Dean Drive - Interested Parties

Interested Parties

As early as 1961 Dean was featured in Popular Mechanics Magazine. The article was titled "Engine with built in wings". In the article it describes the systems and how they might be used in every day instances and not so every day, like space travel.

According to Dean's writings and records now in possession by his son Norman Robert Dean; several groups, including Westinghouse Electric Corporation, the U.S. military, Robert L. Vesco, and the AC Spark Plug (Aeronautics Division) became interested in licensing the device. AC Spark Plug researched the technology for two years, but AC's board decided it was too much of an unknown technology to invest in.

Combined with his experience of forced appropriation of his non-precessing gyroscopic inertial guidance system by the US military (for use in intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarines) and Dean's cautious nature, led him to terminate relations with his most recent interested party investment banker Robert L. Vesco who coincidently fled to Cuba in 1973.

In the 1950s Jerry Pournelle, working for an aerospace company, contacted Dean to investigate purchasing the device. Dean refused to demonstrate the device without pre-payment and promise of a Nobel prize. Pournelle's company were unwilling to pay for the right to examine the device and never saw the purported model, although Pournelle remains skeptical that Dean's device ever worked.