This “free energy” technology has been making the rounds online for quite a while but there are no useful leads to learn more about the reality of it. After reading this blog post, you’ll have a few more leads because I’m posting references to links relating to the Ammann family and related but there’s still nothing that leads to validating the claims and certainly not replicating it.
Let’s start with a couple articles from the early 1900’s. I left remnants of the ads on either side in order to capture the source and date at the top. Also, it’s an interesting synchronicity that this so-called free energy running automobile article is next to an add discussing the Pierce-Arrow, which is supposed to be the car that Tesla drove around with some wireless free energy as well. Although, most of what is claimed about the Tesla Pierce-Arrow story is complete fraud and misinformation, it is interesting. Another interesting connection, at least for me, is the reference to Spokane, Washington since I live here.
For easier reading, here’s a zoomed in text image:
Here is a close up of the Ammann “Atmospheric Generator” literally roped to the front of the car as mentioned in the article. The generator is supposed to be made of only iron, wire and minerals. This is repeated in various references. The red arrows pointing out the two metallic spheres was put on the picture by someone else.
Here’s a closeup of the Ammann Atmospheric Generator, which doesn’t reveal anything spectacular:
With iron, wire and minerals as being the only details about this Atmospheric Generator, that’s not much to go on. Was it wirelessly picking up a transmission from elsewhere or was it some mineral solution that created some galvanic action between iron and wire making it a simple but apparently powerful battery? There are vertical rods around the perimeter of it which look like they are tying the top and bottom together so who knows. It could be anything.
Here is another article sourced from Rex Research – http://rexresearch.com/feg/feg1.htm#amman
Denver Post (Monday, August 8, 1921)
Denver Man Invents Generator That Takes Electricity From Air & Propels Automobile
Believes He has Apparatus that will Revolutionize Power & Lighting & Gives it a Test on Streets of City
Has an invention been made that will revolutionize the electrical world? Will the apparatus conceived by a Denver man light buildings, run automobiles, battleships, power plants by the unlimited supply of electricity in the air? Denver electrical experts say “yes”, and the young inventor, C. Earl Ammann, Monday demonstrated his invention by attaching it to an old automobile and running it about the city.
An atmospheric generator is the name of Ammann’s apparatus. It is a compact, cylindrical object with two small brass spheres protruding from the top. Inside, Ammann says, is an arrangement of steel wires and minerals, so fixed as to draw the electricity from the air, condense it and utilize it for driving power.
The automobile which Ammann used for his demonstration Monday was the body and chassis of an electric vehicle. There are said to be no batteries in the car. It propelled itself with remarkable speed at the touch of the foot, climbed hills and glided through a maze of traffic under easy control.
Careful To Conceal His Invention ~
When asked by skeptical persons if he had a storage battery concealed inside of the power cylinder, Ammann said:
“As badly as I would like to show the inside of my invention, I can’t, for I have not yet obtained the patent rights. It would be exposing the result of seven years of work to open the cylinder. I leave for Washington this week to obtain the patent rights. When I return I will gladly show everything and I can only say, wait until then and time will tell.
“I have bucked every law of the textbooks to perfect the invention. It appears on the order of the wireless telephone but it is decidedly different, except that the electricity is derived from the air. It will run anywhere except under water.
The automobile is only a simple test. The generator will light buildings, do away with steam turbines, and, in fact, propel any kind of engine motor”.
J. N. Davis, the proprietor of the Davis Electric Garage company, at 921 East 14th Avenue, and one of the oldest electrical men in Denver, made a thorough study of the generator.
Electrical Man Has Faith In It ~
“I believe that Mr. Ammann has at least made the invention which will revolutionize power”, Mr. Davis said. “Of course, we don’t know what is inside of the generator and the inventor would be foolish to show us. We have long known that certain minerals exist, which if properly arranged together, would furnish power. That, in substance, according to the blueprints of the invention, is the basis of the whole thing.
“If the generator has been perfected to the extent that it will propel an automobile, the rest of its work is assured. It will be the greatest invention of the age. The electricity obtained from the air, first passing through the generator, would be available for any use”. So impressed was Mr. Davis that he offered the use of his building for Mr. Ammann’s headquarters. Ammann, who is but 28 years old, came to Denver from Spokane, Washington. He is an electrical engineer and lives at the Argonaut Hotel.
This might be the Argonaut Hotel in Denver that one or both of the Ammann brother’s lived at during this time: https://www.flickr.com/photos/auvet/38296270891
Here’s another article by someone that was in Spokane and had the technology demonstrated and partially explained to him – also available at the same Rex Research link above:
Fate Magazine, October 1956, pp. 123-125; “Report from the Readers”
“The Hubbard Energy Transformer” brought back to me exciting memories of another inventor. In 1918, while doing painting and decorating, I was hired to paper several bedrooms in a large two-story house. While at this work I went down to the back porch to pick up some materials. I happened to glance at the light meter and saw it was not moving.
I opened the fuse box and saw the main power fuses had been removed. It took only a minute to make sure the line had not been taped beyond the meter.
The only member of the family at home at the time was a young man in his early twenties [C. Earl Ammann]. I asked him, “Earl, where do you get your juice? I noticed it does not come from the power lines”.
“Come along and I’ll show you”, he said. He led me up to the attic. He placed some steel bars on a work table and picked up a coil which looked like a loose coupler. After placing the coils on the steel rods he touched the opposite terminal. The bell rang with great force, and there was quite a spark, too.
I picked up the coils to make sure there was no contact with other appliances. I could see right through them. There was no battery inside. The bell rang just as vigorously. The wire was iron.
In the basement Earl had what he called an Activator Transformer, the size of two fists, which had to be within 10 miles of the radius of the generator coils. The activator was not in contact with any visible wires or appliances. It was activated by the electric currents which surge around the earth and activate the compass needle. By cutting into these currents, earl said, we can obtain unlimited power.
A year later Earl demonstrated his Cosmo Electric Generator in Denver. He had placed two copper spheres on the front fenders of his car in pace of the headlights. From these copper spheres he obtained enough power to drive that old jalopy all over Denver as reported in the Denver Post at the time.
While Earl was demonstrating his invention all over the streets of Denver, the power had been cut off in the foothills. In spite of this, when he went to Washington DC shortly afterward to try to obtain a patent on his Cosmo Electric Generator, he found that charges had been filed against him claiming he had a device to steal power from the power lines.
K. H. Isselstein,
Spokane, WA
So the “Activator Transformer” with the the spheres sounds like the “Atmospheric Generator”, which is strapped to the front of the car. It supposedly taps into Earth Currents or the Earth’s Magnetic Field. But why does it have to be within 10 miles of the generator coils or Cosmo Electric Generator if it uses Earth currents?
Isselstein who wrote that article in the 50’s is from Spokane so was that demo also in Spokane or in Denver?
I haven’t been able to find a reference online to anything regarding one of the Ammann brothers getting busted with claims that has stealing power from the electric lines.
C.E. Ammann was heavily invested in real estate and appears to be part of a prominent family in Spokane back then. This link shows a list of properties he was involved in: https://fallsgazette.com/search?search=ammann
Spokane was originally called Spokan Falls (Spokane without the E at the end) but that gazette shows it as Spokane Falls.
When looking at some properties related to Ammann, I came across this building, which is on the historical register: https://www.historicspokane.org/wp-content/uploads/SRHP-Ammann-Apts-FINAL-1.pdf
The address is 1516 West Riverside Avenue and it is the “Ammann Apartments” – I know that address because it is just down the street from where my friend Victor lived. I saw a picture and it didn’t quite hit me even though it looked a bit familiar…
But when I saw this side picture of the building…
From about 2014 to 2020, Phil was the videographer for all our ESTC conferences – a whole 7 years. After each conference, we’d take a 1-2 week break and then we’d get together from around 10am to 4pm or so every day until we were done going through every presentation for the final edits. It was a long, tedious task because I had to re-watch every second of every video, every conference for all those years. All the hours spent with Phil was well worth it and is what made the final productions possible. And… every minute of all that time was on the bottom floor of the AMMANN APARTMENTS building, which was originally built by the Ammann family, including C.E. Ammann, the inventor of the “Cosmo Electric Generator” and “Atmospheric Generator” that powered the electric car with Earth Currents – a “Free Energy” technology, right here in Spokane, Washington and the leading conference in the world on this very topic had most of it’s videos edited in C.E. Ammann’s building!
A bit of the family history from the historical register pdf:
Ammann Family & Ammann Apartments After her husband Arnold Ammann’s death in 1886 in Springfield, Illinois, Caroline Ammann and her children Henry, Louise, Hermann, and Charles came to Spokane four years later in 1890. Charles worked as a real estate agent with his firm Ammann & Graves, buying, selling, and investing in land in Greenacres and the Spokane Valley. In addition, he worked at different times as a telegraph operator for the Northern Pacific Railroad and owned a mercantile store. He became wealthy and eventually moved to Seattle. His brother Henry was president of the Car Annunciator Company in Spokane, and worked for many years as secretary/treasurer of the Spokane Toilet Supply Company.
In August 1903, Caroline Ammann purchased Lot 17 on Block 2 at 1516 W. Riverside Avenue in Browne’s Addition for $1,500. She hired Spokane architect Albert Held to design and build a multi-story apartment building with apartments that offered four rooms, a kitchenette, and a private bathroom. By the time work on the property had begun, Caroline’s sons Henry and Charles, and her daughter Louise and her son-in-law W. J. C. Wakefield, had formed the Equity Investment Company, and in 1904, purchased the Ammann Apartments for $10,000. The March 25, 1904 edition of the Spokesman Review newspaper made the following announcement:
TO HOLD REAL ESTATE
W. J. C. Wakefield, L. A. Wakefield, H. A. Ammann, and C. E. Ammann have
incorporated the Trust Investment Company with a capital stock of $10,000.
The new company will do a real estate business, which will consist principally
of holding family property as all the incorporators are related to one another.
One of the company’s chief holdings will be the new two-story
pressed brick apartment house being constructed on Riverside Avenue.
The building was named the Ammann Apartments and was open for business by September. An advertisement in the Spokesman-Review on September 6, 1904 reported:
FOR RENT—APARTMENTS
Beautiful, modern four-room apartments.
Rents $40-$45.
On leases only at 1516 W. Riverside Avenue.
The Washington Trust Company agents.
One year later, a November 1905 advertisement in the Spokane Daily Chronicle newspaper ran a description of an apartment within the property as a “strictly modern four-room apartment, close in, with hot water heat in the Ammann Apartments, 1516 W. Riverside, $35.”
After 23 years, the up-scale Ammann Apartments were still being actively advertised for lease in the newspaper:
AMMANN APARTMENTS
W. 1516 Riverside Avenue
Four-room apartment with glass-enclosed balcony.
Located near library; outside rooms; papered walls;
enameled woodwork; Elecure-Keid refrigerators;
laundry room and locker space in basement. $55.
The Ammann family owned and operated the Ammann Apartments for 27 years from 1904 to 1931, renting apartments to hundreds of people over the ensuing decades.
Well, it’s not often that you chase a mystery and find out that you have spent many hours in a building owned by the very inventor of a “free energy” technology from the early 1900’s!
I’ll conclude with a few historical references to the Ammann’s, company names related to electric power, etc.
The National Underwriter: The National Newspaper of Fire and Casualty Insurance, Volume 19, Part 1
Electrical World, Volume 80
Poor’s Cumulative Service
I have no idea if J.E. Ammann is related, but on my search, I came across this – it relates to flowers, but is very interesting because right below the article about prominent speakers, which includes J.E. Ammann, the title of the next article is Tartarian Honeysuckle! lol
Many references online to Ammann and pointing to the spheres on the generator on the car all claim some relationship to Tartaria, the ancient empire between Russian and Mongolia, Tartaria was a references to the general area. And these spheres – well, so many claim the spires on buildings with or without spheres are all related to wireless electricity that the “mud flood” covered up. It’s good entertainment, but I haven’t seen anything convincing other than the fact that all areas of the world have been building up on ancient ruins over and over and yes, there was the vast region in Asia that was referred to as Tartaria, but the claims about wireless electricity, etc. aren’t backed by much other than imagination. However, the chances that there’s a Tartarian on the same page as an Ammann during my search, which came from the early 20’s independent of modern day hysteria is very, very interesting and entertaining!
I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did! lol The Ammann Atmospheric Generator is an interesting bullet point of free energy history and comes out of the same era as many others who were pursuing earth current generators. If any of this leads you to find any leads, please do let me know! If I have any further leads that guide me to something that we don’t already know, I’ll be sure to post it here and tell you all about it. Until then, happy synchronicities!
