The Marvelous Chicken-Powered Car

ABOVE: Who needs a tiger in their tank? Harold Bate, chicken farmer and inventor from Devonshire, England says that you can power your motor vehicles with droppings from chickens, pigs or any other animal of your choice... even... See more » ABOVE: Who needs a tiger in their tank? Harold Bate, chicken farmer and inventor from Devonshire, England says that you can power your motor vehicles with droppings from chickens, pigs or any other animal of your choice... even with your own waste! To prove his statement is no idle boast, Harold has been operating a 1953 Hillman and a five-ton truck on methane gas generated by decomposing pig and chicken manure for years. He claims that the equivalent of a gallon of high-test gasoline costs him only about 3d and that the low-cost methane makes his vehicles run faster, cleaner and better than they operate on "store bought" fuel. Mr. Bate stands beside his famous Hillman in the photo above. Harold Bate was born in 1908 in the city of Stoke in England's industrial midlands. He left school at the age of 14 to work as an apprentice mechanic with the Potteries Traction Company. Here he learned many basic engineering skills working on the old streetcars before becoming a maintenance engineer with the Stafford Coal and Iron Company. While with Stafford, Bate spent his spare time developing Submarine escape devices and advanced independent suspension systems for automobiles. In 1937, Harold Bate lost a leg in a driving accident. This would have been the beginning of an insurmountable infirmity for many people...but not for Harold. Ten years later.. with wife, young daughter and cane-he set out for the grandest adventure of all: a driving tour of Africa. "We traveled in an old ex-Army' jeep," says Bate," and, in eight years, drove 380,000 miles. It was hard, it was hot and-at times-it was dangerous...but we wouldn't have missed it for the world. We loved every minute. Our daughter learnt more out there than she ever would have in school." While in Africa, Bate prospected for gold and uranium in Rhodesia and Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and- on more than one occasion-the Family was attacked by bandits and had to fight for their lives. For one long stretch, they lived off what wild game they could hunt in mile after mile of mango swamps (well stocked with poisonous snakes) through which they passed. But there were good times too. The Bates were treated like Royalty when they visited the Sheiks of the North African deserts, for instance, and the family was also well looked after by head hunters in another primitive area. As the remarkable and durable Mr. Bate says, "It was one hell of an adventure." On his return to England in 1955, Harold worked as an electrical contractor, started a ferry boat service and drove a taxi before turning his attention to unleashing the power hidden in manure. Detroit and the large petroleum interests keep saying it can't be done but a 62-year-old English inventor has already done it. Harold Bate, British chicken farmer and experimenter, has developed a small conversion unit that makes any ordinary automobile virtually pollution-free. What's more (and hang on to your hat for this one) the Bate converter can also cut your fuel, oil, sparkplug and other miscellaneous automobile operating expenses by a factor of ten! The Bate system accomplishes these amazing feats as naturally as a compost pile by recycling animal droppings and sewage into methane: a Colorless, odorless, flammable gas. This means that, as a bonus, Harold Bate's development just may go a long way toward safely and naturally reclaiming the mountains of waste with which "civilized man " seems determined to bury the planet. Interestingly enough, Bate did not make his noteworthy breakthrough in a well-equipped laboratory or while working on a multi-million dollar research grant. The converter and other parts of the Bate system were developed by Harold from odds and ends at hand as he puttered about his 450-year-old cottage and chicken farm in the heart of Devonshire. To be sure, Harold Bate has invented nothing new in the way of a basic process. Methane has been forming naturally in swamps and waste organic matter since long before man walked the earth and many ingenious experimenters have harnessed this source of fuel in the past (see SOLUTION TO See less »

ABOVE: Who needs a tiger in their tank? Harold Bate, chicken farmer and inventor from Devonshire, England says that you can power your motor vehicles with droppings from chickens, pigs or any other animal of your choice... even...