Issue 75
September/October 2007
Infinite Energy Magazine

— THE BEAUDETTE ARCHIVE ON COLD FUSION —

  by Christy Frazier

Infinite Energy is pleased to report that Charles Beaudette, author of Excess Heat: Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed, has donated his cold fusion papers and research for his book to the J. Willard Marriott Library of the University of Utah , in Salt Lake City , Utah . The Beaudette Archive on Cold Fusion, also known as The Charles G. Beaudette Papers (Accession #2297) contains over 1,800 papers written by cold fusion researchers; 700 quotations; 40 interviews from the period starting in March 1989 and continuing through 2005; the proceedings for the first through eleventh International Conferences on Cold Fusion; technical reports from other conferences, such as the EPRI/NSF meeting of October 1989; photographs of many members of the cold fusion community; about 40 CDs of e-mails, photographs, and technical papers recorded on gold-film disks; miscellaneous popular press articles about the field; and a sampling of the various monthly journals and magazines that were published from 1989 to 2005, including but not limited to Cold Fusion Times, Infinite Energy, New Energy News, and New Energy Times. Also included are draft and final versions of both the first and second editions of Excess Heat.

Dr. Stan Larson, of the Marriott Library’s Manuscripts Division (email: stan.larson@utah.edu), is curator of the collection. A register of the collection, compiled by Lisa DeMille, is available at the New Energy Times website:

www.newenergytimes.com

Thanks to Beaudette’s extremely organized approach to work and the writing of his book Excess Heat, the Marriott Library has kept much of Beaudette’s own filing system in place for the archive. When asked about the housing of the archive at the University of Utah , versus some other venue, Beaudette commented: “As I worked on the manuscript, I kept a close eye on the University. I visited it a number of times. At one point, the Chemistry Department posted on its website a history of the department which included what came to be called the Cold Fusion Episode. That history dodged the awkward matter of presenting the episode event after event simply by means of a reference to my book and leaving it at that. Well, the Library is obligated to maintain a record of the history of the University. In this particular case, that implied inclusion of the history of my book. But my story here is only a guess; I was not a party to their decision to ask for the donation of my archive to the University.”

The Beaudette Archive is only the second known formal archive on cold fusion, the first being the Cornell University Cold Fusion Archive (Kroch Library, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Collection Number 4451), which was established by Bruce Lewenstein in about 1994. (Beaudette spent a week reviewing this archive in 1996 in preparation for writing his book.) The New Energy Foundation (publishers of Infinite Energy) is currently funding a Cold Fusion Oral History Project, which aims to archive audio recordings and material of the major players in the cold fusion field; it will be housed at a major U.S. university as early as 2009, just in time for the twentieth anniversary of the “birth” of the cold fusion field.

The Beaudette Archive on Cold Fusion is looked upon as “foundational,” which means that the library anticipates further additions (though Beaudette indicates he has given his entire collection already, so that task is for others to undertake). It is our hope that not only will the Beaudette Archive be built upon, but that others by seminal researchers and supporters will be created, perhaps at other universities so that these important papers and material are available for researchers located around the world. (We should note, of course, that the online library at www.lenr-canr.org has many of the thousands of important cold fusion papers already archived; additionally, Infinite Energy possesses the archives of the late Dr. Eugene Mallove, particularly popular press coverage of the field and cold fusion technical articles.) We understand that the Beaudette Archive has already been accessed and we’re certain that it will remain an important research tool at the University of Utah for years to come.