ABSTRACT
As part of a 50-state lecture tour, inventor and entrepreneur Dennis Lee appeared in Austin, Texas, in 2001, in one of the sprawling white buildings of ‘Promiseland’, a Pentecostal church lit up that night in shades of purple. 1 He came to sell to the public a ‘free energy’ machine, a miraculous device that would make home energy cost-free. His show combined salesmanship with demonstrations of engines, generators, vacuums, and magnetism. With such apparatus of wonder, he sought to astound his audience, make them appreciate the marvels of the universe, and persuade them that normal science, big business, and government need not have the last word.
