The 13th Energy Science and Technology Conference ran five full days in Spokane, Washington, June 24 to 28, 2026. It was recorded start to finish: 23 presentations, 10 live demonstrations and 12 presenters. The presentations start releasing on emediapress.com on Thursday, October 15, 2026 at 1:30 PM Pacific.
ESTC 2026 on emediapress.com
Every 2026 release goes on the conference page as it comes out, beside the archive of every ESTC since 2012.
The presentations come out as 13 releases, three to four a week, starting October 15. Each release goes live on emediapress.com at its release time, with a preview on YouTube. The first release, on October 15, is Adrian Marsh PhD’s A Foundation for Esoteric Science, and his The coMra Effect releases free the same day.
What is in the 2026 recordings
Eric Dollard: The Alexanderson Aerial, on Ernst Alexanderson’s wireless transmission system and Eric’s research building on it, and Gangrene Energy, on the dirty electricity loose in our utility infrastructure.
Adrian Marsh PhD: The coMra Effect and A Foundation for Esoteric Science.
Al Francoeur: the Onan and Dynamotor technologies.
EPD Laboratories, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit research organization carrying Eric Dollard’s work forward at its Tonopah, Nevada field site. Donations are tax-deductible, and every dollar goes into field research, infrastructure and Eric’s ongoing work. Donate to EPD Laboratories.
Hear about each release first
Energy Times readers hear about each release as it goes live, along with new books, papers and research from emediapress.com. It is free, and you can leave any time. Get Energy Times.
LifeWave was the exclusive platinum sponsor of the 2026 Energy Science and Technology Conference. Thank you to every presenter, vendor and attendee who made the 13th ESTC possible.
A new batch of 24 Lakhovsky Multiwave Oscillators, Model MD-1G/UA, is being hand built right now at A & P Electronic Media in Spokane, Washington. Pre-orders are open: paid in full, first come, first served, and units ship in the order the orders came in, with shipping expected the second week of January 2027.
Get the current Price List and Order Documents
They are free through a no-charge checkout on the product page. The PDF downloads the moment you check out.
The full MD-1G/UA system with copper ring antennas.
Built from the original machines, not the patent
The Lakhovsky Multiwave Oscillator has been copied many times. Most copies reproduce the look of the machine, the concentric rings, and skip the details of the surviving original instruments. That changed around 2012, when European engineers reverse-engineered surviving original MWOs and published a report on how they were built.
Our machine is built from that work. It is not built from a patent drawing or a photograph, and it is built and sold as a research instrument. It is one of only two electrically correct replications being made.
What electrically correct means
An authentic MWO is defined by three inherent imbalances: the coils have differing numbers of turns, they sit at unequal distances, and one phase is grounded. None of the three shows up in a photograph, and none of them is in the patent. A copy that starts from the patent or from the appearance gets them wrong, and the result is a different circuit wearing the same rings. The transmitting side, the receiving side, the grounding and the spark gap are one electrical system, and the relationships between them are the design.
Copper rings or Eric Dollard’s Golden Ratio antennas
Two antenna systems are available, and both run on the same pulse modulator:
Copper ring antennas, bent to Lakhovsky’s BV2 specifications.
Golden Ratio PCB antennas, designed by Eric Dollard.
The MD-1G/UA with Eric Dollard’s Golden Ratio PCB antennas.
The pulse modulator and its adjustable quadruple spark gap produce the high-voltage, broad-spectrum output the original design calls for. The MD-1G/UA is the seventh generation of the system since production began in 2017 and 2018.
The MD-1G/UA pulse modulator, front panel.
Two ways to connect it
Default unbalanced Lakhovsky mode is the standard Lakhovsky configuration, with the cables running to the back of the pulse modulator.
Balanced Tesla-Dollard mode puts the oscillation transformer on top of the modulator as a balanced, centre-tapped primary, bypassing the primary on the transmitter coil. It is a different experimental arrangement, built on Tesla’s and Eric Dollard’s work.
Hookup A1: unbalanced mode, front view.Hookup B1: balanced mode with the oscillation transformer, front view.
The product page has all six hookup diagrams, three for each mode: from the front, from behind and at the back panel. See all six MWO hookup diagrams.
Check out at no charge. The PDF downloads immediately, and the link is also in your order email.
Read the price list and fill out the Order Documents completely.
Return them and pay in full as the documents describe.
Orders are handled in the order they are received, and units ship in that order. Every MD-1G/UA carries a one-year repair-or-replace guarantee. Power outside the US, what is included and shipping are covered on the product page and in the Order Documents. For anything else, use the contact form and I will answer you myself.
The oscillation transformer used in balanced Tesla-Dollard mode.
After nineteen years, Energetic Forum and Energy Science Forum have stopped taking new posts. Both are now permanent static archives — and every word, every thread, and every surviving attachment is free and open to the public, with no account and no login required.
This is not a shutdown. It’s the opposite. It’s a preservation.
What’s in there
Energetic Forum — founded February 17, 2007
10,785 threads
290,097 posts
13,570 attachments
6,202 contributing members
Energy Science Forum — founded July 20, 2012
1,771 threads
24,242 posts
5,321 attachments
1,105 contributing members
Together that’s 12,556 discussion threads, 314,339 posts, and 18,891 attachments spread across roughly 54,000 pages — nineteen years of experimental work, argument, schematics, measurements, failures, corrections, and breakthroughs in one place.
Not a summary of it. Not a highlights reel. All of it.
Who’s in there
If you spent any time in the alternative energy research world over the last two decades, you already know what these forums were. John Bedini posted here. Eric Dollard posted here. Peter Lindemann posted here. So did hundreds of builders, engineers, machinists, and experimenters who never became famous but who documented their work carefully and publicly, year after year, for anyone willing to read it.
Threads that ran for hundreds of pages. Long technical exchanges where someone’s build got taken apart, corrected, and rebuilt in public. Schematics shared freely. Data posted with the measurements that contradicted it. Questions answered by people who had actually done the work.
That kind of record can’t be recreated. Once a forum goes offline, it’s simply gone — and most of them do go offline, quietly, when someone stops paying the hosting bill. Dead links on a search results page and nothing behind them.
That’s not happening here.
What “permanent static archive” actually means
The forums used to run on database software. Every page you loaded was built on the fly by a program talking to a database. That’s how almost every forum on the internet works, and it’s also why they’re fragile: the software needs patching, the database needs maintenance, and the whole thing needs someone actively keeping it alive.
Every one of those pages has now been converted into a plain HTML file. No database. No software to maintain. No admin panel. Nothing that can break, get exploited, or fall out of date.
What that gets you:
Everything stays at the same address. Every link anyone has ever posted to a thread on either forum still works. Bookmarks, forum citations, links in old articles — all of it resolves exactly where it always did.
No account, no login, no registration. Everything is open to everyone. You don’t have to be a member to read it, and there’s nothing to sign up for.
Attachments are public. Every surviving attachment — PDFs, schematics, photos, spreadsheets, scans — downloads directly with no barrier. Nearly 19,000 of them. This is the part that used to require an account. It doesn’t anymore.
It’s in the Wayback Machine too, as an independent second copy at archive.org, so it survives even the improbable.
The archives are complete, offline copies are held in multiple locations, and the whole set is backed up in encrypted form. This is built to outlast all of us.
How to use it
Just read it. Go to energeticforum.com or energyscienceforum.com and browse. Categories, subforums, threads, pages — everything looks and navigates exactly as it always did. The only difference is that the reply buttons are gone.
Search it from the banner. There’s a search box at the top of every page. Type what you’re after and it searches only that forum — no wading through the rest of the internet to find it.
Or search from Google directly. Type your search terms followed by site:energeticforum.com — for example:
bedini monopole charging site:energeticforum.com
That works for either domain and it’s often the fastest way to find a specific thread you half-remember.
Follow the old links. If you have a link from a decade ago, paste it in. It still works.
Download what matters to you. Attachments are one click. If there’s a document you’d hate to lose, save your own copy. That’s exactly what an archive is for.
Why we did it this way
We could have taken the sites down. We could have locked the content behind a member wall and used it as a reason to make people sign up. Plenty of places do.
Instead, these forums are going out the way they operated: open. The information in them was contributed freely by people who wanted it to be found and used. Putting it behind a login now would betray the whole point of it having existed.
So consider this a gift, and a thank you — to everyone who posted a build log at 2am, who answered a beginner’s question for the fortieth time, who argued in good faith, who posted the data that proved their own theory wrong, and who made these forums worth preserving in the first place.
Our exclusive platinum sponsor for the 2026 Energy Science & Technology Conference, LifeWave, produced something you have to see — a short comedic film starring William Shatner, “The World’s Oldest Intern.”
The Film
In this lighthearted spoof, Mr. Shatner — an intern in his nineties — takes on his first-ever internship at LifeWave Inc., where he explores the company’s innovations in health and wellness. Along the way he discovers the LifeWave Welcome Center, a stunning, one-of-a-kind space designed by Doug Drexler, the Academy, Emmy, BAFTA, VES, and Peabody award-winning production and visual effects designer behind many Star Trek movies.
Shatner brings his trademark wit and charm to every scene, getting into a bit of good-natured trouble but ultimately proving himself to be a true asset to the LifeWave team.
As Shatner put it: “I thought I was boldly going where no man had gone before.”
A Genuine Hit
Across YouTube and all social media platforms, the film has surpassed 2 million views. LifeWave has confirmed Episodes 2 and 3 are now in pre-production.
LifeWave Founder and CEO David Schmidt: “This video captures the spirit of LifeWave — curiosity, creativity, and leading-edge innovation, all delivered with a sense of humor and joy.”
This is a reminder that science and innovation can have a sense of humor – welcome to LifeWave!
About LifeWave
Founded in 2004, LifeWave is a global life technology company known for its patented, non-transdermal patches, with product distribution in over 100 countries. Founder David Schmidt’s experience in business and product development spans over 30 years and includes 200+ patents.
Your body emits heat, including heat in the infrared spectrum. LifeWave’s patches are designed to trap that infrared energy when placed on the body, which causes them to reflect it back to stimulate specific points on the skin — with no drugs or stimulants entering the body. It’s a patented, proprietary form of phototherapy.
The 13th Annual Energy Science & Technology Conference sold out fast. 5 days. 15+ presenters. 23+ presentations. 11+ live demonstrations. And for the first time ever: a 2-phase AC motor allegedly built by Nikola Tesla himself on public display — linked directly to Patent No. 382,279.
You don’t have to miss any of it.
Live streaming gets you every presentation, every demo, every minute — watched from wherever you are. And right now, you can lock in the early bird price:
$197$147 — Save $50
⚠ This price goes up to $197 on April 1st. That’s not a maybe — it’s already set. Once March 31st passes, the $50 savings are gone.
This is 5 full days of content you cannot get anywhere else — live demos of technologies that most people only read about. Eric Dollard on gang green energy with a live demo. Adrian Marsh PhD demonstrating the coMra Effect. Hakasays demonstrating Tesla’s Extra Coils. Working Bourke engines. Tesla water pump. A gravity wave detector. The list goes on.
Conference highlights include: • Eric Dollard – “The Alexanderson Ariel & Bolinas Alexanderson Antenna” + “Gangrene Energy” [LIVE DEMO] • Adrian Marsh PhD – “The coMra Effect” + “A Foundation for Esoteric Science” [LIVE DEMOS] • Hakasays – “Tesla’s Extra Coils” [LIVE DEMO] • Sky Huddleston – Working Bourke Engines [LIVE DEMO] • Jeremiah Ferwerda – Tesla Water Pump + Tesla Turbine [LIVE DEMOS] • Davy Oneness – Gravity Wave Detector + Bedini B.A.S.E. Processor [LIVE DEMOS] • Al Francoeur – “The Onan and Dynamotor Technologies” • Carmen Miller – Motor allegedly built by Tesla himself [ARTIFACT ON DISPLAY] • Tom DiFerdinando – “Orgone Energy: The Motor Force of Inner and Outer Space” • Peter Lindemann – Co-presenting (see schedule for details) • …and many more
The full schedule is posted on the conference page. As usual, expect it to be tweaked here and there as we get closer to the event — stay tuned.
The seismic streaming page at EPD Laboratories just got a serious upgrade. Go check it out — it doesn’t look like anything else on the internet.
The EPD-SM1 Seismic Stream Monitor is a custom-built audio player styled after vintage broadcast equipment — complete with a live VU meter showing signal level in real time, and a full signal chain display showing the path from the antenna field through cellular uplink to the Icecast server to your monitor. Hit play and you’re listening to the electrical signals between the ionosphere and the interior of the earth, picked up by an above ground Beverage Antenna at EPD Laboratories in Tonopah, Nevada — 4,800 ft above sea level. Try out the volume slider — it’s fully interactive.
Below it sits the EPD-CR1 Earth Signals Chart Recorder — a real-time scrolling waveform display with adjustable gain (1x, 3x, 5x, 7x). This is a mock recorder for now to show the effect — we’ll be getting into logging the earth signal data and analyzing it with AI and other tools. Coming soon. Play with the gain button and experiment.
There’s also a working spectrum analyzer on the page. You can see the frequencies coming through in real time — the active frequency shows in yellow and the green trace is an RMS average over 60 seconds. Look around the 12-14 kHz range and you’ll notice consistent signals being picked up. Those are the Russian Alpha Navigation System (RSDN-20) broadcasts — a long-range military navigation network operating at approximately 11.905 kHz, 12.649 kHz, and 14.881 kHz.
The pops and clicks are lightning strikes. When those strikes produce pitches — chirps and squeaks — those are responses to lightning creating standing wave situations in the earth. More options are coming — some free and some by subscription.
Special thanks to Hakasays (who will be presenting at ESTC 2026) for streaming the earth signals live. One of his many contributions is that he pays for the cellular data plan to stream it from the shack in Tonopah to the internet. Thank you. And special thanks to Simon Davies of teslascientific.com for help in making the system look better and making the spectrum analyzer more useful.
EPD Laboratories, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. There’s a donation link right on the streaming page — every dollar goes directly into advancing the electrical sciences.Support EPD Laboratories 501(c)(3)
The Emediapress affiliate program pays 45% commission on every referred sale across our entire catalog — that’s over 220 books, videos, presentations, and devices.
And we just added something new: streaming tickets for ESTC 2026 are now in the affiliate program. That’s 10-15% on every streaming ticket sold through your link. The conference is sold out in person — streaming is the only way most people can attend. That’s a lot of potential referrals.
Here’s how it works: sign up for free, grab your unique affiliate link, and share it. Every sale that comes through your link earns you a commission. You can generate a custom affiliate link for any page — including the conference page. Payouts hit your PayPal automatically a few days after the end of each month. No invoicing. No chasing payments. You share, people buy, you get paid.
Quick start: Sign up at the affiliate area, then use the affiliate link generator to create your link for the ESTC conference page. Share that link on social media, forums, email, YouTube — wherever your audience is. You earn on every streaming ticket and product sale that comes through.
With the conference sold out and streaming as the only option — and early bird pricing ending March 31st — this is the best time to share your link. People are looking for a way in. Give them one and earn while you do it.
Note: The affiliate program cannot be used to get discounts on your own purchases. Commission is on referred sales only.
Here’s a new video from a recent live call featuring Eric Dollard, Adrian Marsh PhD, Hakasays, and several callers asking questions. We covered a lot of ground in this discussion – from the live earth signal reception system now streaming at epdlabs.org to the novel audio amplifier project, the legendary “Glom Locker” full of vintage surplus parts, and some fascinating observations about what’s happening with solar activity and earth signals.
Earth Signal Reception – Now Live
One of the main topics Eric covered was the seismic streaming system that’s now live. This is the culmination of over $300,000 and 10 years of infrastructure development at the EPD Laboratories facility in Nevada.
The system uses a 4,800 ft antenna section (about 5/6 of a mile) running from pole 26 to pole 49, with transmission lines going to a shack at pole 54. That’s over a mile of wire total, with two conductors – so basically double that length when you add it all up.
What you’re hearing when you tune in are the electrical signals between the ionosphere and the interior of the earth (about 5 miles underneath your feet, as Eric explains). The pops and clicks are lightning strikes. But the really interesting part is when those strikes start to make pitches – chirps and squeaks at very high frequencies that are responses to the lightning creating standing wave situations in the earth.
Eric explained that when things start getting stressed inside the earth, those pitches drop down in frequency and sound more like “breaking beer bottles” and chirping noises. You also get frequency sweeps which are waves propagating through the magnetic field of the earth. The more coherent and musical the sounds become, the more likelihood there may be seismic activity brewing – though as Eric notes, it’s more complicated than that simple correlation.
The system intercepts the electrostatic displacement current between the ionosphere and the interior of the earth through a mutual capacitance configuration. It’s a remarkable setup.
Note: you may need to set “original sound for musicians” in your audio settings because the pops and clicks can get filtered out otherwise as “interference.”
The “Glom Locker”
We also showed some footage of the famous Glom Locker – an intermodal shipping container filled with thousands of rare vacuum tubes, cases of capacitors, and all kinds of vintage surplus parts. Much of this was acquired by Steve Hills (the director of EPD Laboratories Inc) over decades in the surplus business, along with contributions from Mark McKay.
My friend Jari Karvonen spent about a week helping organize some of this during a recent trip, but we really only scratched the surface. The importance of this collection cannot be overstated – as Eric pointed out, modern components simply don’t work like the old stuff. Brand new electrolytic capacitors from top name brands had so much effective series resistance they weren’t even functioning as capacitors. The new stuff just doesn’t cut it.
When you’re building one-of-a-kind equipment like the Navy TBM transmitter setup or the earth signal amplifiers, you have to glean eBay for the last of the real components from the 50s and earlier. It’s actually cheaper in the long run, and you know it’s going to work.
The Novel Audio Amplifier Project
Eric has been developing a completely novel audio amplifier design that’s unlike anything else in the audio world. This isn’t a voltage gain amplifier like virtually everything else on the market (including all solid state amplifiers). Instead, the transformers themselves amplify – the tubes just add power.
The design extends the original Macintosh concept of equal loading in the cathode and anode with bifilar winding, taking it to multi-stage transformer configurations that are also multi-stage amplifiers. The transformers are coupled with the vacuum tubes into something like a traveling wave amplifier.
The development path goes from small triodes to 6AS7G tubes (which have high transconductance but people use them as voltage amplifiers and get nowhere), then to the Western Electric 300 type triode, and finally to the 811 and 812 power triodes for a 300 watt per channel final version.
The commercial version will be based on a Western Electric 143A theater amplifier design – we found one on eBay from Japan for $27,000, which gives you an idea of what the authentic units go for. This design uses currently available tubes like the 6SN7 and 6550.
The key innovation is focusing on eliminating intermodulation distortion rather than just harmonic distortion. As Eric explained, it’s intermodulation distortion that creates phantom signals – beat frequencies between higher frequencies that don’t actually have any real existence. That’s especially critical when amplifying earth signals where you don’t want artifacts.
Custom transformers and chokes are currently being engineered by a well-known company to go on the prototype panels I cut while I was down there. Once we have a working proof of concept, the goal is to produce a limited edition of maybe 10 rack-mount units to raise funds, then potentially set up an audio company to bring a commercial version to market.
And here’s the kicker – there won’t be a single component made in China in the whole thing. All vintage quality parts sourced from eBay.
Observations on Solar Activity and Earth Signals
One of the more sobering parts of the discussion was Eric’s observations about what’s happening with solar and earth electrical activity. Steve McGreevy and others who have monitored these signals for decades have reported that the earth just seems to be getting quieter and quieter. The solar cycles have been getting weaker and weaker, and quite possibly the next solar minimum will be the biggest dip we’ve seen since this stuff has been recorded.
Even when the earth got hit by a significant coronal mass ejection recently, nothing showed up on the antenna – normally around midnight it would go into “complete war” during such an event. So the whole sun/earth electrical system seems to be in some kind of declining phase. As Eric noted, this could be a sine wave 25,000 years in length – about one aeon. It’s happened before during things like the dark ages grand minimum.
This makes the work of capturing and recording these signals now even more important – so we have historical data for when activity eventually picks back up.
What’s Needed to Continue This Work
Eric was candid about the funding situation. About $50,000 has been used up getting to what you see here, and significant donations haven’t come in for quite a while. The next big expenses include:
Another NV Energy power connection at the mine: $15,000
Contractor to put up toll entrance cable on the right of way: $14,000
Labor costs for specialized workers to advance the projects
The donations are what keep the motor running – whether it’s big contributions like the $10,000 someone donated to buy the 5 miles of brand new copper wire, or smaller amounts that add up over time.
Every donation goes directly into furthering this work in the electrical sciences. For those who don’t have money to donate, sharing these videos and driving traffic to the websites helps us reach people who might be able to contribute.
ESTC 2026 – Meet Eric in Person
Speaking of Eric Dollard – the 13th Annual Energy Science & Technology Conference is happening June 24-28, 2026 here in Spokane, Washington. Eric is scheduled to present on “The Alexanderson Ariel & Bolinas Alexanderson Antenna” and “Gangrene Energy” (with live demo).
This is your chance to meet Eric in person, ask questions, and experience live demonstrations you won’t see anywhere else.
Only 19 in-person seats remain out of 55 total. And here’s the thing – this is the same weekend as Hoopfest (the world’s largest 3-on-3 basketball tournament), so hotels are already filling up.
Super Early Bird pricing of $347 (save $100) ends February 28th.
Other highlights include:
Adrian Marsh PhD presenting on “The coMra Effect” and “A Foundation for Esoteric Science”
Hakasays demonstrating “Tesla’s Extra Coils”
Justin Miller’s status report on the EPD Long Line Facility
Davy Oneness on gravity wave detectors and John Bedini’s B.A.S.E. processor
Carmen Miller presenting a 2-phase AC motor allegedly built by Tesla himself
23+ presentations total with 11+ live demonstrations
Long before modern electronics, inventors like James Wimshurst were exploring how nature separates charge… It was the heart of early X-ray experiments and high-voltage demonstrations—and an early example of what we might now call an open system, pulling energy dynamically from its surrounding electric field. In the 1860s, physicist Poggendorff went a step further, creating the first corona motor—a device that used ionized air, not mechanical brushes, to push a rotor. More than a century later, Oleg Jefimenko revived that work to show that electric fields themselves can do mechanical work directly, bypassing the conventional closed-circuit model of electricity. Those classic experiments are the foundation for much of today’s exploration into electrokinetic and open-energy systems. That’s the legacy our students tapped into—literally by hand—at the fair.
Designing the Demonstration
I designed and built the demonstration system with assistance from the students, prepared the Wimshurst generators, and helped set up the components for the presentation. During the setup period I spoke with teachers, students, and visitors about how the devices operate and about their significance in exploring open-system physics—where charge, field, and motion interact continuously with the environment. I explained how the work of pioneers such as Oleg Jefimenko, John G. Trump, and later experimenters like Eric Dollard and Chris Carson helped extend this field of study. Carson’s self-sustaining high-voltage electrostatic rotary converter, inspired by Trump’s MIT research, demonstrated the same basic principle: energy can circulate through the electric field itself rather than being consumed. We also discussed the remarkable Testatika machine built by Paul Baumann of the Methernitha Christian Community in Switzerland—a large Wimshurst-type generator said to power their facilities through similar electrostatic processes. While I handled much of the technical design and preparation, the students themselves conducted the official presentation before the judges, in keeping with the competition’s rules. Their confidence and understanding showed that they truly grasped what they were demonstrating.
Building the Machines
We used two Wimshurst generators: one commercial unit and one that I constructed from locally sourced materials—polycarbonate discs, aluminum sectors, brass combs, and Leyden jars made from plastic tubing and foil. Both produced visible sparks several centimeters long. For the second exhibit, we built a corona motor using an empty soda can as the rotor. The can’s rim had several tiny tangential holes sanded to bright aluminum, mounted on a stainless-steel marinade-injector needle pivot connected to one of the Wimshurst terminals. Opposite the can, a sharp sewing needle, connected to the other terminal, was aimed just off tangent to the can’s surface. When the Wimshurst machine spun up, faint bluish plumes of corona discharge arced from the sewing needle toward the can. The invisible ion wind pushed air along the can’s surface, producing pure electrostatic thrust. The can began to rotate—first hesitantly, then faster and smoother—powered entirely by electric-field interactions. No magnets. No moving coils. Just field, air, and geometry.
The Demonstration
During the judging, Emmanuel, Sheenaia, and Vivian operated the Wimshurst machines and demonstrated the corona motor to the panel. Two neon bulbs connected to the terminals flickered orange with each charge pulse, showing the potential difference across the Leyden jars. As the can rotated, they brought it near an aluminum backplate. Immediately, the can was attracted to the plate—a vivid display of electric-field interaction—and the corona brightened to a deep violet glow. The audience could see and hear electricity in motion. Teachers leaned in, students gasped, and judges nodded appreciatively. The excitement in the room was palpable as they witnessed a nineteenth-century principle come alive again through twenty-first-century craftsmanship.
Beyond the Sparks
What made the project stand out was that it revealed open-system behavior in a tangible, student-friendly form. Unlike ordinary circuits that consume stored charge, the Wimshurst and corona motor are self-recharging systems that draw and separate charge directly from their surroundings. They invite students to think beyond conventional energy models—to ask where the “push” really comes from, and how fields themselves can store and exchange energy dynamically. Every hiss from the corona and every pulse from the Leyden jars reminded the students that the universe is not inert—it is an active electrical medium waiting to be understood.
Inspiring the Next Generation
When our team’s name was announced for 2nd Place, the students’ excitement said it all. Dozens of others gathered afterward to ask how to build their own machines. Teachers expressed interest in future workshops, and local officials congratulated the group for reviving curiosity about classic high-voltage experiments. For me, the real reward was watching young people realize that science is still full of mysteries worth exploring. You could see it in their expressions—the moment they recognized that even a simple hand-cranked machine could unlock questions about the nature of energy itself.
Looking Ahead
We plan to expand our work with larger electrostatic systems and explore continuous-operation versions powered by modern high-voltage supplies. There is a vast field of discovery waiting in the interplay between electrostatics, induction, and resonance—territory that pioneers like Jefimenko, Trump, Dollard, Carson, and Baumann have already begun to map. Alternative-energy research doesn’t always require exotic materials or expensive laboratories. Sometimes it just needs a soda can, a crank, and the courage to look at electricity differently.
Epilogue
The Misamis Oriental Science Fair was more than a competition—it was proof that when curiosity meets craftsmanship, even century-old ideas can feel revolutionary again. Our students demonstrated that high-voltage electrostatics, far from being obsolete, can still capture imaginations and open minds to the broader possibilities of open-system energy research. As we packed up that day, a few last sparks jumped between the terminals of the Wimshurst machine—small, fleeting, and beautiful, like the moment of discovery that started them.
About the Author
Ed Becnel is a retired software engineer who earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. He has been keenly interested and involved in alternative-energy and overunity research for many years. Originally from Louisiana, Ed relocated to the Philippines in 2021, where he continues to mentor young students in experimental science and engineering. He is currently collaborating with colleagues in the U.S. on various projects related to alternative energy production and utilizationr.
Author: Ed Becnel Mentor, Misamis Oriental National High School With students Emmanuel Bongcas, Sheenaia Cabanig, and Vivian Aboc Tagoloan, Misamis Oriental – October 2025
