John W. GULLEY
Self-Sustaining Electric Engine
Unidentified Author / Untitled Article:
Back in 1966 Gulley invented an auto engine that ran on magnets. Of course, we all know such a thing is impossible (don’t we?) --- as did Joe Creason of the Louisville Courier-Journal who took photographs of and witnessed it in 1966. Detroit got wind of it and sent their engineers down to Kentucky to talk to Gulley. A Mr Hahn --- bigshot engineer at Ford --- looked at Gulley’s charts and patents (registration # 211,702,317, Electric Motor) and told him it wouldn’t work. At that time, the engine didn’t work --- but not fro design defects. Gulley had built the engine out of old washing machine parts with no precision fittings and it had run almost 600 miles before it shook itself apart.
Hahn made one amusing mistake. On his flight out of Kentucky he sat down next to Gulley’s attorney (unbeknownst to Hahn) and proceeded to tell him all about Gulley’s motor and what made it work!
Gulley was later offered $35 million for the rights to hi sengine by GM and refused to sell unless GM would promise production. Shortly afterwards an unidentified male crawled under Gulley’s backyard fence to take a shot at him with a heavy caliber pistol. When the gun went off Gulley instantly grabbed a 20-gauge shotgun parked in the doorway and filled the guy full of #4 buckshot. Gulley, thinking he had been hit because of hot stucco that had fallen down his shirt from the bullet striking near him, walked back into the house to call the law. When he went back outside the body was gone --- but the ground where the man had fallen was covered with so much blood it looked like someone had been slaughtering a hog.
Gulley’s house has been broken into and ransacked repeatedly since then.
Louisville Courier-Journal (11-30-71)
"Engine That Doen’t Guzzle Gas is Ready for Unveiling"
by
Joe Creason
If all goes well, in the near future --- the "very near" future, he insists, John W. Gulley of Gratz finally will unwrap and demonstrate publicly the non-fueled, non-polluting, noiseless and self-sustaining electric engine he’s been working on in secrecy for 25 years.
In Gulley’s naturally prejudiced judgment, which some experts have sneered at but which has made qualified believers of others, is the automobile of the future.
However, he’s quick to add that a power source for automobiles is only one of its potential uses since, in his words, it can be modified for application for everything "from sewing machines to submarines".
The engine Gulley plans to demonstrate is called the Challenger, and it’s more efficient than prototype models he has put together before. Like the previous devices, it is based on the timed discharge of high voltage electricity from capacitors into the field of coils of a modified electric motor.
Now that may sound like a lot of double talk to us average laymen, but reduced to simple terms it means that the engine, if proven, could truly revolutionize the auto industry since it would weigh a furth as much, could be built for half the cost and would operate without the air-polluting fuel of a conventional combustion engine.
Although Gulley has hinted at plans to show his engine to the public several times in the past, various complications --- his health, patent problems, misunderstandings with his backers, vandals who have broken into his workshop and destroyed his prototypes --- have prevented him from doing so. This time, he persists, all the pieces are in place and the unveiling definitely will be held.
Gulley, who learned motor and generator skills during 13 years in the Army, claims to have been besieged with offers from potential investors after news of his invention was revealed here in 1966. But he has turned down all offers because he was convinced they "came from gas and oil people who would throw my plans into the ocean".
Any arrangement he makes for producing the engine will include a guarantee that ir will be marketed in competition with those presently on the market and also that it will be manufactured mainly in Kentucky.
Gulley’s greatest detractors have been those who say wheat he claims to have done is an invasion of the never-never land of perpetual motion.
"Only God is perpetual", he rebuts simply.
And so the mystery of whether or not John W. Gulley has invented the engine of the future or just another pipe dream soon may be answered.
Louisville Courier-Journal (1-26-67)
"Joe Creason’s Kentucky"
Three or four months ago I wrote about John W. Gulley, a Gratz, KY inventor who has come up with a brand new concept in a compact unit to power automobiles electrically.
The Gulley idea, which is based on a unit that generates its own current as it operates, sounded so much like perpetual motion, the power principle that man has dreamed about since the dawn of time, that the story stirred up an unusual amount of interest.
As a matter of fact, just this week I received two letters asking about the invention, bringing to more than 75 the number of inquiries that by now hae come in from Kentucky, Indiana, and five other states.
So here is the latest chapter in the story that, if you’ll pardon my leaning on the old Tom Swift series, might be titled "The Further Adventures of John Gulley and his Electric Runabout".
At present the invention which Gulley calls the Cobra Queen Electric Powering Assembly in the papers he has filed with the US Patent Office, is undergoing scientific research by an outside engineering firm. The reason for this is to determine the feasibility and practicality of the assembly in areas other than just the electric propulsion of vehicles.
Gulley is pushing to have this work completed soon so that he can demonstrate his idea in open competition against electric cars being developed by at least two major manufacturers. He hopes to be able to issue a challenge for public testing by midsummer.
"I know the principles the big auto makers are using, and I know my assembly is far superior", insists Gulley, a motor and generator expert who has been working on his ideas since 1946.
Reduced to simplest terms, Gulley’s power plant doesn’t depend on a battery --- and it was the bulky battery that had to be recharged every few hours that caused earlier electric cars to flop. His secret is a motor with a new type of winding that never before has been submitted to the Patent Office. A battery is needed only to start the unit; after that, it generates its own current.
The power unit weighs less than half that of conventional gasoline engines, and any known make of gas-burning car can be converted to use it easily and cheaply merely by changing the flywheel and applying it to the main power shaft of the Cobra Queen, Gulley says.
Since my first story, Gulley himself has been besieged by letters and calls from person wanting to invest in the idea, technical magazines wanting to do detailed articles about his car, and one letter from Senator Robert F. Kennedy, saying he was calling to to the attention of federal authorities concerned about air pollution.
The next chapter of the story won’t be written from some months yet. I’ll keep you posted.
Louisville Courier-Journal (4-12-69)
"Patience Wearing Thin, Inventor Plans Proof"
by
Joe Creason
Since he’s been nursing his idea for an engine to power automobiles electrically for 23 years now, you’d have to say that John W. Gulley has the patience of a prophet.
But his patience is beginning to wear a mite thin and he’s beginning to tire of demonstrating his idea to experts and then having them just tell him it’s the most revolutionary thing they’ve ever seen.
In short, John Gulley, who lives at Gratz, KY, thinks it’s about time the fish started biting.
After all, as he explains, every expert who has examined his electric powering device (including technologists for both the Army and Navy) have declared them to be theoretically sound.
Moreover, with health exerts showing alarm over the way gas and diesel engines are pushing air pollution to the danger level, he believes the time is right for a non-polluting motor that can replace internal combustion engines.
If it was known what his motor can do without polluting the air, and at a fraction of the cost of conventional methods, Gulley believes the public would be clamoring for his engine. Then not even the powerful oil and automobile lobbies, which he suspects are working against him, could continue to keep his ideas on ice.
The Gulley secret, which he started developing in 1946, is a compact motor he has patented under the name of Cobra Electric Powering Assembly and which generates its own current as it operates. A battery is needed only for a split second on starting.
In case you feel that sounds suspicious like the age-old theory of perpetual motion, you’re right. As a matte of fact, that’s the first hurdle Gulley has had to clear in every instance where skeptical experts have been converted into believers.
"It isn’t perpetual motion", Gulley insists, "because bearings, shafts and such will wear out".
Gulley’s growing impatience arises from the fact that, after putting his plans through computers which stamped them as sound, the Army Engineers have delayed having a private research organization start a detailed study.
If something isn’t done by May 15, Gulley plans to shake things up with a public demonstration. He’ll take a car fitted with one of his engines to Bufflao, NY, and drive it across the continent to Los Angeles. That would prove several things, he believes: that the car does not use any fuel, it employs no energy except that generated by his motor, and it can operate at maximum speed limit for long distances without having to get the power source recharged.
The Cobra Queen is only one Gulley invention. He has also developed the Swengine, an electric engine that drives a generator furnishing current back to the motor. This unit, he says, could power ships, the largest earth-moving machines, and the like.
But at the moment, the Cobra Queen is the motor he’s impatient to unveil.
Louisville Courier-Journal (11-8-70)
"Inventor Claims Car of Tomorrow"
by
Joe Creason
John Gulley’s promise to the world of tomorrow is a noiseless, smooth-riding electric automobile, cost-free in operation and emiting no fumes to pollute the air.
Working in a small, cluttered shop in rural Henry County, the self-styled disciple o Albert Einstein claims his machine is ready for mass production.
Further, he adds, the Einsteinian principles that make his car run can be modified for application in the entire field of mechanical movements --- "everything from a sewing machine to a submarine".
"The day is coming", he said, "when all household appliance will run on their own power, with no help from electricity wired into the house.
Such talk naturally draws more smiling disbelief than it does open-mouthed awe from scientists and engineers, especially coming, as it does, from a high-school dropout and self-taught inventor, working in the unlikely location of Gratz (population 70).
The scientific sneers come, however, only fro those who have only heard the 64-year old Gulley’s "impossible" theories, his claims of taking up where Einstein left off in the "unknown field" of gravity as a source of electric energy.
In Penfield, NY, lives a reputable young scientist who spent three months with Gulley and was made a qualified believer.
Van Combs said from his home in Penfield that Gulley "can do things from a practical point of view that defy present scientific evidence.
I can understand that he must be secretive, but he has got to find somebody he can trust and allow them to take his devices apart. I don’t know why he has delayed. It makes it all look a little odd".
Gulley says his automobile is powered only by his own design of cils and a generator, using a battery for the sole purpose of activating the motor.
He says he drove an experimental machine "27 miles short of 600 miles at zero cost" and that when it stopped running "there still was no trouble in the electrical system".
Gulley says his car engine weighs a fourth as much as an internal combustion engine, can be built for half the cost, and will last 10 times as long.
Gulley claims that modifications produce a motor capable of 10,000 rpm, comparable to the average 8-cylinder car’s 5000 to 6000 rpm.
"My devices are important to the aircraft people too", he said. "They can run as fast as the jet. They can power big earth movers, cranes and anything needing great power".
So why doesn’t Gulley get on with the show?
His story is that he has received offers up to $36 million for his patents from men representing auto makers who "would throw my plans in the Atlantic Ocean just so they can protect the big oil and gasoline people".
He said he will demand guaranteed arrangements form trustworthy financiers who will actually market his devices in competition with present industrial giants.
He will also demand, he said, that most of the manufacturing machinery, for parts and assembly, be housed in Kentucky as part of a dream to make Kentucky the "greatest industrial state in the country".
Living now on a disability pension form the Army, Gulley was asked to explain his ability to reject such offers as $36 million.
"I would have just a big stack of money to fool with", he said. "I wouldn’t have to work. When this thin is worked out the way I want it to be and the money does come along, I plan definitely to give 9 out of every 10 dollars I receive to feed the hungry people of the world. I have no desire for wealth".
Louisville Courier-Journal (1-7-74)
"Gasless Engine: A Solution to the Energy Crisis?"
by
Joe Creason
It’s been an agonizingly long waiting period --- going on 30 years, actually --- but John W. Gulley of Gratz, KY believes 1974 just may be the year when he makes a major contribution to the energy crisis.
To say the least, in the next few days some high brass from the US Army Engineers’ Office of Power Technology will be coming to Guley’s garage workshop in Gratz to look into his claim that he has perfected an idea that could make gasoline a thing of the past as a transportation power source.
You see, Gulley is the inventor of the "Swengine", a small, noiseless, self-contined electric engine that, according to him, could be modified to power anything from sewing machines to submarines --- but especially automobiles.
Gulley is now convinced, he says, that the skeptics who for years scoffed at his inventions are now being won over and that actual production of his Swengine could begin soon.
If this comes to pass, if the Swengine lives up to his claims, the result could be the most revolutionary development in the history of the automobile industry.
Imagine, if you will, a car engine that not only weighs a fourth as much as normal internal combustion engines, but requires no fuel, no cooling, no intake or exhaust systems and doesn’t emit carbon monoxide fumes to befoul the air. Add to these energy and environmental advantages Gulley’s conviction that it can be built for half the cost and las 10 ties as long as conventional engines and the potential impact of the Swengine is mind-boggling.
Although the Swengine is patented, as is also the Quagga Scout, a motor, it is difficult to describe Gulley’s invention in detail because it involves many so-called "impossible" theories. But put loosely in lay language, the Swengine operates on his own design of electromagnets and a generator that powers the engine after it has been started by a battery. There being no friction bearings, the engine has indefinite life expectancy.
Since all that suggest the field of gravity as a source of electrical energy, skeptics have said Gulley is laying claim to having created perpetual motion.
"This is not perpetual motion", he counters. "The material used in this engine will wear out in time and for that reason, if no other, it isn’t perpetual".
Gulley, now 67, is a motor and generator expert who learned his skill during 13 years of Army service. He started thinking about an electric car in 1946 after he was retired because of a circulatory ailment.
After repeated experiments, he finally developed an engine he called the Cobra Queen and tested it in a car. He wasn’t given the time of day when he started trying to sell his idea to manufacturers. In retrospect, he suspects the powerful oil and auto lobbies have been working against him all along because of what his invention could do to them.
Finally, after the Swengine evolved from continued experimenting and since he felt he could trust the Army not to put his idea on ice if it could be proven, he decided to try the Washington route. At first that was slow going, too, but in the last year, with the help of Senator Marlow Cook and Representative Tim Lee Carter, who set up appointments for him with the right people, the Army began to show more and more interest.
Although he’s been disappointed before, Gulley believes the upcoming meeting with engineers from the Office of Power Technology may be the light at the end of the tunnel. He hopes to have an engine in his car at that time to use in a demonstration.
Who knows? Maybe a breakthrough the energy-starved world needs will be coming from a setting as unlikely as a garage workshop at Gratz, Kentucky. If it’s ever going to come, now is precisely the right time.