Nick Palmer writes:
> engineerable" by a competitor but this is not important. As long as you keep > the THEORY behind the construction of the machines secret (unless it would > be very obvious to infer it from the machines themselves) . . .
The machine would be an expression or embodiment of the theory. The machine describes the theory to an engineer or physicist more clearly than any paper could. As far as I know, all machines in history have been easy to reverse engineer, because the level of elite knowledge in one society is seldom very different from the level in other, competing societies. People generally learn things at about the same time. No individual is ever more than 10 or 20 years ahead of everyone else. (Not in technical knowledge, but you could argue that Francis Bacon was 300 years ahead of his time in his philosophy of science, and 400 years ahead in his ideas about society and race.)
The British used steamships in the Opium War against China (1840). Within a few years a handful of Chinese experts were able to build their own steamship, even though they have no direct access to the British ships. By around 1855 Japanese experts also built working steamships, soon after Perry "opened" Japan. The US gave the Japanese government a miniature steam railroad, but I do not think the people who built the steamship had access to it. I think they did have some textbooks. The main thing they had was the knowledge that such machines exist. To give another example, within the month of the atomic bomb explosion over Japan, Japanese scientists knew a great deal about nuclear weapons from their investigation of the fallout. If they had been given free access to materials and equipment I expect they could have replicated within a few years. Of course the U.S. banned nuclear weapons research in occupied Japan.
By the way, most magnetic motor researchers emphatically disagree with what I just wrote. They often claim that a theory is essential, and they have that theory. For example, here are quotes from J. Manning: "The Coming Energy Revolution:"
"Also, standard mathematical calculations didn't work with the VTA. In 1991, Sweet produced a math theory for the VTA�an engi�neering design model that showed how factors such as the number of turns of wire in the coils affected the device's behavior. Pro�ducing this theory was an important step. Without it, other re�searchers would not reproduce Sweet's work. . . .
Sweet also frustrated his fellow researchers by keeping secret his most important process�how he conditioned the magnets that are at the heart of the VTA. Did he pump the magnets with powerful electromagnetic pulses to shake up their internal structure? He refused to give details, and said it wasn't likely that other re�searchers would learn his secrets: "The odds against them finding out is like trying to open a safe with 100 dials set from zero to a hundred, without knowing the combination."
p. 76, 79
I think that is nonsense. I also think the descriptions of Sweet's machine and its various accomplishments are nonsense. For example, it reportedly exploded at one point, and another time it became an anti-gravity machine (that is, it lost weight while operating). In any case, the machine was not replicated, so for all practical purposes it never existed as far as I am concerned, even if it did exist in the physical sense.
- Jed
