The 1928 Hendershot Fuelless Motor Press Record: hendershot3.htm and the Mark Hendershot Memoir

What this source is

This is the source archive document index rather than a technical report. It gathers the 1928 newspaper coverage of Lester J. Hendershot's claimed "fuelless motor," a family memoir written by his son Mark M. Hendershot, a retired patent attorney's report from Borderland Science, and a set of scanned patent-application images. The page is titled "Free Energy Generators," but that framing is editorial: the contents are press clippings, a memoir, and document scans, not measurements or test data.

The index links to two companion Hendershot pages on the same site and to a large compiled PDF, The Hendershot Mystery, assembled by NuTech2000 (Australia). The PDF is no longer hosted directly because of its size (36.5 MB) and is instead distributed on a data DVD or viewed through an external link. Its table of contents lists chapters on the "fuelless" motor, solid-state generators (Mark II and Mark III), newspaper transcripts, book and magazine references, the Mark Hendershot memoir, a patent draft, the earth-induction compass principle, and the patent application.

The claim as the source presents it

Hendershot's own explanation, quoted in the New York Times of 28 February 1928, is that the device is not mysterious: it draws on "the same force that pulls the needle of the compass." He said his original objective was not a motor at all but a reliable true-north compass for aviation. The ordinary magnetic compass points to magnetic north, which varies from true north across the Earth's surface; the induction compass indicates true north but must be reset before each flight and was not always reliable. Working with a pre-magnetized core, Hendershot claimed he could set up a field indicating true north, and then found that cutting the same line of magnetic force north–south gave a true-north indicator, while cutting the field east–west produced rotary motion. On that basis he switched to building a motor.

The claimed power path has two stages: an initial impulse from a pre-charged magnetic core, and a larger secondary impulse by magnetic induction from the Earth's field. The device is described in the 1928 press as a motor and in the son's later account as a generator — a shift the source itself flags, asking readers not to conflate the two.

Reported performance figures

All figures below are attributed claims or press paraphrase. None is accompanied by an instrumented test protocol, an independent measurement, or a replication by a disinterested party.

• A built unit reportedly developed 60 horsepower and ran two weeks without recharging the magnetic core (Hendershot, via the New York Times, 26 February 1928).
• A model reportedly reached 1,800 revolutions per minute at Selfridge Field, and technicians there called its performance "entirely satisfactory."
• Motors were estimated to run 2,000 to 3,000 hours before the magnet center would need recharging.
• Mark Hendershot reports that later models lit a 120-volt bulb and a table radio simultaneously, and that he personally witnessed a television set and a sewing machine run "for hours at a time" in the family living room.
• Hendershot also asserted the engine weighed only four ounces per horsepower.

The demonstrations and the witnesses

The first significant experiments on the motor version were held at Selfridge Field, Detroit, under Major Thomas G. Lanphier, commandant of the field and leader of the First Pursuit Group. A smaller model was demonstrated secretly in a hangar there; the block test was witnessed by Lanphier, Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh, and others. A separate demonstration had taken place two weeks earlier in Pittsburgh, where W. B. Stout — head of Stout Air Lines and designer of the all-metal tri-motored Ford monoplane — called what he saw "impressive" and "uncanny." Stout is also quoted recalling that when the device was wired up, observers said it would not work, "Then it DID work."

The source is explicit that the press overstated Lindbergh's role. Headlines such as "Gasless Motor Tested for Lindy," "Lindy Inspects Fuelless Motor for Airplanes," and "Lindbergh Tries Motor That The Earth Runs" treated his presence as endorsement, and one story claimed he and Lanphier were flying to New York to show the motor to the Guggenheim Foundation for the Promotion of Aeronautics. Later reports emphasized that Lindbergh "had nothing whatsoever to do with the experiments" and had merely witnessed a couple of demonstrations as the guest of his friend Lanphier. The source presents both versions without fully resolving which is accurate, and notes that anything connectable to Lindbergh was front-page news in that period whether or not he had an active interest.

The counter-demonstration

Dr. F. W. Hochstetter of the Hochstetter Research Laboratories in Pittsburgh called a news conference and displayed models he said were the "Hendershot Motor." When his models failed to work, he declared Hendershot a fake and attributed the effect to power from concealed pencil batteries. He added that his models would not generate enough electricity to "light a 1-volt fire-fly" or "stitch a fairy's britches."

This episode is a rival's failed replication followed by an accusation, not a controlled debunking. It directly contradicts Hendershot's Earth-field explanation, but the source reports both as claims rather than adjudicating between them.

The patent attorney's report

The Borderland Science item (March–April 1989) is a report by Edward O'Brian, a retired patent attorney. In the excerpt carried here, O'Brian describes his suspicion being aroused by someone's emphatic denial that a set of "Utility Engines" information described Hendershot's device — a denial he found so forceful that he felt the man "doth protest too much." O'Brian reports tracing the matter to an acquaintance of Hendershot's who said Hendershot had remarked that the "Utility Engines" information was not his device but "was pretty damn close." O'Brian also describes the physical construction: a first model built around a ring magnet less than three inches in diameter, with coils rigged "as only Hendershot knows how to rig them" and another set of coils passing through the center of the ring; a second model built around a ring magnet with a seven-inch outside diameter and six-inch inside diameter.

Images and documents

The page carries a portrait of Lester Hendershot (hendershot.jpg), two circuit drawings (circuit1.jpg, circuit2.jpg), a photograph of his son Mark (hendershot-son-mark.jpg), and five patent-application scans (patapp1.jpg through patapp3.jpg, patappfig1.jpg, patappatty1.jpg). These are illustrations and document scans. They do not measure performance, and nothing in the source establishes that the patent-application drawings depict a working device.

Evidence boundary

The record here is weak and second-hand. Every performance figure is an attributed claim or a press paraphrase. There is no independent measurement, no instrumented protocol, and no replication by a disinterested party. The Hochstetter episode is a rival's failed attempt plus an accusation. The source's own correction of the Lindbergh headlines is itself a caution about the reliability of the surrounding press record: if the newspapers overstated the most famous witness, their handling of the performance claims deserves the same skepticism. The page title's "free energy" framing is editorial and is not supported by anything in the collected documents.

Related material

The claim itself is documented at Fuelless Motor Claim, and the inventor at lester-j-hendershot. Stout's quoted assessment is the key witness statement and is recorded at william-b-stout. The page as an artifact is described at The 1928 Hendershot Fuelless Motor Press Record: hendershot3.htm and the Mark Hendershot Memoir. A separate treatment of the Selfridge tests and the Hochstetter counter-demonstration appears in the Hendershot claims-versus-evidence source.