The water fuel cell is a technical design of a "perpetual motion machine" created by American Stanley Allen Meyer (August 24, 1940 – March 20, 1998). Meyer claimed that an automobile retrofitted with the device could use water as fuel instead of gasoline. Meyer's claims about his "Water Fuel Cell" and the car that it powered were found to be fraudulent by an Ohio court in 1996. Description The water fuel cell purportedly split water into its component elements, hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen gas was then burned to generate energy, a process that reconstituted the water molecules. According to Meyer, the device required less energy to perform electrolysis than the minimum energy requirement predicted or measured by conventional science. The mechanism of action was alleged to involve "Brown's gas", a mixture of oxyhydrogen with a ratio of 2:1, the same composition as liquid water; which would then be mixed with ambient air (nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons, free radicals/electrons, radiation, among others). The resultant hydrogen gas was then burned to generate energy, which reconstituted the water molecules in another unit separate from the unit in which water was separated. If the device worked as specified, it would violate both the first and second laws of thermodynamics, allowing operation as a perpetual motion machine. The term "fuel cell" Throughout his patents Meyer used the terms "fuel cell" or "water fuel cell" to refer to the portion of his device in which electricity is passed through water to produce hydrogen and oxygen. Meyer's use of the term in this sense is contrary to its usual meaning in science and engineering, in which such cells are conventionally called "electrolytic cells". Furthermore, the term "fuel cell" is usually reserved for cells that produce electricity from a chemical redox reaction, whereas Meyer's fuel cell consumed electricity, as shown in his patents and in the circuit pictured on the right. Meyer describes in a 1990 patent the use of a "water fuel cell assembly" and portrays some images of his "fuel cell water capacitor". According to the patent, in this case "... the term 'fuel cell' refers to a single unit of the invention comprising a water capacitor cell ... that produces the fuel gas in accordance with the method of the invention." Media coverage In a news report on an Ohio TV station, Meyer demonstrated a dune buggy he claimed was