Let's go fission for fusion

Philo T. Farnsworth with a fusor

Last time I introduced you to Philo T. Farnsworth, the man who conceived of and invented most of the technology for television, for which he received contemporary credit, credit that faded over the years as a big corporation sought and gained the credit for. 

Now sure, pretty much all complicated ideas are thought of, often by numerous people. You might be like me and have all sorts of ideas for useful inventions that you've seen come to light over the years. You might have even thought, "Hey, I thought of doing that a long time ago!" But someone has to come up with the ways to accomplish the idea, to put flesh on the bones, so to speak.

And many ideas build on other ideas that just weren't carrying out the mission. Television was one of those ideas, and Philo brought it from idea to reality. He did that again many years later with a device called the fusor. 

After World War II the idea developed that nuclear energy could be used for good -- powering our world, for instance. The technology behind the atomic bombs, splitting atoms to release energy worked and still works, but it has it's well documented problems. What if we could produce energy by fusing atoms instead of splitting them? That's the way the sun does it.

Experiments in the '50s showed fusion could be accomplished and that it would produce energy much more cleanly than fission did -- the most common byproduct being helium and any resulting radioactive material having a short half life (which just means it decays rapidly and doesn't hang around in the environment for ages).

A physicist in California applied his expertise and came up with a plan to control fusion reactions and applied to the Atomic Energy Commission for a grant to develop his ideas. Officials at the AEC seemed interested initially but in a few weeks they told the scientist that his proposal had been classified, and he was no longer allowed to write anything about it or even tell his friends, colleagues or family about it. One agency official was quoted as saying "He is allowed to think classified data, but he is not allowed to write it down." They told him he could continue to provide them with ideas though.

Experiments were eventually conducted and fusion was attained, but it required magnetic containment, which required large machinery and lots of power, and this is the method that researchers still use. And we're still waiting.

Philo, on the other hand, had a different idea, which is also still being pursued, called Inertial Electrostatic Confinement, which as the title suggests, uses electrostatic forces to pull atomic particles close enough that they can fuse. And the thing is that the principles Farnsworth articulated and the equipment he developed to demonstrate the process formed the basis for the ongoing research.

Now Philo worked for ITT when he and some colleagues developed the first working fusor while working for ITT in their nuclear energy research section. But management had the same problem that RCA had with Phil -- how could this self-taught inventor ever be taken seriously by the people we need to look to for funding, including, you guessed it, the AEC. So they hired some PhDs to help with the project.

One in particular, Robert Hirsch, began his own experiments and essentially took over the project. The invention is now often referred to as the Farnsworth-Hirsch or Hirsch-Farnsworth fusor. The AEC still wasn't impressed and ITT eventually dropped its support. And the problem remains in developing a system that produces more energy than it consumes.

But science students and aficionados are capable of building smaller fusors to this day. And they do. The resulting device is colloquially referred to as a "star in a jar." You can't buy a kit, but all the parts are freely available. 

Check out this video, if you want to learn more. Skip to 11:40 if you just want to see the device in action.