Elbert C. Kilpatrick

Elbert Craig Kilpatrick (1850/1 - 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. Six years later, Kilpatrick disappeared, along with his papers regarding the generator, seemingly to never be seen again.

U.S. Government Documentation

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

Press Coverage

 * p1: https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn84026749/1918-06-27/ed-1/?sp=1
 * p3: https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn84026749/1918-06-27/ed-1/?sp=3
 * p3: https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn84026749/1918-06-27/ed-1/?sp=3