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By The Dallas Morning News
September 8, 1935
C.H. Garrett, Dallas inventor, gave a private demonstration Saturday of a recently patented contrivance which he said substituted water for gasoline as fuel for internal combustion engines.September 8, 1935
He said it broke up the water by electrolysis into its component gases, oxygen and hydrogen, using the highly explosive hydrogen for fuel in the motor cylinder.
The working model operated a four-cylinder engine for several minutes in the demonstration, at varying speeds and with several starts and stops. Garrett said he had operated the engine continuously for more than forty-eight hours.
The inventor said the idea itself was not new. He explained that difficulty had been encountered heretofore in attempts to store the dangerously inflammable hydrogen. He claimed to have avoided that trouble by making and exploding the gas in the same process without a storage chamber in which the flames from the motor cylinders might react.
Water, he explained, is broken down into its component gases by passage of an electric current through it from electrodes immersed in the water. Hydrogen collects at the negative pole and oxygen at the positive. The hydrogen, Garrett said, is mixed with air and introduced directly into the cylinders..
The inventor said he had been working on the device for eight years, assisted by his father, Henry Garrett, traffic signal engineer for the city of Dallas, inventor of the traffic signal system, now in use here and holder of several patents on such contrivances.
Garrett said attachment of the electrolytic carburetor and installation of a generator of about double normal capacity to furnish power for the breaking down of the water were the only changes needed to convert a gasoline burning automobile into a water burner!
He said the electrolysis chamber would have to vary in size with the size of the motor used, one of about a quart capacity being big enough for the ordinary automobile.
He claimed instantaneous starting in any weather, elimination of fire hazards, cooler motor operation and fulfilling of all motor requirements in power and speed.
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