HERE IS A STORY CARRIED BY PC WORLD MAGAZINE and PC WORLD ON-LINE 2/26/1998
New Hard Drives Based on UFO Technology? 
by Brian McWilliams, PC World News Radio 
February 25, 1998 

This has been a big year for breakthroughs in computer storage
technology. But a small New Jersey firm says it is on the verge of
developing a new storage device with performance that's out of this
world--literally.

American Computer Company says it is prototyping a 90GB drive that is
1000 times faster than IBM's swiftest drive. What's more, the ACC 090b8
is about the size of a poker chip. And because it uses solid-state
technology, it requires negligible power and has no moving parts to wear
out.

According to ACC President Jack Shulman, the drive uses a technology
call transpacitor, or TCAP. Schulman says the design is based on
information he received from a former military official--information
that may have been salvaged from the alleged 1947 UFO crash in Roswell,
New Mexico.

"I was very skeptical up front," Shulman says. "I said, 'If you want me
to look at something like this, you ought to offer me some evidence.' He
came back with four rolling carts full of boxes [from] somebody who may
have worked for the DOD or the labs, or some other research
project--we're not certain, and they're not saying. We looked at this
amazing aggregation of old, very elderly documents, and we gleaned
material from them describing two or three distinct technological
concepts. So because of my frien dship with the guy I said OK, we'll
spend X amount of dollars and see if one of these is feasible."

Shulman says he hired a forensic scientist to analyze the documents, and
confirmed that they dated back to the mid-1940s. "We decided almost on a
whim to try developing a switch in the drawings that looked very much
like it was a semiconductive device. And it worked according to the
drawings. ... We were rather surprised. So we've been working on a much
more dense version of that chip to see if it has any commercial
feasibility. I figure we're 18 or 20 months to completing that growth
cycle, and probably 18 months beyond that to see if it's even
commercializable."

Shulman says he estimates ACC, which is a computer distributor, can sell
the 90GB device for less than $1000. He has built a section at ACC's Web
site to publicize the technology, including a message board area that's
frequented by people interested in UFOs and extraterrestrials. Market
researcher Jim Porter of Disk/trend has been to the site, which features
a drawing of what appears to be a space alien. Porter says no one in the
storage industry is taking ACC's claims very seriously. "Other people
have seen [the Web site], including major companies--it floats around.
And it's cute," says Porter. "It's gotten a modest amount of attention
in the industry. ... All I can say is, the picture of the little green
man is pretty decisive."

Ken Hallam is director of technology for the storage business at Unisys.
He says storage technology advances steadily--the larger research
community is rarely surprised by a novel development. He adds,
"Certainly, if this was left by aliens, maybe that's the reason no one
else has got it. ... I talked to [Shulman] about getting a copy or an
evaluation unit, [but he said] he doesn't sell to big companies. He felt
this technology should be reserved for individuals and not for big
companies--he's concerned tha t they might try to exploit it somehow, I
guess."

Shulman says the TCAP technology is for real, and ACC hopes to have it
in service by the end of 1999 or early in the year 2000. But patent
issues could stand in the way.

"Our lawyers are engaged in a very, very serious look to see if this
thing is patentable at all. We haven't made a big to-do about it
possibly being a classified technological advance--it probably is, and
that would render us unable to patent it, [or to sell it] commercially."

Even if ACC's discovery produces a marketable product, Hallam of Unisys
says, there are big questions about whether it can be economical or
easily incorporated into today's computers.

"The reason that disk drives [are] so cheap is that there's a whole
infrastructure behind the disk drive industry--silicon, and heads, and
media," Hallam says. "There's an awful lot of material science that goes
into [disk drives], and makes the product something that can be
mass-produced. But as soon as you ... put 90GB into [a storage system],
the first question is how you get it in or out--you need some kind of
interface that's extremely fast."


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