The Daily Notes ( Canonsburo PA )
Friday, March 31, 1939
GRAVITY FORCE USED TO RAISE MOTOR POWER
Miami Inventor Calls Principle Enormous Energy Saver
MIAMI, Fla., March 31 -- Skinner proudly displays hi; latest invention, a device that multiplies power in a startling fashion. Skinner had great hopes for the principle he embodied in his deivice, which he calls "a gravity power machine...
He believed the machine's principle could be carried to a point where a one-horsepower motor would produce electricity for a community of 3,500 people at a total cost of only $5 a month. "Almost any engineer will tell you that what this machine does is impossible," said Skinner, and then proceeded to demonstrate in his workshop here. His working model of the "gravity power machine" was run by a one-eighth horsepower motor. The device, in turn, operated a heavy duty, 12-foot lathe, a six-foot drill press and a hack saw from the from several children's toys and special types of furniture he has invented. Skinner said some skeptics were inclined to wonder whether his "gravity power machine" was obtaining power from some other source than the one-eighth horsepower motor because the shop was electrically operated. To make the demonstration more convincing, he obtained a one-fifth horsepower gasoline motor manufactured to run model airplanes, which he said he would install to produce the power for the shop. same shaft at the same time. "Almost any engineer will tell you that to run even that heavy duty lathe and produce the quarter inch shaving on a steel bar that it does would take a two-horsepower motor," Skinner said.
The "gravity power machine" stricKen about two weeks ago consists of a steel framework containing four shafts controlled by on the eccentrics. On each shaft is an off-balanced weight which Skinner said was "about the secret of the whole thing." He explained that the shafts, turning in the eccentrics, moved the weights in a circular motion at 60 revolutions a minute. Because the weights are off-balance, he vaid, they are always "falling," producing the multiplication of power. The "falling," Skinner said, is more correctly a following of the weights to new centers of gravity caused by the changing positions of the shafts. The weights do not actually fall. The one-eighth horsepower electric motor. Skinner said, was used only for power to turn the eccentrics and the "gravity power machine 'provided the power, in turn, to operate the hop. U'OO Per Cent Step I'p Skinner estimated the "gravity power machine" would increase the horsepower of a motor about 1,200 per cent. A one horsepower motor, he believed, with a perfected "gravity power machine" to multiply its output, could be made to drive a generator large enough to produce electricity for 3,500 persons. And the operating cost would be only about $5 a month, he estimated. The machine Skinner exhibited was the fifth he has buildt in the 14 years he has been "working up the idea." A number of engineers have inspected his invention, he said. One of them was A. P. Michaels, a Jacksonville, Fla., consulting engineer, who gave Skinner a letter describing the machine as "a practical device and will have a definite . field where it is necessary to use power to drive equipment. It should result in a very large saving of power used." One Engineer Silent George C. Estill, electrical engineer and retired president of the Florida Power and Light company here, was another who examined the device but he said his check was not complete enough to allow him to form a conclusion. Skinner turned to inventing after the collapse of the Florida real estate boom of 1926. He recently perfected a device for recharging dry cell batteries.