays several bullet scars on his torso from narrow escapes.
Plant owner figures, “Hell, even if what’s in that box only lasts a few days, it’s still revolutionary.” He gives him the money in cash. The guy takes his box and promptly vanishes. The owner eventually tells the story to my father, and displays the bank slip where he withdrew the money.
Ideas?
