John HUSTON
Heat from Air
Fate Magazine, November 1956, pp. 126 & 128; "Report from the Readers"
"Heat From Air"
The story of Alfred Hubbard and his coil in the July 1956 issue of Fate made me recall another mysterious device. Around 1920 John Huston of Prineville, Ore., claimed to have invented a way to take heat out of the air with condensers. The first poorly insulated rig of his that I saw boiled water in 20 minutes. The device was claimed to replace fuels, to be good for household heating or refrigeration and to be able to run railroad engines or steamboats.
Huston and his father formed a company of 20 stockholders and Huston built an up-to-date model of his device. This model performed better than expected, and Huston and his father took it to San Francisco to demonstrate it. They hoped to interest manufacturers in building the device on a royalty basis.
I talked to Huston after he returned to Prineville. He told me, "The machine can be made so hot that it will destroy itself. Reverse the machine, and the temperature will go as low as 250 below zero."
He said manufacturers in San Francisco refused to build the machine because it would throw too many men out of work. It would also kill the sale of fuels, the major cargo of steamships at that time.
Huston also told me he had patented his device in Canada and England. The USA had refused to patent it.
Huston evidently got nowhere with his device and I do not know what became of it. He died a young man of 22 in 1920 or 1921.
Bert Grater,
White Salmon, WA
USP # 1,781,062
Thermal Plant
11-11-1930
John D. Huston / [Houston]
