Lebanon Man Designs Magnet Powered Motor

"Inventor Bill Landon, Jr. is waiting for a decision from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on his latest and most ambitious project - a magnet-powered motor. Such "fuel-less" motors could be used to run anything, negating the need for fuel of any kind, Landon said. The implications of his claim are huge, he acknowledged, and people will be skeptical. One of his own relatives asked how it was possible that no one had thought of such a motor before, Landon said. Displayed on a table in his home, the magnet motor doesn't look revolutionary or even complicated. The size of a medium pizza, the main parts are a stationary base, or stator, and a rotor. Magnets are arranged in circles along the edges of both pieces.

Milled to precise shapes and placed in exact positions, Landon said, the magnets will pull and push one another to create constant rotation. "The energy produced by moving in a straight line between two points and that produced by moving between the same two points on a curved line is different, and that difference is used to propel the motor," he said. That's the translation for laymen — the patent application, available online at patft.uspto.gov, is much more detailed and complex. Landon flicks the rotor and it spins for several minutes.

The model is not perfect, he said, because the parts must be precisely machined and fitted and he lacks the necessary equipment. Landon said he hopes that an entrepreneur somewhere in the U.S. will fund a working model. In the end, patent examiners will decide whether Landon's invention is novel and useful. He expects a decision in about seven months."