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Jim Murray

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Jim Murray
NationalityAmerican
Known forDynaflux Alternator; Transforming Generator; S.E.R.P.S. (Switched Energy Resonant Power Supply); Gravity Tap Project
Scientific career
FieldsElectrical engineering, Energy, New Energy

Jim Murray — who signs his patents and books as James F. Murray III — is an American electrical research engineer and independent inventor best known for the Dynaflux Alternator, the Transforming Generator, and the S.E.R.P.S. (Switched Energy Resonant Power Supply) system that he demonstrated publicly with Paul Babcock. Working outside the university and utility research establishment, he argues that conventional electrical engineering has confused energy with power, and that machines can be built which recycle the same energy repeatedly so as to deliver far more power to a load than the source supplies. He is a long-standing figure on the independent-inventor and Tesla-technology conference circuit, including the Tesla Tech ExtraOrdinary Technology Conference and the Energy Science & Technology Conference.

Biography

Murray describes himself as a research engineer with some three decades of experience in electrical power management and experimental mechanics, and states that he has spent more than forty years conducting fundamental experiments on electrical and mechanical energy conversion. Reliable public sources do not give his date of birth, his formal education or his employers, and none is asserted here.

His first major machine, the Dynaflux Alternator, was developed in the 1980s under private backing; the resulting patent was filed on 21 October 1987 and granted on 25 October 1988 as US 4,780,632, "Alternator having improved efficiency", originally assigned to MKH Partners and later held by Resonance Technology Inc. of New Jersey. Murray states that his machines were developed over about thirty years with several million dollars of private investment, and that for much of that period the work was held proprietary under non-disclosure agreements on behalf of those investors. From the mid-2000s onward he began disclosing the designs publicly, first through conference presentations and later through a series of video presentations and a book.

Scientific contributions

The energy/power distinction

The conceptual core of Murray's work is a distinction he insists conventional practice blurs: energy is a finite quantity measured in joules, whereas power is a rate, joules per second. On his account, a given packet of energy is not consumed once and destroyed; if a circuit is arranged so that the energy is returned to the source rather than dissipated, the same energy can be made to do work many times over within a single second. The measured ratio of output power to input power can then exceed unity without violating conservation of energy, because energy and power are not the same quantity. His book on the subject, The Meaning of Unity in Energy Conversion Systems, is devoted to distinguishing the several different ratios that engineers call "efficiency" and to setting out how, in his view, input-versus-output claims for such machines ought properly to be measured and validated.

The Dynaflux Alternator

The Dynaflux Alternator attacks the Lenz-law reaction — the back torque that, in an ordinary generator, makes the prime mover work harder as electrical load is drawn. Murray's design mounts the rotor obliquely, at an angle to its axis of rotation, so that it presents an elliptical profile to the pole pieces. As the rotor turns, the magnetic flux linking the power windings is made to reciprocate along a path parallel to the axis of rotation rather than perpendicular to it. The flux never reverses polarity; it simply changes its direction of motion. Two consequences follow, on Murray's analysis: the machine produces two complete cycles of alternating current per revolution, so that 60 Hz output is obtained at 1800 rpm instead of the usual 3600 rpm; and the Lenz reaction, having been redirected, develops as an axial thrust on the rotor rather than as an opposing torque, so that it no longer loads the prime mover in the ordinary way. He describes it as one of the very few "no back EMF" generators ever to have been granted a United States patent, and reports apparent system efficiencies well above 100 per cent from the patent's own test data.

The Transforming Generator

The Transforming Generator is a rotating machine Murray built decades ago in order to study the difference between voltage potential and electromotive force. Unusually for a rotating machine, it produces square waves rather than sinusoids, which he notes allows information to be carried on its output as a square-wave carrier. He reports that in tests driving mercury-vapour lighting the machine yielded substantially more lumens per watt than a conventional supply, and that in early experiments capacitive loading drove the machine into resonance and accelerated it toward self-destruction. He was granted international patent protection on the device but reports being refused a United States patent on it. He first disclosed its inner workings publicly at the 2016 Energy Science & Technology Conference.

S.E.R.P.S.

S.E.R.P.S. — the Switched Energy Resonant Power Supply — is Murray's best-known demonstration device. Its switching network divides each excitation cycle into phases: energy is drawn from the input source to magnetically excite an output winding, stored in a series capacitance while power is delivered to the resistive load, and then injected back into the input source during a later part of the cycle. Murray calls the resulting condition "energy resonance", distinguishing it from ordinary frequency resonance, and traces the principle to Nikola Tesla's use of reactive power and to the operation of the magnifying transmitter. A patent application, "Switched energy resonant power supply system", was published in his name on 15 June 2017.

The device was demonstrated before a live audience at the 2014 Energy Science & Technology Conference in a joint presentation with Paul Babcock, titled "The Secret of Tesla's Power Magnification"; Babcock built the replication using his own nanosecond-scale switching technology. The presenters reported that the machine drew about 1.1 watts net from the power supply while two incandescent lamps burned some 52.7 watts of light and heat — a coefficient of performance of roughly 47.9, later demonstrations being cited at COP 50. These figures are Murray's and Babcock's own measurements from their demonstrations and have not been independently replicated in the peer-reviewed literature; Murray's position is that they are not anomalous at all once the energy/power distinction is properly applied.

Gravity Tap Project

Murray also pursued what he called the Gravity Tap Project, which he presented at the 2007 ExtraOrdinary Technology Conference in the session "Researching Tesla's Inventions" on 27 July 2007. Recordings of the presentation were subsequently circulated in several parts.

TeslaTech

Murray is part of the independent-inventor community around Tesla Tech, the organization founded by Steven R Elswick that publishes ExtraOrdinary Technology and runs the annual ExtraOrdinary Technology Conference. He appeared on the 2007 conference programme with the Gravity Tap Project, in a session devoted to researching Tesla's inventions. Like many in that circle he presents working hardware to the audience rather than papers alone, and his later demonstrations at the Energy Science & Technology Conference — a closely related annual gathering of the same community — followed the same pattern.

Conference presentations

  • "The Secret of Tesla's Power Magnification" — with Paul Babcock, 2014 Energy Science & Technology Conference (the SERPS demonstration, reported at COP 47.9)
  • "Tesla's Hidden Discoveries" — 2013 Energy Science & Technology Conference
  • "Fundamentals of the Transforming Generator" — 2016 Energy Science & Technology Conference
  • "Gravity Tap Project" — 2007 ExtraOrdinary Technology Conference, Tesla Tech, 27 July 2007

Works

  • The Meaning of Unity in Energy Conversion Systems, James F. Murray III with Aaron Murakami, 2020, ISBN 978-1-6501-8365-7
  • US Patent 4,780,632, "Alternator having improved efficiency", filed 21 October 1987, granted 25 October 1988
  • US Patent Application 2017/0169941, "Switched energy resonant power supply system", published 15 June 2017

External links

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