It was not supposed to be visible. Gary had left his recycling bin at the end of the driveway and his electric bill was sitting right on top — unfolded, face up, readable from the sidewalk. Michael Garnett saw it on his way back from his own mailbox. He told himself he must have misread it. He had not misread it.
Three weeks later, he knocked on Gary's door. Gary led him through the back gate. Against the wall of the garage, tucked out of sight, was a device. Not solar panels. Not a wind turbine. Nothing Michael recognized. Compact. Quiet. Completely unremarkable to look at.
"Built it myself," Gary said. "Parts cost me about $200. Took one Saturday afternoon."
— Gary, 61-year-old retired schoolteacher, Augusta, Georgia
Gary was not an engineer. He was not a survivalist or a tech enthusiast. He liked woodworking and grew tomatoes in the summer. And he had been paying $14 a month for electricity — for four years in a row — while Michael had been paying $230 or more every single month without once questioning it.
Michael did the math on the drive home. Four years at roughly $210 less per month than Gary. The gap between Gary's household budget and his own was close to $10,000. Ten thousand dollars that Gary had kept. That Michael had sent directly to the power company. And all Gary had done was spend $200 and one afternoon.
102,244
American families have now built the same device Gary had against his garage wall.
Average reduction: 50% to 80% off their monthly electricity bill.
What Michael learned over the following weeks — about the technology, about where it came from, about why almost no one had ever heard of it — was not what he expected. The story reaches back over 130 years, to a laboratory fire on Fifth Avenue in New York City that destroyed an inventor's life work almost overnight. The people who benefited from that fire knew exactly what they were doing.
Gary built his device using plans based on a patent that was filed in 1894, then buried. The inventor was left with nothing. Over 102,000 families now know how to build the same device themselves — and their electricity bills tell the same story Gary's does. In the presentation below, you will learn exactly what Gary showed Michael in that backyard — and why the energy companies have worked for decades to make sure you never do.