NOW comes a modern Ajax in the person of 19-year-old Alfred M. Hubbard and claims he has “tied his wires to the tail of the cosmic lightnings” and that his laboratory lamps are illuminated from the vast reservoirs of universal energy tapped by a device like none other ever built on earth.
    Hubbard calls his invention an “atmospheric power generator” and he holds that it will junk every known electrical generator and render obsolete the whole complicated fabric of wires that net the earth. With a machine that will fit in a lower bureau drawer and require no attention from one year to the next and no fuel. Hubbard says he can furnish an entire house with heat and light and power.
    The Rev. Father William E. Smith, for 50 years a professor of physics in Jesuit colleges, has made a thorough investigation of the Hubbard invention and has examined every part of it. Prof. Smith declares that it is revolutionary and today as a practical device producing electricity without motion, heat or chemical reaction.
    “It is not a fake or a fraud, and neither is it a perpetual motion machine,” declares Prof. Smith. “To call it an ‘atmospheric power generator’ is in error. It produces, I believe, only power stored within it at the time of building, but this power comes from a heretofore unsuspected source and will make the device operate for an almost indefinite time.”

From—The West Virginian. (Fairmont, W. Va.), 27 Jan. 1920. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.