Josef Papp (c. 1933 – April 1989) was an American

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, build, maintain and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials. They aim to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while ...

who was awarded U.S.

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

s related to the development of an engine, and also claimed to have invented a jet

submarine A submarine (often shortened to sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. (It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability.) The term "submarine" is also sometimes used historically or infor ...

. He was born in

Tatabánya Tatabánya (; ; ) is a city with county rights of 64,305 inhabitants in northwestern Hungary, in the Central Transdanubian region. It is the capital of Komárom-Esztergom County. Location The city is located in the valley between the Gerecse an ...

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

and died in

Daytona Beach, Florida Daytona Beach is a coastal Resort town, resort city in Volusia County, Florida, United States. Located on the East Coast of the United States, its population was 72,647 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. It is part of the Deltona� ...

. Papp was issued several U.S. patents for these inventions, including his noble gas fuel mixture. The engine continues to be considered by many scientists as a hoax. Papp's poor physics theoretic background is demonstrated in the abstracts of the patents, which had been criticized by

Richard Feynman Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist. He is best known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of t ...

. Supposedly — no confirmation has been found in contemporary sources and — Papp presented to an audience, including Feynman, an ill-fated demonstration in 1966, in which his engine exploded, killing one man (never identified in later accounts) and seriously injuring two others.http://hoaxes.org/comments/papparticle.html which has a text that it identifies as being drawn from an article "The Dream Machine" By David Ansley, ''San Jose Mercury News'' (August 27, 1989), p. 8; "Papp became frantic; the engine was running without any controls, he said.

Feynman Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist. He is best known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of t ...

relented and gave up the plug. Papp put it back in the socket right away and the engine blew apart ... A Mattel engineer died"; although Ansley was the Science & Medicine Editor for the ''San Jose Mercury News'', a search of the archives of the ''Mercury News'' does not show an article written by him between August 9 and September 15 of 1989, nor an article in the ''Mercury News'' titled "The Dream Machine" Feynman is said to have written an article for "LASER, Journal of the Southern Californian Skeptics" (reproduced in text form by the Museum of Hoaxes) asserting that Papp was a fraudster and the explosion an attempt by Papp to avoid discovery, although he notes that Caltech settled with Papp out of court.R. Feynman on Papp perpetual motion engine; said to have been "Originally published in LASER, Journal of the Southern Californian Skeptics", date not listed
/ref>

Notes

External links

Papp submarine page in the museum of hoaxes
* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Papp, Josef 1930s births 1989 deaths 20th-century Canadian engineers 20th-century Hungarian engineers Submarines Hungarian emigrants to the United States Hoaxes in the United States 20th-century hoaxes

See also

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External links