Free Energy

 I dreamt that Philomena next door was in our house chatting with my wife (as neighbours often do).

When Phil mentioned that her mobile phone had become very hot in her pocket, I decided to insert my male, scientific, view-point into the conversation.

"Well," I said, "your phone works, of course, off microwaves. Microwaves are a form of energy, and often convert into heat. They can also be converted, do you know, into electricity.

"Over a hundred years ago, in fact, Nikola Tesla erected a very tall aerial in America to transmit electricity by microwaves across the Atlantic."

"But it didn't work, did it?" said Phil.

"O yes, it did," said I. "It worked until his bank pulled the plug on the finance. When the banker heard Nikola say he would deliver free electricity to Africa, the bank withdrew the money and the project stopped. The banker wanted to make millions, not give stuff away for free. 

"In fact, they are now doing that very thing in Africa. In Nairobi, where my sister works, the slum-dwellers all have smart-phones, but they don't have electricity; so the phone companies provide them with chargers that charge their phones from the microwaves transmitted through the air.

"So, you could set up a receiver in your garden to receive microwaves and convert them into electricity."

"So, I would have to set up a big tall Antenna in my garden," said Phil.

"O No," I said. "The transmitter must be a shaft, a tall aerial, but the receptor should be a bowl-shaped receiver."

"Well," said Phil, "I have a very large Pyrex bowl that I never use, because it is far too big for anything. We could use that."

"I was really thinking of something larger still, but we could use your Pyrex bowl as a proto-type."

So, next thing, Philomena and I were constructing a microwave receiver from her Pyrex bowl. I bored a hold in the bottom of the bowl, because it would be outside and we did not want it to fill with water. Next, I pasted the outside with glue and wound yards and yards of copper wire round and round the bowl, making it into a great bowl-shaped coil.  

I tested it with a sensitive voltmeter, and found that there was, indeed, a difference in potential between the start and end points of the coil. Then we attached the extremities to a direct-current battery-charger and commenced to charge batteries using our device. (All battery-chargers are direct current, but the commercial ones incorporate a device to convert DC to AC). 

All this happened in the dream, of course, not in reality.