On 01/27/2010 04:38 PM, John Berry wrote: > Papp submarine? > Plane tickets? > > Seems there is more I don't know about Papp than I'd have thought.
Yeah, he invented a jet submarine, designed it, built it in his garage out of plywood and spare washing machine parts, and then took it to France, taking just 13 hours to cross the Atlantic. He turned up on the French coast, alone, after the trip. Unfortunately it sank just before he got to the French coast, so he couldn't display it (and it was never found); there was just Papp, alone on his life raft. Equally unfortunately, he couldn't adequately explain the plane tickets to France which were found in his pocket, nor the witness who claimed to have seen him boarding a plane for France some hours earlier. So say a number of websites. Attribution to original sources is lacking so take it with as much salt as you like. IE has an article on Papp, which also talks about this, but nothing in the article is attributed (that I could see) and it also repeats the usual version of the Feynman story, which appears to be bogus, so I wouldn't put a lot of trust in that particular article. As to the Feynman story, AFAIK the only eyewitness who actually wrote what happened at the exploding Papp engine demo was Feynman himself, and according to his account, it was *Papp* who unplugged the engine, not Feynman. Feynman did nothing more than ask to hold the plug for a while after Papp had pulled it from the wall, and then delay a bit in giving it back. Since there was a lawsuit over it (with attendant investigation and testimony and whatnot), and a number of people were there watching it all and could easily have cried foul had Feynman tried to lie about it, I would tend to suspect that the version Feynman committed to print was accurate. The more dramatic version (repeated, unattributed, by IE), in which Feynman himself yanks the plug from the wall and then the machine blows up, is repeated a lot but I've never seen any attribution to original sources indicating what witness, if any, claimed it happened that way. Unattributed dramatic stories which are contradicted by usually reliable witnesses can, as a general rule, be safely relegated to the "urban legend" bucket, IMO. > > There is also US /Patent/ 3977191 - /Atomic/ expansion reflex optics > power optics power source (AEROPS) > > Which is very similar. > > On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 10:19 AM, Stephen A. Lawrence <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > > > On 01/27/2010 03:48 PM, [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]> wrote: > > In reply to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>'s message of Wed, 27 Jan 2010 > 20:40:18 +0000 > > (UTC): > > Hi, > > [snip] > >> There was mention of a combustion engine in new IE issue using > inert gases. Is this what > >> SPICE is based on? could one gas act like an electrolyte while > compressing "bubbles" of > >> the other gas? > > [snip] > > The Papp engine ran on inert gasses. Is that what they are > referring to? > > You mean "runs", not "ran"; the (cough) "dream" lives on, as the Rohner > brothers are apparently still in business, claiming to be the techies > who actually built the engine and the only people who understand it, and > at least one of them is apparently selling something, not quite sure > what: > > http://www.rohnermachine.com/ > > http://www.pappengine.com/ > > All good fun, they look at least as legitimate as Steorn... > > When there is a pressing need which nobody can fill, people will come > crawling out of the woodwork claiming to have special magical knowledge > that allows them to fill the need. > > Love the story of the Papp submarine -- particularly the bit about the > plane tickets. > >
