(from Stefan Hartmann posted on OU.com)
Hi,
I received this email message from Dave Doleshal and
post it here without any comments.
Dave's comments to Jack Durban's interview text are in red color.
Hello Stefan,
Dave Doleshal here,
I wrote you a response a few weeks back regarding the interview with Jack Durban, even though I had not yet actually had the time to read the interview directly. I've been preoccupied with other matters for a while. However, I have now had a chance to read the text, and can offer a little more precise response. My comments are in red, Jack's are in black. In case I didn't make it clear in my previous response, you are welcome to post both that response and this one to your list:
JACK:
"I worked with Steven Mark and could share some interesting info. I met him 1996 when the main video was made. I met all the players and took over a couple of his projects. I am an accomplished inventor and product developer. See http://www.vorel.com or do a patent search on 'Jack or John Durban'." (March 14,
(insert picture here) Jack Durban
Yes, this picture looks like Jack, though I haven't seen him in a decade. As per my earlier comments, Jack Durban is for real. He is a very intelligent and highly skilled man in the electronics field, with numerous patents, accomplishments and projects under his belt. When last I knew him, I thought very highly of him both in terms of his professional competence and his ethics. I doubt there are very many people in the world today who are as good at things like circuit design or prototype development as Jack. That was my opinion a decade ago, and I'm quite sure ten more years of real world practical experience has only improved upon his already excellent abilities. He is for real, and he did observe the TPU in operation at last once, as he says.
On March 16, 2008, Jack Durban wrote:
"A little background on who I am and why I remained silent for over a decade.
I have been an avid inventor and product developer since I was a kid. I was drawing detailed engines and mechanisms by age 9 and just had a knack for looking at a product and finding faults in the design. In school I spent all my time drawing machines and basic circuits. I worked on my first patent in High school and it issued in 1977. Since then I have developed over 200 products that cover several industries. I currently hold 21 patents that have issued or are pending published applications. As a product developer I have prepared dozens of patents for clients and read thousands of patents during searches over a quarter century now. I have seen it all when it comes to technology and I have an open mind which is rare in my field. I have designed and worked on alternative health devices like the RIFE machines and even worked with Barry Lynes the author of "The Cancer cure that worked". I designed the world's first Brainwave analyzer to measure correlates of I.Q. with Dr. John Ertl a brilliant PhD in Cybernetics. I am putting this out there to say that I have always entered into any design or design evaluation task with eyes wide open and no preconceptions."
All of the previous paragraph seems like accurate information to me.
JACK:
"The reason why I didn't come forward sooner was due to an NDA I signed back in '96. As one who makes a living working with invention, patents and is a caretaker of others intellectual property, I have to be very careful in discussing anything of a sensitive nature. Although all NDA's have to expire by a certain date, I waited an extra 8 years just in case Steven ever surfaced again."
Once more, accurate information, so far as I know.
JACK:
"I have seen several so called free energy devices, and all without exception were failures. Not all were fraudulent. Some were just not well understood by their creators as not meeting the requirements of producing over unity power or work."
Once more, all accurate, so far as I know. Jack is simultaneously open-minded and skeptical, a rare combination. It would not have been easy to put one over on him. He'd seen several fake free-energy devices in his time, had a pretty good idea what kind of tricks could be used, and was alert for any trace of such fakery. Even so, he evidently couldn't find any.
JACK:
"When I was approached by M.M. to work with Steven Marks, I wasn't overly excited after years of seeing these all crash and burn, but I was again all ears. When I saw the devices work and was able to rotate the units 90 degrees without loss of output power, I felt a chill go over me like seeing a ghost. You see I know Tesla's works as he is one of my heroes like Edison and others. I fully understood the impact of being able to rotate the device without performance depredation. The gyroscopic sensation felt when moving the device made it clear to me instantly that the coils displaced about the perimeter of the device were switching in a quadrature fashion like stators in a motor yet there were no mechanical devices in the unit. It became clear that there was a lot of current flowing from winding to winding."
I was not present for this event, but I later talked with both Steven and Jack about it. For what its worth, the details given here seem to be accurate. I'm not sure what is meant by quadrature fashion (as I often have to tell people, my electronics and engineering knowledge is limited). However, this feeling that the device is somehow spinning rapidly as if it were a gyroscope is a sensation these real TPUs do create when you hold them. And as Jack points out, it is somewhat startling since there does not seem to be any kind of literally spinning wheel contained within the device. When you touched it, the sensation was reminscient of the old style power sanders that vibrated rapidly and intensely. However, the device was silent when in operation. What, if anything this might reveal about the inner workings of the device, I'm afraid I am in no position to guess.
JACK:
"The device worked and the video is real. It was shot at a mansion that Steven rented in Lemon Heights California. Steven's face does not appear in the first videos but I did notice that he does appear in the one on youtube that shows potential investors. He always wore an all black suit and shoes even when doing basic lab work. It was part of the facade." Also accurate information. As far as the suit, ties and shoes, yes that was a little personal quirk of his. He liked to dress that way, even as a teenager. As far as dressing that way when doing lab work, I can't verify that. Steven usually changed into old clothing appropriate to the task when working on a car, fixing a fence or doing any electrical work. To call it a "facade" seems a little uncalled for. I don't see any grounds to criticize him on this, nor do I see it as being relevant to the nature of the technology.
JACK :
"The sad thing is that Steven was a bit of a hustler. He received millions from several investors, and never delivered the end product. Steven spent wildly on a lavish lifestyle. The seemingly sophisticated test equipment one sees in the videos was in fact a collection of audio and video gear. It was all purchased for audio development on Steven's so called 3D audio theater system that was shown at CES in 1996 or 97". One thing I had not appreciated until I read this interview was that there seems to be MUCH animosity between Jack and Steven. This apparently developed since last I had any involvement with either of them. It is hard to comment on what this is about. Last I had anything to do with any of this, I was trying to help Jack and Steven put together a deal for producing the TPUs round about 1996. That deal never went anywhere, but at least at that time, the two of them were getting along fine, and each seem to have a high enough opinion of the other they were willing to work together. Obviously the situation between them has deteriorated considerable since then.
JACK:
"I have no doubt that Steven was not the true inventor of this device, as he was not technically savvy enough for such a feat. His only technical background was working on televisions and cars." I must confess it surprises me to hear Jack say this. Although Steven was not a university trained engineer, he was very talented and creative where technical matters were concerned. I have no explanation for Jack's attitude. Jack clearly has some extreme venom against Steven. Perhaps it is mutual, but if so, I have no specific information about this. As far as Steven having been the inventor, I have no reason to doubt this. He was obsessed with the idea since 1974, believed Tesla had built such a thing early in his career, and felt it was possible to replicate such a thing. He tried a lot of things over the years that didn't work, chasing down every lead he could, including reading every bit of Tesla material he could get his hands on. For a long time he had the idea there was some natural frequency of the earth (approx 6.8 hz) that contained a huge amount of power, and if one could only tune into it as one would a radio station, it'd be a source of free energy. He built all kinds of receivers trying to do this, but they never worked. Eventually he gave up on that angle and started trying other things. For a couple of years he was doing things like grinding up gem-quality rubies for some reason I never understood. That was a very expensive set of experiments, but evidently they led nowhere. Years later, round about 1988, he started making the device that later ended up being called TPUs. It is possible he met somebody who gave him a device or revealed the secret to him, but if so, I can't imagine who that would be. If so, why haven't they come forward? It has proven thus far impossible for any of us to gain even a clue about what this thing is or how it works. Thousands of people have sweated through all the Tesla books and materials and other so-called Free-energy material out there, and grilled every eccentric and crackpot who claims to have such an invention, but we have all come up empty-handed. So are we to believe there was someone wondering around Southern California in the 1980s giving away the secret to people for free, yet we find no trace of them now? Who could that have been? Anything is possible, but somehow I find the notion a bit hard to swallow without some solid evidence.
Jack:
"I met Steven in 1996 when my company was hired by Mercury Marilla, Steven's boyfriend at the time, to replicate the device's capabilities by any means possible. At First I thought he was trying to find out if there was another quick way to produce the same result with an alternative approach, but I later realized he was likely looking for a second design that he could pawn off on investors so he could retain the original design."
Although I wasn't present for this meeting, I have a few relevant comments. As I understood it, M.M. stole one of Steven's units and started taking it around to various engineers without Steven's permission. It was M.M. not Steven, who wanted to try to reverse engineer the TPU. By this time, Steven had already built at least a dozen of these things himself. So far as I know, most of the engineers reacted about like Jack did. They were evidently convinced it was real, but had no clue how it worked. I don't know what kind of tests Jack did with it, but it seems clear his was not able to look inside, nor take it apart.
After Steven found out what MM had done, he was furious. However, he did want to talk with Jack about it later. My understanding of Steven's interest in Jack's feedback was not about trying to reverse engineer it, but on trying to get ideas about how to do a more convincing demonstration for potential investors. I say this only because of what I saw SM do with several other engineers. The problem seemed to be this: He would show the device to investors, and they would say,
"Yes, but how can we be sure it isn't fake"?
Since few of them had enough tech savvy to evaluate it for themselves, this was an impasse. They'd say they wanted Steven to give them a device, let their engineers dismantle it figure out how it worked before they'd give him any money.
Steven was unwilling to let them do this. Mainly his concern was that once they knew the secret, what was to stop them for revealing it to others, or making their own devices? Things like NDA agreements are not very powerful legal devices. They work fairly well between honorable men with good intentions, but they don't do much about inscrupulous people wanting to steal an idea. And it's hard to prove in court that somebody revealed thus and such information to so and so, especially when they did so privately and deny it.
What he seemed to want was for engineers to tell him how such a reputed device could be faked, and then arrange his future demonstrations so as to rule out that possibility. (How do you show it isn't full of batteries, isn't just a receiver of broadcast power from a nearby transmitter or powerful magnetic coil hidden in the wall, etc).
JACK:
"There were many, many investors pouring in money like there was no tomorrow in the hopes of getting their hands on what appeared to be the holy grail of free energy."
I don't know if this is actually true. Steven received a lot of money for other projects, but the way I always remember it, his frustration was he couldn't get money for this device. People were reluctant to invest, as discussed above. They either weren't sure it was real, or else were afraid that even if it was, it might be such a hot potato they'd never be allowed to manufacture it and sell it. My understanding was that he did eventually sell the rights to someone, but it was for a fraction of what he figured it was worth. Who exactly that was, and what they did with it (Evidently nothing, else we wouldn't be here trying to figure it out). What Steven told me a decade ago was that part of that deal included that he was not to reveal any technical details about how it worked to anyone, ever, and that is what he intended to do. He told me then he had lost all interest in the matter, and so far as I know, that is so.
That being the case, I am very skeptical of people that tell me they have been in contact with Steven and he has told them such and such. I have been contacted often over the years via email by people claiming to be the real Steven Mark, but when I start asking them questions only the real SM would have the right answer to, they always fail. So do be careful.
JACK:
"There was a reason beyond the endless supply of investment dollars that kept the technology from ever being delivered, and that was the fact that the device only ran for so long before it shut down due to overheating, which averaged 20 minutes or so after it was activated. He was very frustrated with the thermal issues, but every time I came up with a solution he would say he would check it out, but nothing ever came of the remedies. He would never allow me to take the unit apart or do any dissecting at all." Again, perhaps accurate information. However, long before he met Jack, Steven said it would be simple enough to just have a device consisting of two or three such units sitting next to each other. As soon as one got close to overheating, just have it automatically shut off and have another take over. Seems simple enough. Whether he ever built one like that, I don?t know.
Jack:
"The design was quite simple. There were two sets of windings arranged in a fashion that very closely resemble the Tesla patent 381,970 circa 1888."
I confess I am not familiar with this particular patent. I know Steven scrutinized everything Tesla ever wrote, at least everything he could get his hands on, including all the patents. I know that because I was often the one who dug things out of the library and brought them to him. There was no internet in those days. Far as I know, Tesla never patented or published the secret of his supposed free-energy devices. Perhaps Tesla did so in some veiled way, and Steven discerned some clue the rest of the world has missed. If so, I have no clue what this may have been. However, as I believe I have mentioned before, Steven always did say he believed his own device was basically a reconstruction of what Tesla had once made, or at least operated on the same general principles. Also relevant is that Steven used to say he believed Tesla?s device was something Tesla invented before the mid 1890s, based on such knowledge of physics and such electronic equipment as existed then, not after things like quantum physics or solid state electronics were available. He use to laugh when he heard people speculating about elaborate things that could tap into other dimensions or such, insisting all this came from humbler more mundane origins. What, if anything, that may reveal about the working of the device, I have no clue. But I do think it interesting Jack is here suggesting the device was at least partially inspired by a Tesla patent of 1888.
Jack:
"There were two large chokes and polypropylene caps that appeared to be an output smoothing function. My Instincts told me that the choke and cap pair was a tuned tank, but knowing how little electronics knowledge Steven had, I could not see him being capable of doing any tank tuning, and there was no grid dip gear around. I'll be releasing more information as I get time."Other than reiterating I find it strange Jack should be so disparaging of Steven's technically abilities, I have no comment on this passage.
JACK :
"Oh one little side note among many in this interesting moment in time was Steven?s use of a magnet to activate the device. This was just a ruse. The magnet, a cheap Radio Shack magnet at that was deployed only as a means of closing a simple Reed switch that closed the primary circuit. Steven thought this would throw off those who viewed live demos, as he was well aware that many potential investors were bringing their top engineers with them." I confess I don't know what a reed switch is, but I've seen plenty of simple magnet activated switches, so such a thing is hardly amazing. I'm not sure it was a ruse, but I am sure it offers no clue as to the inner working of the device. Steven did take pains to obscure how it worked. If he thought he was giving away some secret, he'd have never let this be filmed. Some of his devices worked merely by flipping an ordinary off/on switch. If these is real feature of the device, it's probably more like the ability to push start an automobile. It works, but it reveals little about how to build a car.
JACK:
"I am thinking about writing a screenplay on this, as there is much, much more to the story, including , crimes and misdemeanors. I have been sitting on this story for over a decade now."
Perhaps not a bad idea. It is probably the only way Jack or I are ever going to make any money off this event. I won't deny there was what at least some people might consider outrageously scandalous sexual behavior going on amongst some of the people involved. So far as I knew, Jack was never a part of this, being a happily married heterosexual and who probably had little direct info about the juicier aspects of it all. However, in all fairness to some of the parties involved, and to clarify some of the statements I made in haste earlier, I don't want to imply that everybody involved in the companies connected with all this were involved in sexual misconduct. Some were, some weren't. The general pattern seemed to have been it was the Church-going, squeaky-clean, conservative, "respectable" bankers and accounting types with billboard resumes that went around lecturing everybody else about morality that were fucking around on their wives, lying to the spouses and fucking their employees. On the other hand, the "Hollywood-types" with their counterculture reputations who you might expect to be the one behaving scandalously who were the honest ones who behaved properly and who were to decent "family men" who behaved properly and who had nothing to hide. Good luck on that one, Jack. You can count on me to by a ticket that that show, even if nobody else does. Just remember the redhead was Vanessa, the blonde was Monique, and the brunette was named Kim. Make sure you don?t confuse them. And remember, Tatiana was Russian, not a Ukrainian, and she is real particular about that point.
And all this, of course, have no bearing whatsoever on the workings, technical aspects or validity of the technology in question, does it?
In a (later?) post, Jack said:
"For some odd reason I just thought it was time to tell the story that few have ever heard. Perhaps it was seeing all the pretenders making up stuff about the man and the machine only to profit themselves from the legacy.
I did secretly release some secrets to Keely net a few years ago and they agreed to keep my name a secret.
Now after 11 years I no longer am concerned about breeching anyone's confidence. NDA's only last so long!
I hope you have an open mind as the technology did indeed work.
As one who was often hired to debunk so called over unity devices I was very fortunate to play with the device and work on a couple projects with Steven both power and audio related.
I should tell you in advance that I have a pretty good idea as to how it worked but I do not know enough to build it without spending some serious time in the lab which."
Not much to add here beyond what I already said. The only relevant point seems to be that despite Jack?s apparent hatred of Steven Mark, which you?d think would make him want to dismiss the possibility the technology was real, Jack seems to steadfastly insist it had to have been real, even though he doesn?t seem to have any more of clue about how it worked than the rest of us."
I suppose that is the thing that still intrigues me about the whole affair. There were times I figured it just had to be fake. But, as with Jack, I had seen a lot of these so called free energy devices, and all of them were fairly transparent fakes. That was obvious even to me. Yet they threw very brilliant and competent electronic experts at this TPU, quite determined to debunk it, and even after ten years no one can expose it as a fake or explain how it was done. Usually a good stage magician can detect fakes of this sort even better than scientists and engineers can. But even after ten years, none of them seems able to debunk it. Perhaps next week, or next year one will step forward and do so. I for one would be relieved. But until they do, all I can say is that if this was a fraud, it sure as hell seems to have been a good one.
On March 20, 2008, Jack Durban wrote:
"I would like to add the following...
This was part of an email of 20 March 08, between myself and one of the respected elders in the movement to reproduce the SM Device. This email is redacted and only shows one question of many and my position on Steven Mark to clarify my motives in this matter.
I think that you offered some sound inspiration but i did not see how knocking him technically helps as there may come a time when he will be more forth coming.
Let's examine this situation.
If there ever was a man deserving of some knocking it is Steven Mark. I understand that you guys are walking on egg shells with this guy with the hopes that he will someday reveal the final formula; but there is little reason to believe beyond hope and despair that he ever will reveal the final answer."
As I have said before, so far as I know, Steven has lost interest in all this years ago, and whatever deal he made forbid him to ever discuss this secret with anyone, so I doubt he ever will.
JACK:
"Megalomaniacs like Steven need an audience to feed their narcissistic appetite. To give anyone the final keys to making the device work would be cutting the umbilical cord to his adoring fans. All he could gain from such an act is a thank you. Remember, Steven knows how to make these already. If he wanted to help you or anyone else he could have without hesitation long ago." Again, apart from his personal grudge against Steven, I have to agree with his main point. I think if Steven intended to reveal any secret about this, he'd have done so long ago. I have no reason to suspect he's interested in doing so now.
JACK: "There are several others doing this and are well beyond where Steven is. Once he realizes this watch how quickly he comes forward to help when his obsolescence becomes a self realization and his fan base loses interest." An intriguing possibility. Who are these people? What are they doing? If Jack knows them, why is he worried about what Steven does or did? Why not try to get them to come forward? What can they tell us?
Steven made at least a dozen or so devices prior to 1994 or so. I have no idea who has them now. He made them several years before he met Jack, probably beginning in the late 1980s. Maybe one of them will turn up?
JACK:
"The reason I came forth yesterday was to tell the truth about what I experienced while working with Steven Mark. Contrary to some of the less than friendly posts regarding my inability to shed any light any light on the technology beyond what is already known, I never represented that I possessed or would reveal anything of a technical nature that would further any development underway. If I had I certainly would have finished the device myself.
What was a payoff? None for myself. Most of the feedback I received publicly was negative. The only payoff I can hope for is that if a guy like Steven Mark, a hustler and tinkerer with less than extraordinary intellect was able to reproduce this free energy device there is hope for others to replicate this device also as many others have to date."Again, if Jack knows of "so many others" who have replicated this device already, why waste our time on SM? How about revealing who they are, or trying to get them to come forwards?
Well, I guess that's it for now. If I had anything worthwhile to reveal, I'd have revealed it long ago.
Best wishes and good luck.
Regards,
DAVE DOLESHAL
"Secrecy, secret societies and secret groups have always been repugnant to a free and open society"......John F Kennedy
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Topic: The Doleshal Letters (Read 6791 times)
