On Dec 20, 2005, at 5:57 PM, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
What, exactly, happened with fusion research, cold or hot, in the 1930's? As far as I knew, fusion research didn't start until much later than that, but these two references seem to suggest that the groundwork for cold fusion was laid at that time.
Check out Wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Cold_fusion#Early_work> "The special ability of palladium to absorb hydrogen was recognized in the 19th century. In the late 1920s, two German scientists, Fritz Paneth and Kurt Peters, reported the transformation of hydrogen into helium by spontaneous nuclear catalysis when hydrogen is absorbed by finely divided palladium at room temperature. These authors later acknowledged that the helium they measured was due to background from the air or the glassware they used.
In 1927, Swedish scientist John Tandberg said that he had fused hydrogen into helium in an electrolytic cell with palladium electrodes. On the basis of his work he applied for a Swedish patent for "a method to produce helium and useful reaction energy". After deuterium was discovered in 1932, Tandberg continued his experiments with heavy water. Due to Paneth and Peters' retraction, Tandberg's patent application was eventually denied."
