5. Cold Fusion Device
Eugene Mallove was a notable proponent and supporter of research into cold fusion. He was the author the book Fire from Ice, which details the 1989 report of successful cold fusion from Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann at the University of Utah. Mallove claims that the results were suppressed through an organized campaign from mainstream physicists. He was fatally beaten May 14, 2004 by an unknown assailant. His violent death was suspected by some to be related to the nature of his work.
4. Water Fuel Cell
Stanley Meyer produced nine patents relating to his water powered car. He was subsequently sued by two investors and the court found Meyer guilty of gross and egregious fraud, ordering him to repay the investors their $25,000. Following his sudden death, an autopsy showed that he died of a cerebral aneurysm. Meyers supporters continue to claim that he was assassinated by Big Oil, Arab death squads, Belgian assassins, or the US Government in order to suppress his inventions.
3. Earthquake Machine
At one point while experimenting with mechanical oscillators, Nikola Tesla allegedly generated a resonance of several buildings causing complaints to the police. As the speed grew he hit the resonance frequency of his own building and belatedly realizing the danger he was forced to apply a sledge hammer to terminate the experiment, just as the astonished police arrived. The Discovery Channels popular MythBusters show examined Teslas claim that he had created an Earthquake Machine in their 60th episode. They tested the physical phenomenon known as mechanical resonance on a traffic bridge, which today are built to withstand such forces. While a single I beam of steel was deflected several feet in each direction by their oscillator, and they reportedly felt the bridge shaking many yards away, there were no earth shattering effects. It is worth indicating that, in the time of the event undertaken by Tesla, buildings were not built to withstand such resonance.
2. Flexible Glass
Flexible glass is a legendary lost invention from during the reign of Roman Emperor Tiberius Caesar. As recounted by Isadore of Seville, the craftsman who invented the technique brought before Caesar a drinking bowl made of flexible glass, and Caesar threw it to the floor, whereupon the material dented, rather than shattering. The inventor was able to simply repair the dent with a small hammer. After the inventor swore to the Emperor that he alone knew the technique of manufacture, Caesar had the man beheaded, fearing such material could undermine the value of gold and silver.
1. Chronovision
Father Ernetti was known as an exorcist in the Venice region, but more especially because of his work on the chronovision. In the 1960s he is said to have constructed a time viewer in the 1950s, as part of a group that supposedly included Nobel Laureate Enrico Fermi and Wernher von Braun. The machine was called the Chronovisor, and could allegedly see and hear events of the past. According to an explanation by Ernetti, the luminous energy and sound that objects emanate are recorded in their environment, such that proper use of the chronovisor could reconstruct from said energy the images and sounds of a specific set of events from the past. Through the viewing screen of the chronovisor Father Ernetti claimed to have witnessed a performance in Rome in 169 BC of the now lost tragedy, Thyestes, by the father of Latin poetry, Quintus Ennius. He also claimed to have witnessed Christ dying on the cross. On his death bed in 1994, Father Ernetti said that he attended a meeting of all the people involved in the chronovision at the Vatican during which the only existing machine was destroyed.
