The Unbelievable Invention in 1996...

The water fuel cell is a technical design of a "perpetual motion machine" created by American Stanley Allen Meyer (August 24, 1940 – March 20, 1998). Meyer claimed that an automobile retrofitted with the device could use water as fuel instead of gasoline. Meyer's claims about his "Water Fuel Cell" and the car that it powered were found to be fraudulent by an Ohio court in 1996.

• Stanley Meyer (Stanley Allen Meyer) was born August 24, 1940, and was one of two twin boys. His twin brother is Stephen Meyer.

Meyer was born and lived on Columbus' East Side before moving to Grandview Heights, where he finished high school. He briefly attended Ohio State University and joined the military.

"We were always building something," Stephen Meyer recalled of their youth. "We went out and created our toys."

At 6 feet 3 and with a booming voice, Stanley Meyer was charismatic and persuasive, equally conversant with physicists and bricklayers.

He was also eccentric. His favorite phrase was "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition," friends said.

He once called Grove City police to his home and laboratory on Broadway to report a suspicious package. The Columbus bomb squad detonated the parcel, only to discover it was equipment that he had ordered.

• Employment & Business...

Meyer worked for the Battelle Foundation in Ohio. He also worked on the development of the Gemini project with NASA, and also worked on the feeding system for energy on "concept EBED" for the Star Wars project.

With his brother Stephen Meyer, former engineer in electricity of USAF, Meyer assembled an operation worth several million dollars in the field of transport and spare parts.

• Achievements...

Stanley Meyer was very entrepreneurial and always financed his own scientific work.

Meyer was recognized and rewarded by national and international organizations, and was elected inventor of the year in "Who's Who of America" in 1993. Meyer also received substantial support from Canada, England, and Sweden.

• "Water Fuel Cell" Technology...

His focus on water as fuel began in 1975, a year after the end of the Arab oil embargo, which had triggered high gas prices, gas-pump lines and anxiety.

"It became imperative that we must try to bring in an alternative fuel source and do it very quickly," Meyer says in his documentary.

This led to Meyer developing what he patented as the "water fuel cell".

Meyer claimed that an automobile retrofitted with the device could use water as fuel instead of gasoline.

The water fuel cell purportedly split water into its component elements, hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen was then burned to generate energy, a process that reconstituted the water molecules.

According to Meyer, the device required less energy to perform electrolysis than the minimum energy requirement predicted or measured by conventional science.

Eye-witness accounts suggest that US inventor Stanley Meyer had developed an electric cell which split ordinary tap water into hydrogen and oxygen with far less energy than that required by a normal electrolytic cell.

Meyer made a demonstration before Professor Michael Laughton, Dean of Engineering at Mary College, London, Admiral Sir Anthony Griffin, a former controller of the British Navy, and Dr Keith Hindley, a UK research chemist.

They all agreed that Meyer's cell, developed at the inventor's home in Grove City Ohio, produced far more hydrogen/oxygen mixture than could have been expected by simple electrolysis.

Stanley Meyer claimed that his invention could do what physicists say is impossible -- turn water into hydrogen fuel efficiently enough to drive his dune buggy cross-country on 20 gallons straight from the tap.

Meyer had euphoric highs and humiliating defeats. He was kind and generous yet paranoid and suspicious.

He would be hailed as a visionary and a genius. He also would be sued and declared a fraud.

Exclusive News Interview 

• Legal Hurdles...

Meyer attracted believers, investors - and eventually, legal trouble.

William E. Brooks from Anchorage, Alaska invested more than $300,000 in Meyer's technology. He hoped to find applications for his aviation business.

Today, he and his wife, Lorraine, laugh about the ordeal, made easier because their money was returned in a 1994 settlement in Franklin County Common Pleas Court.

Two years later, a Fayette County judge found "gross and egregious fraud" in Meyer's contract negotiation with two businessmen. Their money was returned.

Roger L. Hurley, a retired Darke County judge, defended Meyer and still believes in him.

"I would not represent someone who I would consider to be a shyster or a bum," said Hurley. "He was a nice guy."