Defense Intelligence Reference Document Maverick Inventor Versus Corporate Inventor

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The inventors highlighted in this study investigate technologies encompassing the
production or conversion of energy from novel sources, sometimes referred to as "new
primary energy sources," including permanent magnets, cold and warm fusion, "zero-
point fluctuations," and novel uses of batteries and rotating systems, as well as
theoretical and experimental approaches to modulating the local gravity field. Some of
these inventors and inventions are described in recent books (see Reference 5, 6).
Historically, what has been the relative contribution to the major innovations in these
areas? Taking the specific area of electrical energy production as an example, it was the
contributions, inspiration, and determination of maverick inventors such as Tesla that
resulted in the design of many of the current power-generating technologies in use
today. As far as radically new recent designs of alternators and motors is concerned,
there have been very few innovations from maverick inventors, Flynn's dual-path
magnetic circuit being a notable exception (Reference 7). Most of the innovations in this
area come from corporate inventors in the electric power industry, as the only path left
toward increasing efficiency is through novel materials such as high-temperature
superconductors. Such research is generally out of reach of the maverick inventor.
There has been no lack of attempts by maverick inventors to produce electrical "free
energy" and related machines.
In the area of space propulsion and earth-to-orbit methods in particular, again it was
the contributions of mavericks such as Tsiolkovsky and Goddard that laid the
foundations for modern rocketry. Both inventors took a practical approach to rocketry,
as the field was in its embryonic state. Initially denigrated as being "only" a high school
math teacher with no formal scientific training, Tsiolkovsky developed the fundamental
equation for rocket propulsion. Although Goddard was university trained, like
Tsiolkovsky, his fundamental work on rocket dynamics was largely ignored until later in
his life. During their early, creative years, neither man worked for large organizations.
As far as radically new propulsive means are concerned, there have been innovations
only in the efficiency and overall design, and the fundamental mass expulsion model
has remained unchanged. The efficiency innovations have sprung from corporate
inventors who have the resources to plan and test their increasingly costly designs only
in the context of large organizations.
The current innovations in these two fields come from larger organizations such as
those highlighted in the previous section. However it should be noted that these
innovations, largely increased in efficiency, have been economically as well as
technically viable. There are plenty of novel thruster designs that would be excellent
candidates for inclusion in the breakthrough category if only they were not so
expensive. Antimatter propulsion using positrons and antiprotons is a good example
(Reference 8, 9). In the early development of electrical machines, many parts of the
system were very expensive-electrical steel laminations, for example-but mass
production brought prices down. Fortunately inventions are not completely discarded
simply because they are too costly at the time of their conception. Increasingly today,
materials costs rather than manufacturing costs drive economic decisions about the
development and commercialization of inventions in this category. This is due in part to
the replacement of human manpower with its robotic equivalent and the scarcity of
certain strategic technologically important raw materials, such as rare earths.
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