Farnsworth Questions

Reflections on fusion history, current events, and predictions for the 'fusion powered future.
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Richard Hull
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Re: Farnsworth Questions

Post by Richard Hull »

Frank, I have long called for the Lawson criteria here in hundreds of posts. Energy at cross section, pressure, containment. No one on earth has run a fusor at real high energy, high pressure fuels and high current. All fusors will and forever suffer at very high energy ions, being forever limited to operate at low pressures and low currents. I doubt if anyone ever will..... Certainly, never at the amateur level. By this I mean 200kv applied, 100 microns pressure and 100 ma current or better. This would be a fusor breakthrough leaving us only 7 or 8 orders of magnitude away break even! I am really waiting for someone or group to belly-up to the bar to "show me".

Nicolas, "Star mode" means absolutely nothing in relation to the fusion process! it does indicate a, clean, somewhat limited, symmetrical, internal operational regime. There are no instability issues in the fusor as built here. The fusor is a bungling mass of disorganized, bull headed electrostatic goings-on in an ionized plasma that cannot help but fuse due to the very uncontrolled nature of the effort. It is mostly a velocity space fusion system with a bit of target-fusion coupled with fortuitous re-ionization possibilities. Working against all of these fusion methodologies is the bedlam going on through out the device. There are no instabilities in the system because there is no attempt at stability in the very simplicity within the device. We have enumerated in many posts over the past years the exact mechanisms pro and con that we think are going on in the simple fusor.

Add multiple precision ion guns, several biased internal, ported,shells and perhaps ultra-high frequency, high voltage, high power oscillators to get a bare, hoped for improvement in stability and control of the processes involved and.....Who knows?

We have what we have, it does fusion. In this ball of bedlam, the simple amateur fusor, mathematics is the outsider regarding any precision of understanding. Certainly no trained physicist familiar with fusion and plasma would give it the analysis you seek as it is just does not show any merit or display any chance of re-paying the effort involved. Too many variables and processes coming to light only from empirical experiment and, perhaps, processes not even identified at this time, 20 years later.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Dennis P Brown
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Re: Farnsworth Questions

Post by Dennis P Brown »

As I've posted before, fusors, no matter the number of ion guns or increase in density or other tricks these devices will never even match the Sun for energy output (on a volume bases) much less exceed it. In the Sun, even at a million times our atmospheric pressure and millions of degree's C the net fusion via tunelling runs at all of about 300-500 W/ m^3 per sec (try figuring out how much hydrogen and deuterium is in that cubic meter - I did that once and it is vast.) That is barely more power than what the average fusor puts into their device. If those vast pressures and temps produce such tiny amounts of released energy, what is any fusor under vacuum ever going to achieve? Give it a rest; no way will a fusor based on tunnelling ever give real power (above net.) When you think about the conditions in the Sun's core and its puny energy release - trying to get a fusor to exceed even this rather unimpressive level is just plan silly.

On the otherhand, without this strong restriction, life would never occur in the universe since otherwise, star's would burn up in no time. We should be happy that tunneling is so ineffiecent.
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Richard Hull
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Re: Farnsworth Questions

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Tunneling is a mere rolling of the dice......... the P-P cross section is so miserable coupled with casting the of dice, solar fusion is pitiful. The solar core temps are also rather pitifully low. (thank goodness) Also written and calculated out in past posts years ago.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Nicolas Krause
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Re: Farnsworth Questions

Post by Nicolas Krause »

Have any of Farnsworth's notes survived to the present day? In reading Richard and Frank's recent posts I was struck by how so much of the discussion of his ideas has to rely on secondary sources. I would love to see any scrap of paper where he wrote down his ideas about what he was trying to accomplish. I think I am consistently struck by how someone who was so wrong on details (ie: polarity of the grid) could also be so right in generalities. This is a man with very little formal education, and yet he laid out a device that produces respectable rates of fusion compared with the huge mega science projects. I understand his explanation of what was going on was incorrect in the device, but he still built a device that when you flipped the wires powering it, it magically generated fusion.
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Re: Farnsworth Questions

Post by JoeBallantyne »

Yes, many of them. The Marriott Library at the University of Utah has a large collection of Philo Farnsworth papers.

The vast majority of which are technical. Included are lab notebooks from Hirsch, and Meeks, as well as Farnsworth.

I have about 30+GB of pictures of said material. I took said photos in the late fall of 2019. I ran out of time to take pictures of everything, since it is a very slow tedious process, but I believe I got photos of most of the fusion related material.

Philo was brilliant, and IMO understood a lot more than what Richard gives him credit for.

My 2 cents.

Note that I would be happy to share the pictures of the above material.

Joe.
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Richard Hull
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Re: Farnsworth Questions

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I have a large cache of this work here as well, but nothing on the planet substitutes for the words of those involved in the hands-on doing. In the end, based on 100% of those involved in the day-to-day work and who were doers interviewed.....Farnsworth did not do in the lab and when rarely, he was involved, he self-deluded especially in the early work. From early 1962 onward he was a rarity in the lab save for pats on the back and at-a-boys.

He was known to think and think some more, entombed in his office on the second floor. His thoughts were directed from his office with occasional meetings with Bain and later, Hirsch. Phil was an executive and along with the admiral and a couple other onsite physicists and mathematicians constantly kept producing feel good documents related to progress and did yeoman duty keeping the work in the labs funded. Phil and the admiral and others were working hard with ITT patent attorneys correcting and amending rejected submissions. What Phil did do was keep the project alive in concert with the admiral ensconced at the NY HQ.

Regardless of any Farnsworth brilliance on paper, the net result 1958-1968 was zip as related to the advancement of fusion, beyond another proof of how not to do useful fusion. They literally did produce the easiest way to do demonstrable fusion on a table top and a future path for amateur fusion.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
Frank Sanns
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Re: Farnsworth Questions

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What other fusion approach from conception to multiple devices did any better in a ten year span? I say none.
Achiever's madness; when enough is still not enough. ---FS
We have to stop looking at the world through our physical eyes. The universe is NOT what we see. It is the quantum world that is real. The rest is just an electron illusion. ---FS
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Richard Hull
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Re: Farnsworth Questions

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One must remember that others in fusion, over any ten year span, built models of their ideas of some size at a minimum of 20-50 times the volume and 100 times the expense. Just like the ITT effort they all showed a net value of zip. Many did not last ten years due to loss of the outrageous funding need to keep them alive. So, build in the small from a concept and spend very little for 10 years and fail or build in the large from a concept get the thing done in 4 or 6 years spending huge amounts and fail. Net result: two failures going at it in two different ways. Brilliance in theoretical concept is one thing, turning that concept into a successful physical embodiment for a predicted, valued result is quite another.

Never fear, we will soon, (well, maybe not so soon after all), have ITER on the pile of ultra big, super over budget, and embarrassingly late running fusion project fails..........In the sense of a 24-7-365 fusion reactor that produces net, viable, continuous, un-interrupted fusion energy.

If ITER fails to meet the full goal, will we enter the next phase of hyper-big fusion systems. We have been through the small, medium, big, bigger, large, very large, gigantic and now the ultra-humungous, international funded assemblages. There remains only the hyper humongous, totally Global effort.

Will the lucky donkey bring forth fusion in the solid state?

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Dennis P Brown
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Re: Farnsworth Questions

Post by Dennis P Brown »

Speaking of large machines that limp along with large funding the (South) Korean "Star" tokamak proves that not only are these machines essentially worthless (for future possible fusion power plants) but even adding just a few extra seconds takes years of efforts. This would be sad if not for the fact they think this is some type of achievement to be noted. At least they mention that they are reaching the absoult end of what any tokamak can achieve - all of 20 seconds. Pulsed plasma at a cost of many billions per unit is no way to generate power even if it (ever) works.

See: https://phys.org/news/2020-12-korean-ar ... -long.html
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Richard Hull
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Re: Farnsworth Questions

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I was delighted to read that they hit 20 seconds. What was not said was "could you immediately do it again?" If not, why not? We're off to the races now! It's 24-7-365 or bust! So far, it is a bust. Still, it is nice to recognize a doubling of working plasma time.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
Frank Sanns
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Re: Farnsworth Questions

Post by Frank Sanns »

Nicolas

Here is an excerpt of the actual Philo Farnsworth vision of use of fusion energy. These are the dreams that I read and was impressed with. A vision for all. This is only the first part. There is much more but it is in his words and the part relevant to this thread.

I have the permission from the family to link to the full document so I will be putting that up in its own spot.
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Farnsworth Peacetime Uses of Fusion Energy.   Sanns Excerpt.  NOT ENITRE DOCUMENT.png
Achiever's madness; when enough is still not enough. ---FS
We have to stop looking at the world through our physical eyes. The universe is NOT what we see. It is the quantum world that is real. The rest is just an electron illusion. ---FS
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Nicolas Krause
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Re: Farnsworth Questions

Post by Nicolas Krause »

Thanks Frank! Always love to read the original stuff. After reading Joe and Richard's comments I remembered I'd downloaded an archive of documents that had been posted on Fusor.net awhile back (I can't remember who posted them, my apologies!), but with school and other work I'd simply forgotten about them. Now I'm slowly poking through them as time allows, I believe they come from the archives Joe mentioned at the Marriott Library.
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Re: Farnsworth Questions

Post by Frank Sanns »

Joe has indeed posted those. There are many though, like this post that, that are originals that come from the Farnsworth family and are NOT part of the UT archive. Thanks Jonathan Moulton!
Achiever's madness; when enough is still not enough. ---FS
We have to stop looking at the world through our physical eyes. The universe is NOT what we see. It is the quantum world that is real. The rest is just an electron illusion. ---FS
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Richard Hull
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Re: Farnsworth Questions

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I have this document as well. I hope everyone knows this is part of a prospectus for PTFA. Don't let the 1965 date fool you. This was written after Phil's forced medical retirement in 1965 ( just left work and never returned...Went on a long bender and had to go to rehab). ITT was paying his salary on sick leave for a while, but soon sent him his notice of termination. ( I have this document as well) As he recovered, he was already figuring on PTFA back in Utah. The admiral did not survive the ITT purge of its fusion program either and was terminated.

In the document snippet that Frank sends, above, Phil always refers to "We", meaning PTFA and not ITT. This was pure fluff that he seemingly believed to be his and PTFAs mission. Again, always dreaming into the future. A future that was doomed from the outset. Any living entity that could take Phil's dream document as viable and at its face value, I am sure, already had in their possession, a deed to Brooklyn Bridge. I find it amazing that a man of Phil's supposed genius could pen something like this load of codswallop.

Once ensconced in Utah, Farnsworth asked ITT, in a letter, to sell the fusor patents to PTFA. ITT must have been stunned and had apparently read or had knowledge of this prospectus for PTFA. I don't know if they were worried that he could pull off a small fusion device if they sold or if they just did not normally sell or transfer patents. Some of the files I have contain two terse letters from ITT one telling him, NO, that they would not sell the patents and ITT attorneys forbidding him and his company, PTFA, from work on a fusion device that in any way trod on any part of the patents that ITT held.

This effectively blew Farnsworth's fusion dream to hell. I also have a letter from Gene Meeks of PTFA asking a company if they might be interested in contracting his labors in electronics and engineering skills from PTFA. This is how desperate PTFA was for money as it sank rapidly in the first year of operation in Utah. George Bain told me that Phil even asked him to farm himself out under contract so PTFA could get money!! In the end, Phil would drag his best ITT team members out to Utah and try and use them outside of PTFA to keep his dream floating. This speaks to his ability to attach people to himself and his dreams. In the end, they all left Utah and returned to Indiana. George said he and Eva had a rough go of it for a while. Much of this is in "Richard's attic" history.

Farnsworth like Tesla went from feast to famine all through his life with great dreams and pronouncements. Television was Farnsworth's peak in this world, Just as AC power was Tesla's peak and gift to the world. Everything that came after was an ever steepening inclined slide down into the rabbit hole of history with unfulfilled dreams and promises from both of these geniuses.

I am glad that folks are interested in the ITT - Farnsworth story. It is the origin of all of this that we now do here. The history of the origins of all of this is important.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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