Patently Curious

One sunny morning in the environs of Washington, D.C., I’m standing in an overgrown suburban backyard, slapping mosquitoes while trying to get a photograph of a “free energy” model railroad car on a small folding table. Tom Valone lines up the car, lets it go, and an array of cunningly oriented magnets draws it forward. The little car accelerates, runs off the end of its track, and tumbles into the grass.

This is more impressive than I had expected. science. After he received a master’s in physics But what would happen if the track were circular? in 1999, he took a job as an examiner at the U.S. Would the magnets on either side of the track push Patent Office, specializing in the utterly conventional the little car around and around indefinitely? subject of electrical testing and measurement.

Valone isn’t sure about that. “You should look at a He had an ulterior interest, however. “Academic different patent from the same inventor,” he says. “It scientists,” he says, “tend to value journal publication uses magnets in the form of archways. Two witness- exclusively. That’s their benchmark for credibility. es have told me that when they visited the inventor, If they don’t see it in an academic journal, they they saw a model running in a circle continuously don’t think it’s true. But this is a very tunnel-vision for two hours.” approach. Patents provide an alternative view of

I always seem to have this kind of problem with innovations occurring in the world, from authors free-energy demos. The real demo is someplace who usually don’t publish journal articles.” else, or it happened at some other time, or the And so in his spare time he gathers information people who saw it have disappeared, or the inventor — patents, especially — on every obscure invention refuses to talk to a journalist because he’s afraid he can find. At this point he is probably the most that his idea will be stolen. “Where, exactly, does the broadly informed authority on the kind of basement inventor live?” I ask. tinkering that ventures into gray areas beyond the

“In Virginia.” conventional laws of physics. While most of us tend

Valone’s own house is in Virginia. “So why haven’t to dismiss such work, Valone is like an open-minded you visited him?” juror who regards a defendant as being innocent

“Oh, I’m too busy.” until proven guilty. In his world, claims are worthy This is the odd thing about Tom Valone. He has of consideration until proven false. a fevered interest in fringe phenomena, catalogs His open-mindedness led him into big trouble in them with obsessive zeal, yet seems more inter- 1999, when he conceived a “Conference on Future ested in describing them than evaluating them. As Energy.” He obtained permission to hold it in an he puts it, “I hope to create a ripple effect. If I make auditorium at the State Department, taking advan-people aware of things, their perception of what tage of an Open Forum Speakers Program that they should do on their own may change.” existed “to explore new and alternative views on

Despite his unconventional interests, Valone vital policy issues of the day.” Unfortunately, “new has a solid background in conventional science. and alternative” didn’t mean the same thing to He received a Bachelor of Science in physics and them as it did to him. a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering Robert Park, a PR writer for The American Physical at SUNY Buffalo in 1974, and remained at SUNY, Society (APS), is notorious for denigrating, ridiculing, teaching college classes in subjects such as engi- humiliating, and eviscerating any individual who neering physics, technical physics, electronics, propounds propositions that Park, in his wisdom, digital logic, microprocessors, and environmental finds implausible. When he learned that Valone’s

Photography by Charles Platt

50 Make: Volume 09