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The Engadget Interview: Sean McCarthy, CEO of Steorn
Today's interview is a first for Engadget in a couple ways: we've never talked with an executive whose company doesn't actually make or sell something, nor have we talked with anyone whose technology is theoretically infeasible. Still, we've all had our chance to criticize Steorn for its scientifically heretical claim to the invention of a perpetual motion machine, its failed live demonstration of that machine, and so on. So now it's time to turn the mic over to Steorn's CEO Sean McCarthy, where he discusses his belief in the potential of Steorn's Orbo technology, his feelings about the scientific community and skeptics at large, and what happens next for the supposed free energy company.Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today. I'm sure that you're very busy, especially after the last couple of weeks-- I've had better weeks. Yeah, I would imagine. But before we actually get started talking about the technology [Orbo] or anything like that I think that a lot of people would probably like to know a little bit more about the company. So what can you tell us about Steorn that we don't already know? I mean we know that it was a company that was founded not to break the laws of thermodynamics but rather technological means. The company was founded by myself and three other guys back in 2000 and it was basically three of us had come from a company that I had been working with for a year and the Irish economy was doing well so we decided we'd set up a tech company with no real objective. We started working in the early days just helping people manage some of their big e-commerce spend. So it would primarily be contract management, so for example where corporate would be spending vast amounts of money on e-commerce projects.But that day was over so we came in to restructure the contracts and try to manage them into a more realistic burn rate. So we did that with probably some of Ireland's biggest corporate e-commerce sites including people like Banks of Ireland and so on. In 2001 we were asked to get involved in the development of some anti-counterfeit technology for credit cards and basically that became the mainstay of our business both in terms of developing anti-counterfeit systems for optical disks and for plastic cards and also doing an awful lot of forensics and expert witnessing for law enforcements across Europe. I see. So then you stumbled upon this technology by-- An awful lot of the work we would have done would have been done in ATM fraud, which is a very widespread fraud in the UK and in Ireland and across Europe, and from working with the police they have quite a different view on the crime than for example a bank, and the police's prime objective is to catch the bad guys. So we started looking at covert surveillance equipment to monitor high risk ATMs, because clearly what the law enforcement wanted to do was to get evidence of a person physically committing a crime and it was during the development of some covert CCTV cameras that we were looking at basically very mobile devices -- so we wanted wireless image transmission and also not to have to worry about wiring them up to anything. So we initially looked at solar cells and we looked at augmenting solar cells to extend the battery life of the system with winter at the top of these were lamp post sized devices. So it was during that we started really playing around with magnetic systems and that's where we began to notice some strange anomalies and got caught in this weird and wonderful world OU. [Over unity, aka free energy.] Sometimes we wish we hadn't but we have.
Steorn's CEO states the obvious: "we screwed up"
Perhaps the only thing more impressive than claimed possession of an "infinite free energy" machine is the refusal to give-in under the weight of the world's skepticism-turned ire. "We screwed up," admitted Steorn's CEO Sean McCarthy yesterday after their failed demonstration, but "if we were here to rig a demo, we'd all be here watching a wheel spin." As shyster-Sean explains, Steorn brought three systems to London, one of which they got working for "about 4-hours" on Tuesday night. As we all know by now, it mysteriously ceased to function after it was moved to the display room. At that point, there was a breakdown of the watchmaker-quality bearings causing friction to "go to hell." Sean no longer attributes the failings to the lamp heat, lamenting only that his team doesn't know the cause. Moving forward Sean alluded to a less "covert and cryptic" Steorn as they attempt to regain the confidence (they had it?) of the public and more importantly, their shareholders who are more than likely discussing matters with legal counsel at this very moment. Still, he promised to return. Next time, however, the system will already be up and running before the demonstration is announced. While we seriously doubt they've circumvented the laws of our physical world, half the fun of any good scam (and this is a good'n) is picking apart the components to reveal the truth. Click-on through for the full Q&A caught on video.
