New Fuelless Motor Under Expert Eyes

Has Mystified Several Men Familiar With Electricity

Hendershot Invention Taken to New York With Lindbergh Party

New York, Feb. 27. — (AP) — The Hendershot “fuelless motor” was in New York today to be put under the critical eyes of electrical experts as soon as a patent can be obtained.

It has already mystified several men familiar with electricity. Major Thomas G. Lanphier, commandant of Selfridge Field, Mich., and leader of the first pursuit group, said at the Hotel Biltmore where he and Colonel Charles E. Lindbergh and a party of friends are staying.

Difficulty in obtaining a patent was found, he said, as the government patent department could find no classification for the motor. Patent attorneys he said, have taken the matter in hand and as soon as a patent is obtained the motor will probably be tested under the supervision of experts of the Guggenheim foundation for the promotion of aeronautics.

He denied that a company had been formed to produce the motor or that its practicability for use in airplanes had been proven. Major Lanphier also denied that Colonel Lindbergh was in anyway connected with the group which was backing the inventor, Lester J. Hendershot of West Elizabeth, Pa.

“There are only Hendershot, D. Barr Peat, his friend, Colonel Henry Breckenridge and myself,” Major Lanphier said.

“I put a little money into it and when we decided we ought to see some one about patenting it I thought of Breckinridge, whom I knew through Slim. Slim (Colonel Lindbergh) was my guest and I showed him the motor. That is all he has to do with it.”

Colonel Breckinridge is a New York lawyer and was assistant secretary of war during President Wilson’s first administration.

“The fact that Colonel Breckinridge is also Colonel Lindbergh’s attorney gave rise to a lot of false rumors that Lindbergh was interested in this motor thing,” Major Lanphier said.

The army officer, who said his only knowledge of electricity was what he learned in his first year at West Point, described the “fuelless motor” as a generator. He said the invention, which he called an energy collector, gathered out of the air “a power which Hendershot says he believes is energy generated by the rotation of the earth on its axis and around the sun.”

Dr. Nikola Tesla, inventor of the induction motor and who recently patented plans for a “helicopter-airplane” views the invention with skepticism. Dr. Tesla, who has spent many of his seventy-one years experimenting in taking energy from the heat of the sun, earth and air, said power obtained from these sources by a small motor “can only be measured in ‘mouse’ power.” “There is, apart from lighting, no natural electrical source which could be exploited with the practical object of developing power in the amount required for the operation of machinery,” he said.

Major Lanphier declared, however, that “the whole thing is so mysterious and startling that it is possible it has the appearance of being a fake.”

“I was extremely skeptical when I saw the first model,” he continued, “but I helped to build up the second one and witnessed the winding of the magnet. I am sure there is nothing phoney about it.”

He said the electrical men to whom they had shown the motor “laughed at the way we wired it up and said that it violated all the principles and that it wouldn’t work. Then it did work.”

Hendershot could not be considered an electrical engineer as all his schooling was obtained in high school, the major said. “His ideas on electricity cannot be called orthodox,” he added, “but for just that reason I have a lot of faith in him, because in setting to work on this problem he didn’t fall into the ruts scientifically trained men have been walking in for years.”

The Seattle Post Intelligence today quotes Alfred M. Hubbard of Seattle as believing the Hendershot motor is a development of a “free energy” motor he patented in 1919. He was quoted as saying his apparatus extracted electrical energy from radium. He said he sold 75 percent of his patent rights to the Radium Chemical Company of Pittsburgh in 1920.