William
LANDON
Magnetic Motor
http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-connecticut-yankee-landon060.artjun01,0,3005796.story
Hartford Courant ( 1
June 2009 )
Lebanon
Man Designs Magnet-Powered Motor
by JESSE LEAVENWORTH
By heritage, accomplishment and spirit, Bill Landon Jr. is a
quintessential Connecticut Yankee.
Mechanically adept from a young age, Landon, 72, has immersed
himself in making things work. At age 8, he took electrical
motors from old record players to customize his train set.
Starting at age 10, he revived a decrepit Model A Ford and
buggied through the woods and fields around his home.
Landon has worked as an electrical engineer for various
companies, including contributions to what is now Hamilton
Sundstrand's spacesuit program. He is an inventor, a fixer of
antique machines, a vintner, a carpenter and designer at his
historic home on the edge of Lebanon's long green.
Now Landon is waiting for a decision from the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office on his latest and most ambitious project — a
magnet-powered motor. Such "fuel-less" motors could be used to
run anything, negating the need for fuel of any kind, Landon
said. The implications of his claim are huge, he acknowledged,
and people will be skeptical. One of his own relatives asked how
it was possible that no one had thought of such a motor before,
Landon said. Displayed on a table in his home, the magnet motor
doesn't look revolutionary or even complicated. The size of a
medium pizza, the main parts are a stationary base, or stator,
and a rotor. Magnets are arranged in circles along the edges of
both pieces. Milled to precise shapes and placed in exact
positions, Landon said, the magnets will pull and push one
another to create constant rotation. "The energy produced by
moving in a straight line between two points and that produced
by moving between the same two points on a curved line is
different, and that difference is used to propel the motor," he
said. That's the translation for laymen -- the patent
application, available online at patft.uspto.gov, is much more
detailed and complex. Landon flicks the rotor and it spins for
several minutes. The model is not perfect, he said, because the
parts must be precisely machined and fitted and he lacks the
necessary equipment. Landon said he hopes that an entrepreneur
somewhere in the U.S. will fund a working model. In the the end,
patent examiners will decide whether Landon's invention is novel
and useful. He expects a decision in about seven months.
"This is," he said, "either madness or genius." [ &c... ]
MAGNETIC MOTOR
US Patent Application 20090066172