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Chapter 01 – Early Years

The Early Years.

The Sea Of Energy

In Which The Earth Floats

by
T. Henry Moray

Chapter 1 – The Early Years

“Enough energy is coming to the earth to light over 1.5 million (1,693,600) 100-watt lamps for every human being on the earth today. No fuel of .any kind need be taken as a dead load since this energy can be “picked-up” directly by ocean liners, railroads, airplanes, automobiles, or any form of transportation. Heat, light and power can be made available for use in all kinds of buildings and for all kinds of machinery. An example would be to pump water onto the desert lands, the power source being only a fraction of the weight of any steam plant or any kind of engine in use today, and all this at a fraction of the current cost.

“A wild dream? No! It’s a proven practical reality, as hundreds of people know who have witnessed the Moray radiant energy invention – powered from the cosmos.” So stated Thomas Henry Moray’s original Sea of Energy In Which the Earth Floats.

In order to understand the development of Radiant Energy, one must understand what took place in Dr. Moray’s life. By looking at the background of the Moray family and of the family of his mother, Petronella Larson, one can understand why Dr. Moray was in a sense a recluse and refused in some instances to discuss his invention with individuals who might otherwise have given him great credit.

Henry Moray was the product of emigrants, a Swedish mother and Irish father. Petronella Larson came from Sweden during a period when superstition was very great and under circumstances that required her to sacrifice greatly in order to immigrate from Sweden through Pennsylvania to Salt Lake City. She married James Cain Moray, who had been born in Ireland to a family living in hiding because its members had been condemned since the days of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Scottish-English wars. This marriage was filled with disaster: of seven children, only two survived to grow to maturity – Henry Moray and his sister, Nellie.

A family fortune built by Henry’s father, James Cain Moray, was almost entirely lost after the father died, and individuals who supposedly could be trusted betrayed Henry’s mother. As a result, Henry’s mother wished him to follow a business career and encouraged him by offering to buy up businesses with what little money was left: She insisted that he attend the old LDS College because it had a business course.

Henry Moray’s interests leaned toward electronics and electrical engineering rather than business. His work was confined to whatever he could “scrounge” up himself as his mother thought his interests a waste of time. He often would go to the garbage dump to find pieces of wire, scraps of tape, and material he wanted to work with in the basement. At one time his uncle, John Moray, offered to put up money for the young man’s experimenting, but Henry’s mother became too upset.

At age fifteen he obtained a job as an electrician, wiring houses. It would seem that a large number of the houses being wired at the time happened to be houses of prostitution. I heard him mention on many occasions that the girls always treated him with great respect and the madame made them behave themselves when he was there working. He felt particularly sorry for one of the girls and tried to show her the error of her ways. In later years, subsequent to his mission for the L.D.S. Church, he visited a business acquaintance and was pleasantly surprised to find that the girl was now married to the businessman.

His thoughts were continually drawn to an idea pounding in his brain and looking for expression. In a brief history of the Radiant Energy device, he wrote:

“I started my experimentation with the taking of electricity from the ground, as I termed it, during the summer of 1909. By the fall of 1910 I had sufficient power to operate a small electrical device, and I made a demonstration of my idea to two friends, Lorine and Parnel Hinckley. This demonstration in the early stages of my experimenting consisted of operating a miniature arc light. I had the idea of using what I termed static, based upon the experiment of Ben Franklin with his kite, but as advancements were made it soon became evident that the energy was not static and that the static of the universe would be of no assistance to me in obtaining the power I was seeking.

“Although the accepted scientific ideas of the day seemed to point to the impossibility of what I was trying to do, there was never a time when, within my mind, anything but ultimate success was assured. Even when only enough energy was obtained to make a slight click in a telephone receiver, I did not doubt the soundness of the idea upon which I was working.

“During the Christmas Holidays of 1911, I began to fully realize that the energy I was working with was not of a static nature, but of an oscillating nature. Further I realized that the energy was not coming out of the earth, but instead it was coming to the earth from some outside source. These electrical oscillations in the form of waves .were not simple oscillations, but were surgings – like the waves of the sea – coming to the earth continually, more in the daytime than at night, but always coming in vibrations from the reservoir of colossal energy out there in space. By this time I was able to obtain enough power to light the old type 16-candlepower carbon lamp for about one half capacity, and I did not seem to make any further improvement until the spring of 1925.”

In 1910 or 1911 he enrolled in a correspondence course in electrical engineering in Pennsylvania.

In July of 1911, Petronella Larson bought for her son what they thought was the controlling interest in what was then known as the Independent Electric Company. They bought the company on the basis of a financial statement furnished them by certain prominent individuals in Salt Lake, depending entirely on the integrity of these individuals for the accuracy of the reports. It turned out that the inventory and accounts receivable had been falsified, and that most of the accounts receivable had been outlawed because no attempt to collect them had been made in a reasonable amount of time to keep them alive.

Henry went to work for the company, became secretary and a member of the board of directors, and became very friendly with the president, a man by the name of Holly, the biggest owner of the company besides Henry. Holly immediately understood that Henry had been taken advantage of. Together they got rid of the incumbent manager and attempted to salvage what they could of the company. It was three weeks before either of them fully realized the extent of the misrepresentation. Much to Henry Moray’s surprise, he had bought only an interest in the inventory and the sales and had no control over management. The only thing that was correct was “bills payable.” Even though Holly attempted to salvage the company (after Henry Moray was called on an L.D.S. Mission), Henry and his mother lost everything that they had put into the company. Only one of the individuals responsible ever tried to explain his own actions, and then he simply said that if he had known to whom he had sold the company, he would not have done so. Because this individual himself had lost so much money on the company, he thought he was justified in making the deal.

Years later R.L. Judd, an attorney and friend from Henry’s LDS College days, took up the case and tried to straighten it out. But because of political pressure, Judd finally advised Henry that he should withdraw his legal action. Henry felt he could not fight the responsible individuals alone. No other attorney in Salt Lake would take the case, so he abandoned any effort to obtain retribution for the financial loss he had suffered.

In 1912 he was called to go on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and under a visitor’s visa was allowed to enter Sweden during the Exhibition of 1912 in Stockholm. With permission of his mission president, he attended the University of Upsalla for short periods of time, taking courses by examination. He mentioned many times that he feared he would be caught by a certain Lutheran pastor and discovered to be a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This Pastor Aslive had become an arch rival since Henry Moray had succeeded in embarrassing him in several debates. The pastor, therefore, became enraged any time he and Henry Moray chanced to meet. Since Upsalla was a state school, Henry was forced to attend under the name of James Cain Larson, assuming his mother’s maiden name and using the address of his mother’s half-sister, Fru Cecelia Nelson (c/o Andrus Solomon Larson, Perstorp, Skone).

In his notebook, dated November 1, 1913, Henry included a memo that he had obtained material from a railroad car at Abisco, Sweden the previous summer, and material from the side of a hill. He made electric tests of these materials, taking them home to try each as a detector for his energy machine. Tests indicated that this soft, white stone-like substance might make a good “valve-like detector.” Some excerpts from the notebook follow:

“November 13, 1913, time early this morning to test the stone again. Hard to buy wire and stuff to make coils. Used cardboard tube to work on. Batteries of no help in priming. Got hard rubber Widstens from Wilsons and bought some silk and pure wool cloth to use as static generator. Got some red sealing wax and tried to make vacuum tube, but no luck. Silver wire used on stone makes a rectifier.

“January 21, 1914, been alone a few days down at south end of Gefle Branch where I came to study. Took my gadget with me when I left Gefle Sunday evening, January 19. Guess time will not permit me to do much with gadget. Yet will do all I can. I know it will work.

“Tuesday, May 5, 1914, at south end, had fun at class today. (Ed: referring to the University of Upsalla.) Swedes make fun of my Skone Swedish, but I do them in a way they cannot understand English. Got four hours in the shop and lab, with a friend, without making explanation. He asked ‘what that dumb radio set was, can’t get anywhere much hearing that device.’ Soon will be home, in about four months.”

Before leaving Sweden, July 31, 1914, he had succeeded in completing his doctoral thesis, which advanced the idea that there was energy throughout space. It is unfortunate this writing is not available to us. His oral examinations were completed, although no commencement ceremony or certificate of graduation was issued at that time. Through the years he kept abreast of the latest developments in science through diversified reading. He built up a personal scientific library of extensive proportions.

On November 28,1917 (Fig. 4), he married Ella Ryser. They had five children: Henry, Jr., Ella Evelyn, Sylvia, John Eugene, and Richard Ryser.

At the end of World War I it was difficult to get engineering jobs. Moray was forced to work as a fireman on one of the railroads. Later he was able to obtain work as a civil engineer for the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. However, he detested working as a civil engineer. The drawing (see Fig. 5), which he made, illustrates how he felt. The engineers working on both sides of him smoked cigars. He used to say he knew that if he had not quit the job, he would have ended up smoking a pipe simply for self defense.

Still later he held various other positions, serving as an electrical engineer and designer for the Phoenix Construction Company (a sub-contractor for the Utah Power and Light Company), an assistant chief electrical engineer for the Aarastad Construction Company, and an assistant division electrical engineer for the Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Company.

During this time, he designed the electrical layouts for many large buildings in Salt Lake City and throughout the West. He was the design engineer for what was known as Terminal, located west of Salt Lake City, which was the largest oil-cooled electrical switch yard in the world. He was a certified member of the American Association of Engineers, and secretary of the Independent Electric Company.

On December 21,1920, he was injured in an accident while examining a Utah Power & Light Company substation to determine the levels of inductive interference to telephone circuits. During this period the first attempts were made to discredit him. To obtain some compensation for both the labor time lost and the injury to his eyes, he was forced to take his case against the company all the way to the Utah Supreme Court. The transcript of the case reveals that the company had examined his background and everything about him.

He often mentioned that this accident may have been a blessing in disguise. His limited ability to see detailed work forced him from the drawing table into research and led him back into Radiant Energy. From time to time arguments were given that he had lost up to 75 percent of his vision. It is interesting to note that in the early 1970’s, a few years before he died, an optometrist commented on the large number of burned spots of the retina of his eye. It was reported a few years ago that the Mountain Bell System denied that Henry had ever performed the work that resulted in his injury or that he had ever been an employee in their system. However, the Utah Supreme Court record exists today. A copy of the record is held in our files, as is his notebook on inductive interference.

The period that followed 1921 included some rather lean years for Henry Moray. He tried to expand into various other fields in order to occupy himself within the limitations of his eyesight. Without going into detail, it can be said that his financial woes multiplied until he was barely able to retain his home and that of his mother.

He obtained a certificate as a poultry judge and in September of 1923 he became a certified member of the American Poultry Association. He purchased 3000 Buff Orpington chicks and entered the chicken business. He had built a 150 foot long chicken coop behind his home. Properly housed and cared for, the Buff’ Orpington chicks grew into a fine flock in a short time. Henry then became interested in raising fine Cornish hens and purchased a hen, a cockerel, and some eggs. Before long these eggs hatched and the resulting chicks were raised and groomed into fine showbirds. He began winning prizes almost immediately and soon became known throughout the Salt Lake Valley as a raiser of spendid Cornish poultry.

So valuable was Moray’s Cornish poultry that Dr. Warburton, a well-known Salt Lake dentist, once bought ten eggs from Henry at $50 each. Henry gave Dr. Warburton five extra eggs without charge and further guaranteed that these eggs would produce a prize-winning showbird. Not only that, he guaranteed that one of the birds would win Grand Champion. And sure enough, some time later one of the birds did win Grand Champion at the Utah Poultry Association Exhibit.

Henry’s Cornish poultry soon became known throughout the state and beyond. He was asked to judge poultry at state fairs and at shows of the American Poultry Association in such faraway places as Montana, Kentucky, California, Kansas, Nebraska, and Vermont.

With such a widespread reputation as an expert raiser of Cornish poultry, it wasn’t long before people were calling him “The Cornish King.” Word of his Cornish poultry reached Hollywood, and producer Raoul Walsh and actress Thelma Todd visited him and bought many fine birds.

One particular Cornish cockerel was named Lord Cecil. Lord Cecil was a perfect bird, perfect in body features, color, and feathers. Whenever he was put on a table and viewed by judges, the opinions of the judges was unanimous. He always won Grand Champion. At the American Poultry Association’s show at Sugarhouse, Salt Lake City, in 1923, Lord Cecil was judged by Judge Branch to be first cockerel. Judge Branch was a particularly difficult judge to please, and he commanded a fee of $500 a show for the job of judging. At that same show, Lord Cecil won the sweepstakes, the prize for the best color, and the prize for the best shape. After the show, he won the Grand Champion and the Gold Medal. The value of the bird at this time was at least $1,000.

Shortly before selling the major part of his breeding stock in Cornish Chickens to the movie actress, Thelma Todd, Henry Moray had to take legal action against one of the local chicken farmers who falsely claimed he had purchased Lord Cecil from Henry. Henry continued to sell prize eggs at a handsome price “by the setting,” as it was called, for purchasers to raise chickens or show birds directly related to Lord Cecil. Henry then sold his breeding stock, planning to start over from the chicks he had left that year. Instead, he was wiped out completely. A marauding skunk or weasel got into the coop and destroyed his best cockerels.

In the early 1930’s, Dr. Moray bought a prize horse by the name of Valencia Don for the sum of $5,000. Don came highly recommended. His sire had sold for $100,000 and he was truly a champion animal.

On the pretext of furt er training, a man by the name of Royce misappropriated Don. After several months, he was finally arrested and brought to trial for taking the horse and removing it from the state of Utah. During the period Royce had him, the animal had bred many mares, witnesses claiming a ridiculous number. Royce had kept the horse under the influence of drugs and had given false papers with regard to the breeding certificates.

When the horse was returned and Royce was finally brought to justice, Henry Moray felt such sympathy for Royce – because of his large family and the poverty that Royce professed – that he allowed it to be said in court that the horse was worth less than fifty dollars. This made the crime only a misdemeanor and Royce was not sent to prison. All Henry really wanted was to have his horse back. However, in a way his sympathy backfired because he made an enemy of a man named Grant Ivins, who had had mares bred illegally by Don while the horse was in Royce’s possession, and who demanded, unsuccessfully, that Henry give him breeding certificates.

During this period in his life Henry was learning the hazards of fame, not just from people who claimed his prize cock or made off with his champion horse. Before 1928, my mother received phone calls telling her that her husband’s life was “not worth a plugged nickel” unless he cooperated on Radiant Energy. Even then, violent opposition to his work was becoming prevalent. His home and laboratory were constantly broken into when the family was not at home.

The harassment became so great that Henry was forced to buy a 32.20 revolver and a little hand gun, a Colt. 32. For many years he carried the Colt with him wherever he went. Until the federal government entered the picture, Henry always had special bullet-proof glass put in all the windows of his automobiles; a local glass installer had it shipped in especially for him.

More than once the glass saved our lives. I remember one time in 1936 when we were fired upon. My mother was driving the car and I was sitting behind her in the back seat. The bullet went through the car and lodged in the windshield directly in front of her. Just as this happened, a classic black sedan with all the shades down almost forced her off the street and then sped away up 21st South in Salt Lake City.

In one attempt to break into the Moray house in 1931 or 1932, someone shot the watchdog, King, with a small caliber gun. The bullet grazed his head and lodged in the back of his neck. Assisted by my cousin, Chester Todd, and several other young men in the neighborhood, Dad was able to probe the bullet out from under the skin.

Through the years many unscrupulous men tried to deny Henry credit for his life’s work or take from him his very livelihood. These actions often hindered the work that all his life he tried so desperately to do.

Many people knew my father, and I have found none of them to be neutral: they either disliked him intensely or they could not say enough to praise him. I have been told that he had no enemies, but I have often thought, “With some of his friends, who needed enemies?”

This “valve-like detector” is what led Henry to do research in semi-conductive materials, and from this soft white stone he developed his first Moray valve and the Moray valve that was used in some of the early Radiant Energy devices.