A few of you pooh-poohed the idea of patent offices
approving spurious applications. I've just tested a product
that was granted such a provisional patent  that's a real
doozy

The claim by the person (an acquaintance of a friend) is
that a battery charger can be connected to the output of an
inverter to charge the battery that runs the inverter. You
probably think what I thought, although I had the dubious
benefit of this person talking technical gobbledygook
for an hour explaining why he thinks it will work, and how
many years he's been working on it to make it work, which
includes "some alterations" made to the inverter. I volunteered
to test his system, something apparently he hasn't already
done !!! even though he's looking for investors

Result -

6 hours to discharge a 12V marine battery with a 75W light bulb

And with battery charger connected back to battery

4 hours to discharge a 12V marine battery with a 75W light bulb

Just as I thought - the battery charger is merely a 25W load and
contributes nothing. His claim that it will go "for months and
months" is not entirely convincing ;-)) despite his excuses that
such-and-such parts are prototypes that "need more work" and
so on. The poor guy has got the concept of over-estimating
and under-estimating as cocked up as his physics. He rambled
on about magnetic fields and timing which may have some
merit with regard to improving efficiency, but to present such a
concoction of off-the-shelf bits and pieces as a technological
breakthrough is nothing short of delusional

The friend told me that someone had offered to put $500,000
in without asking for any tests. There's nowt sa queer as folk eh ?

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