I built this electric guitar at Presidio Junior High 7th grade woodshop 1964. Later I modified it with several inventions, as seen here with its electronics cover overturned. My sister called it the Can Opener.
Foot Guitar. An electric bass. This is where I first added speakers to drive strings. It was stolen in 1971 from where I lived at Project 2, San Francisco.
A Ravi Shanker record was all I had to tell me what a sitar was. Mom somehow had the courage to buy me a radial arm saw at age 15 (1965). I build this in my bedroom with the saw and a cheap wood lathe. It is really a larger bass sitar because I scaled it to Ravi Shankar's hand which is smaller than mine. That instrument to the right has a banjo skin perpendicular to the strings and a cello-like finger board. I told mom 'it thinks it is a cello.' Mom immediately called it The Neurotic Cello (1966).
South Indian Veena, my senior high school woodshop project of 1968. I did not quite finish it upon graduating at George Washington High School San Francisco. Brought it back to show the teachers.
The Sun Harp
Everything about the Sun Harp seemed like magic. It was 1968, soon after high school graduation, when I asked my friend Bob Galvin to help me find something like a special driftwood to make a harp with. He led us to Alamere Falls at Drakes Bay seashore where he previously found a beached whale. The ocean cleansed the whale and left only his jawbone for us. Bob carried it up a rickety ladder on the cliff and several miles down the trail. The wood for the harp was from Bob Stocksdale who became famous for his bowls. He gave me a giant slab of African schedua, asking only $15. My friend Jim Shaw introduced me to Jo Hanson who gave me her garage on 22rd Avenue SF to do art-related work for her, and for my art. Jo moved but she arranged with the new owners that I could use the garage for a year. I brought the harp to the San Francisco Arts Festival and the director sent me to Frank Oppenheimer at the Exploratorium. I showed Frank a photo and he said to bring it in; that was 1969 when the museum recently started. It seemed like all the news articles about the Exploratorium featured the Harp. I called it the Cosmological Harp back then. By late 1970 I constructed the Solar Sphere (see below) in Jo's garage and brought it to center stage with the harp at the Exploratorium.
The harp worked like an optical pickup with the strings casting a vibrating shadow. A solar cell signaled an amplifier to drive a speaker to vibrate the strings in a feedback loop. I tuned the strings in the light beam to make complex chords. The focal point of light on the central string revealed shapes by how I tuned it: circle, figure 8, and stars. In addition to illucidating the relation between signal and shape, the harp demonstrated principles of physics that I later used in my unquantum theory. As the feedback made the sound louder, it would reach a threshold, then change harmonics: the threshold effect.
It was a poor decision of mine to take the harp from the museum out on tour. It was on display at Sonoma State University where I was studying physics. It had to be moved, so I stored it in their woodshop. It disappeared from there, spring 1980.
My sketches designing the harp envisioned it as an alive physics experiment revealing the secret of life.
The Solar Sphere. It was a sculpture that said we could re-design all our tools and run them from the sun. It is like a solar powered drill press in an eggshell. I took the sphere on tour and had it parked at Greenfield Ranch near Calpella CA. It was towed away by accident (vanished). In this 1971 photo is Louise Clark of Lafayette CA, another supporter of mine.
August 1972, at Quick City event California Institute of the Arts. Solar Sphere and Tania. Notice the incredible (undoctored) streak of Luck passing through her. I did not see or know Tania at the time. The photo was given to me years later by her friend. I later met Tania in an unrelated way.
Above is a solar mirror used to cook. It is an aluminized mylar film sucked and suspended on a hollow form. ~1972
The Utility Core of 1971: An 8 foot diameter vertical cylinder made of steel rings on a 4 wheel trailer. It is like an inside-out house with kitchen, shop, physical plant and office tools. You live around its circumference. It had a crane and chair that rolled around on its rings. Atop is a sleeping loft. It is a mobile home that works by means of an external shelter. It makes house-moving easy. It was intended to lower commuting traffic and housing cost by building cities from these modules. I lived with it enough to test that it was a good design.
I build it at Project 2 in San Francisco, with an arc welder, saw and drill press. I paid the rent by making tables from recycled cable spools. We towed it to Tania's ranch where it was destroyed in the fire. The fire also destroyed a piano invention in the works, and all my tools. That fire was nearly fatal. In photo is not ER.
I escaped death several times. 1964 had my foot caught in a Muni bus door and was dragged a block. 1968 caught at a cliff and climbed with my teeth at Lands End. 1977 the fire.
I made this 24 foot diameter sail-mill entirely from found materials in San Francisco 1973. Photo is atop Project 2, a hippie live-work warehouse, where I lived for 3 years, on Mariposa Street SF. I also made and tested a 10 foot diameter Darius wind turbine on their roof.
Would you believe I did the calculations to withstand a hurricane and had this windmill design approved by the San Francisco planning department? I built most of it in San Francisco for Miriam Wornum. In 1977 she canceled the project, so we moved the rotor and its unfinished tower to Tania's Greenfield Ranch. The windmill was severely damaged in the 80's and might still be standing. Shown here, it is under construction with a temporary crane and with its shroud tipped down.
It is a 17 ft diameter bicycle wheel. I adjusted the spoke tension by tuning, then tightened the whole thing by pulling the hub sections along its axis. The blades are folded sheet steel. Rim is electrical conduit filled with foam, bent in sections and spliced with inserts. It was inspired by an article on the Chalk turbine.
From San Francisco we moved the rotor on Leonard Lake's truck with a wide load permit, taking two lanes on the Golden Gate Bridge. We had to trim trees on the dirt road leading to Tania and Leonard's ranch.
It may have been the summer of '78 on the ranch when Leonard moved my work space. It was not cleared properly and I accidentally started a brush fire. I had welding tanks in my car and flames were surrounding it. I tried to push the car, it rolled but not fast enough, I was in the fire, ran away rolling on the ground screaming, putting myself out. Airplanes put the fire out. My second degree burns healed. I was charged with a misdemeanor, and Leonard sued me for only $200. Seven years later LL became the infamous LL. I was studying physics those years (1977-1980) at SSU. Upon entering college, Tania and I shared a tiny truck at the Sonoma Grove hippie trailer park near SSU. I may not have attended college if it was not for Tania. We went our separate ways in 1979. In 1989 I found my wife Miriam (another Miriam).
Above the entrance of the science building of Sonoma State University is the solar heliostat I made for the school. In 1979 it aimed a sun beam to a beautiful exhibit showing sun-spots and spectra. The control system I made was removed by the head of the physics department (JT); his plan was to implement a microprocessor system that was never implemented. It may still be there on the ledge.
In my third year at Sonoma State University, in a physical chemistry term project, I designed and built this electron spin resonance spectrometer. I only had books with crude descriptions. The stockroom there and at San Francisco State University had components, but the design is all mine. I was able to see the fine spectrum of a known macromolecule and measure a famous physical constant (g). I thought the school would want it, but the first thing they did was request me to return its parts to the stockroom.
That is not the only way school let me down; see the solar heliostat above. Furthermore, after going through 3 years of upper-division math and physics Joe Tenn would not let me take their nuclear physics lab. Also, that is when the Sun Harp was stolen from there (spring 1980). Fall 1980, after a week at SSU, I transferred to SFSU. That SFSU semester was good and I took three classes: computer intro with Dan Wertheimer, digital signal processing, and philosophy. After that, I dropped out and started Computer Continuum. I returned to SFSU 1995.
Did business as Computer Continuum 1981-1995. This 1982 advertisement in Microcomputing seemed to be for the world's first computer add-on to make a digital oscilloscope with FFT spectrum analysis: The ZX81 A/D D/A board is my design but the software was by Dr John Kane. Here are some later ads: signal acquisition, motion control, Macintosh. Soon I did all the software and hardware to automate machine tools with the IBM PC. I started this business with Mom.
The GoodField. This is a wide-band radio-frequency signal generator for experimental human therapy. I learned this technique from Victor Fellus who achieved much clinical success, as reported in European journals. I produced about 200 of these and sold them with a buyer's contract of their understanding that it was experimental. My version added many tuner adjustments. My "healer" clients reported benefits, and I tested it on myself, but I could not determine if it did anything. We also produced a generator of pulses you could feel, modeled after Bob Beck's Brain Tuner. This venture was harmless and fun.
Metabolic rate meter, AKA The Finger Squeezer. This research was inspired by the book Endogenous Endocrinotherapy (1947) by Jules Samuels. He tourniqueted the web of the hand and measured a time until blood turned blue with a simple spectrometer on the hand. The rate of change of oxygen saturation, being controlled by hormones, revealed endocrine gland deficiencies. He then stimulated the proper hormone-deficient organ with radio-wave diathermy. I realize this sounds hokey, but Samuels' work was well written and reported success. I had to see for myself with modern tools. I made several contraptions to read the rate of change of oxygen saturation using technology similar to a pulse-oximeter: red and infra-red (805 nm) LEDs, photo sensors and computer control. I tried to correlate those readings to my wife's menstrual cycle, but never made sense of it. My contraption tourniqueted the finger. Try to see where you insert your finger in the photo above. Later I found that my infrared LED was not quite the correct wavelength. I think this can still work.
In 1995 I returned to college at SFSU to study mostly biology. I somehow talked my way into an advanced biology class with Dean Kenyon. Dean was a controversial figure for his book on intelligent design. My view is something less polarized. We all agree on natural selection. However, the mystery remains for how a trait is generated. Mainstream will talk of accidental DNA letters shifting one at a time. The accidental method falls short because too many DNA letters require adjusting to code for a new protein, and a trait with a chance of succeeding requires many proteins. My paper was on the nature of introns: the non-coding DNA letters. Ninety-something percent of DNA are introns. From reading much literature, I made the connection that the number of DNA letters in its storage loop was equal to the number of letters between 'hot-spots.' A hot-spot is DNA-code that is recognized by a protein that causes genetic crossover. I figured that under stress, the DNA-code can become phase-shifted to expose those hot-spots between the storage loops. When crossover happens it releases stored intron code. That mechanism could unleash enough code for a new trait. For cells that have introns (not bacteria) this idea offers why introns exist at all. It is a code-generating machine. Such a machine can make awful mistakes, but offers a mechanism toward hitting upon code for a survivable trait. To summarize, popular arguments are polarized. Academics depend upon random quirks in the DNA code. Opponents call upon intelligent design. I call for something in-between. In fun, I call it "stupid design." The code generating machine is not smart but has Lamarkian capabilities. That is, it responds to the environment, but makes mistakes. My theory has not been reviewed.
Also in that semester, in my microscopy class, I made a dark field microscope illuminator. By employing a selective surface mirror it might be an invention. Photo below.
Patent application for Book with flexible slanted spine. https://patents.google.com/patent/US20100176583
The Unfinished Gork. You play by pulling the lever with left hand. It is like singing with your hand. Any melody that I can sing, I can play on this, and in any key. I kept adding pickups, speakers, amplifiers, and tricks toward developing sustain and harmonic effects. It is a new way of making music.
At the 2007 Maker Faire, San Mateo CA, we demonstrated my gamma-ray unquantum experiment. In photo are my good friends Ron Seefred and Robert A Wolf. I publicly demonstrated my unquantum effect at three different events. This event was reported in the Chronicle.
Triple coincidence test with Na22. One gamma, from annihilation radiation, made coincident clicks on two BGO scintillators. This test gave coincident clicks at 10 times the rate predicted by quantum mechanics (the chance rate). For details see page 20 here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DBRzJxgnjlRGOeDqECKUQOgDd0cB0XKe/view
Search for fractional charge. It seems I worked on this for three years (~2012-14). The black arm on a pivot that runs through a one-Tesla magnet swings an Americium isotope source through a range of magnetic deflection angles. To the left is the detector chamber. This same chamber was used to perfect the alpha-ray unquantum effect. Toward the right and just behind the source is an electron gun of my own design. The electron gun was intended to send a ray of charge (electrons) along-side alpha-rays at the same velocity. A soft interaction of charge with the matter-wave was intended to change the alpha to a fractional charge state. Rutherford talked of this velocity-resonance principle. I was able to see the normal three states of the alpha: neutral helium, singly ionized helium, and double ionized helium. Here, we think of helium as the helium nuclear wave-function, the matter-wave. The electron gun never worked properly and I never saw my effect. I expect some future investigator will attempt this experiment. A similar experiment was performed long ago by Davis and Barnes. They claimed to influence the charge of the alpha, but in the conventional quantized sense. I searched for all the material on that, including this one that heavily discredited them: https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-ph/0010295.pdf. A more modern author performed a similar test, but did not understand the velocity-resonance principle of Rutherford.
Two discrete alpha charge states with a gap between them are shown here. I intended to see that gap become filled when the electron gun was on; that would indicate fractional charge. I contend that charge is strongly thresholded. Thresholded (not quantized) charge explains charge diffraction and my unquantum effects.
Unquantum diffraction crystallography. I spent about a year trying to see this effect. This was intended to be the first practical unquantum application. Diffraction crystallography is usually done with x-rays. Scientists have deciphered the shapes of most of our macromolecules such as DNA and proteins this way. However, our diffraction patterns suffer by not receiving the phase component of the Fourier transform. With my two detection clicks in-coincidence, that phase (timing) component can be extracted so as to calculate better images. The first step I took was to see if the unquantum effect changed as I rotate the crystal or the angle to the detector. Toward the back of this photo is the gamma source. The vertical cylinder is the scatterer crystal. Two 1/2" scintillators receive the gamma. The deflection-detector is toward the right and it can swing around. It is all inside the 12" diameter lead shield. I was never able to obtain a good enough result to brag about. Perhaps I needed a stronger source to see the signal above the noise. I recommend any future attempt to use nuclear decay x-rays. X-rays are known to interact better with nuclear distributions than gamma. An x-ray tube would not work because it does not have a pulse-like hv emission the way spontaneous decay does. The unquantum effect is revealed with near-field pulses emitted from spontaneous decay.
I want people to know that I only report success after deep interrogation. I did many things that did not work. I repeated the unquantum effect hundreds of times and scores of ways to convince myself of its reality.
Test of Bell's theorem with LEDs. I made a classical model to simulate a famous test of Bell's theorem that was performed by Alain Aspect. This paper gives some details. Of course, this model is not the same as that quantum experiment, but it gives the same result. It shows how optical polarizers work. My model, Aspect's experiment, Malus' law of polarizers, and quantum mechanics, all say the same thing. It is only Bell's theorem that says different. Here an LED in the center blinks light in all directions. Toward each left and right side are polarizers and a solar cell. A motor rotates a polarizer. Electrical pulses from the solar cells go to a coincidence circuit and then to an oscilloscope to show how correlations of pulses vary as a cosine squared function of the polarizer orientation. Of course, Malus' law is upheld. Most authors on this subject say that Bell's theorem should relate to reality, and will conclude that nature is weird. I say they have it backwards. In this case, the "Aspect experiment" was done correctly. I say, some assumption behind Bell's theorem must be false. This is all very confusing because in this case, quantum mechanics works. Quantum mechanics usually works. Nevertheless, QM is still weird because it does not work in my unquantum experiments. My position is that both QM and Bell's theorem are flawed.