Hello, my name is not Ringwood - and i am not a doctor  **

however, everything else in these webpages is true (i believe!)

after reading some papers by a gentleman named H. Aspden, i was inspired to carry out some experiments which might show if it's possible to extract energy from the vacuum medium (or, as it was called at its last known address: the 'Aether')

(...i hope you're not putting any money on this!)

i set up a simple circuit to repetitively charge a capacitor from a voltage source and discharge it into an output load 

    basic circuit arrangement for switched capacitor experiments

my first tests were just to transfer charge from a charged capacitor stack into a separate, fully-discharged, capacitor stack

subsequent experiments used developments of the circuit to investigate energy implications arising from the results i found


results from my experiments can be viewed using the buttons to the left of this page

** and now, to explain the 'Doc Ringwood' thing:

in a move that wouldn't seem out of place in the pages of one of Douglas Adams' 4-book  trilogies, i was once named as referee for a heavy-duty Science Grant application by someone who, although co-incidentally NOT being named Ringwood either, WAS however a doctor (PhD)

unfortunately, he submitted his application to the distinguished panel of scientists for consideration BEFORE checking that my name was Ringwood or that i did indeed have a PhD myself (not when i last looked!)

this left me with something of a dilemma:
  - should i point out to him that neither of the only two things he had stated about me on his grant application were true - in which case he would have then to re-approach the award panel & either explain his mistake ("but you can still entrust me with all this money & expect me to get my facts straight in my reports") or say that Doctor Ringwood declined to act as Referee for him any more - also certain to throw the grant his way!

 - or, should i (forgive me for even thinking of this possibility...) go ahead and write him a reference, as if from Doctor Ringwood, on his suitability for receiving such a prestigious research grant

it's funny how time compresses when there's a major b***s up on the event-horizon, because before the ink had dried on his email explaining that he hoped it was ok to have given my name as a referee, a huge envelope arrived from the grant panel, addressed to a Doctor Ringwood, asking me to provide a reference

so i ...
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...am going to leave it as an exercise in human psychology for you to decide what i did next

i seem to remember i kept the envelope addressed to Dr Ringwood, to show to any future grandchildren of mine when they don't believe that this story is completely true