The Halitotic Converter

The Halitotic Converter

Alternative sources of energy are all the rage now.  You can’t pick up a paper anymore without reading about solar, wind farms, biodiesel, or fuel cells.  But this isn’t the first time the nation has been swept up in the idea of non-petroleum sources of energy.  In the late 70’s, President Carter responded to the OPEC embargos by establishing the Synthetic Fuels Corporation, a government-sponsored research and development corporation intended to convert energy research ideas into actual energy-producing plants and inventions.  Millions of dollars were spent during the early 80’s trying to develop alternative energy sources.  Only a few projects were successful, such as the Great Plain coal gasification plant in Beulah, ND.  Out of all the boondoggle-ly research sponsored by Synfuels funds, nothing matches the weird and tragic story of the Halitotic Converter.

Flora Spoil

Like many great discoveries, the Halitotic Converter was the result of serendipity.  Alternative Horizons, a small R&D company in Novato, CA, had a three-year grant from the Synthetic Fuels Corporation to develop a process for efficiently converting landfill-derived methane gas to electricity.  They had built a number of prototypes in the lab but none met the proposed specifications.  Late one evening in the spring of 1981, a lab technician named Calvin Hornsby was working at his desk when he noticed a bright light coming from the converter lab.  Hornsby knew that each bench prototype had a light bulb on top to measure the current generated from the methane gas pumped in from a storage tank.  He also knew the methane supply was turned off for the evening – he had done it himself.  With some trepidation, Hornsby went into the lab to investigate.  Sure enough, one of the indicator bulbs was shining brightly and bending over the instrument was their cleaning lady, Flora Spoils.  After a quick greeting, Hornsby asked Flora how long the bulb had been glowing.  “Oh, this one does that every time I dust it” said Flora.  Hornsby blinked repeatedly in an effort to clear the effects of Flora’s astonishing bad breath.  He checked the methane supply and, indeed, it was off.  What was powering the bulb?  When Flora went off to clean another room, the lamp suddenly dimmed. “Flora, come back here a minute.”  “Yes, sir?”  The bulb glowed anew.

The Reno Pilot Plant

Over the next weeks, the team at Alternative Horizons rigorously tested their hypothesis that the bench prototype was converting Flora’s bad breath into electricity.   They ran an ad in the San Francisco Chronicle looking for volunteers with really awful breath to participate in the research.  They discovered that not all bad breath could be converted to electricity but a specific combination of garlic, shallots, and feta cheese produced the target voltage originally specified in the Synfuels proposal.  This combination was wisely omitted from Alternative Horizons presentation at the annual International Synfuels Convention in the fall of ’81.  Public and private interest in the Halitotic Converter, as it was now called, grew at an astonishing rate.  Soon, Alternative Horizons was overwhelmed with venture capital offers.  They built a pilot plant near Reno, NV capable of powering 100,000 homes from the breath of only twenty-five employees whose pay included all the garlic, shallots, and feta cheese they could eat.

Reagan and Gorbachev at Reykjavik, Iceland

However, powerful interests were understandably threatened by the sudden success of the Halitotic Converter.  The hallways of Washington were soon crowded with members of the oil and gas lobbies, not to mention the powerful mouthwash lobby.  A bitter public relations battle ensued as groups with names like “Citizens for Oral Hygiene” and “Americans for Clearing the Air” published slanderous diatribes against Alternative Horizons, the Halitotic Converter, and even poor Flora Spoil herself.   Acting on the orders of President Reagan, the U.S. Government, using the justification that the original research was funded by a Synfuels grant, seized the assets of Alternative Horizons including the pilot plant, and the prototypes, and all records related to the Halitotic Converter.  Within a month, the entire enterprise disappeared as if it had never existed.  In 1991, Rolling Stone published an article claiming that Ronald Reagan had secretly promised Mikhail Gorbachev that the U.S. would never develop the Halitotic Converter at Reykjavik, Iceland in 1986.  Both men thought that its development would destabilize international relations around the world.  Strangely, the author of the article was killed in a boating accident two weeks later.

Question of the Day: Flora Spoil is an anagram for what?