Elbert C. Kilpatrick

Elbert Craig Kilpatrick (1851 - 1924?) was an American school administrator and teacher who, by his own accounting, had experimented with electrical motors since 1873, before ultimately inventing what he called a compound motor generator, which he claimed used "both positive and negative currents" to produce a self-perpetuating motion.[P]

In 1918, Kilpatrick appeared in Washington D.C. to protest that Garabed Giragossian and the U.S. Government had stolen his design, and that the Garabed generator was entirely based on information given to a government official in a secret interview at Mare Island (Vallejo, California) during January 1916. Whether these claims were true or not, neither Kilpatrick nor Giragossian would receive any Congressional financing or support for their inventions after Giragossian failed to convince a panel of experts of his claims. Undissuaded, Kilpatrick returned to California and apparently continued to work on his device for the next six years; by 1924, he had allegedly received financial backing from an "English firm", only to disappear while travelling from San Francisco, along with his papers regarding the generator, seemingly to never be seen again.[P]

U.S. Government Documentation

 * Patent Application, Serial No. 86957, For Method and Apparatus for Converting Electrical Energy into Mechanical Power