POWER FROM THE SEA.

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1399, 4 September 1923, Page 5

POWER FROM THE SEA.

“INVENTOR” CHARGED WITH FRAUD. (By Telegraph. Press Association.) PALMERSTON N., Monday. In the Supreme Court to-day Joseph Harvey Cornish was charged on six counts with false pretences. It was alleged that accused at Levin, with intent to defraud, obtained fiom James Bebbington £5 by falsely representing that a solicitor of Otakl had put in £SOO for the purchase _ of one hundred shares in an invention of accused’s for utilising the rise and fall of the swell of the sea. Other offences were alleged to have been committed at Levin and Shannon. The Crown Prosecutor stated that accused claimed to. have discovered an invention for utilising the rise and fall of the swell of the sea. The idea involved was a very old one, and many astute minds in the scientific world had endeavoured to develop it for mechanical purposes. Accused claimed that he had provisional protection for an invention, and he had been selling shares in the invention for three months prior to arrest. He disposed of thirty-two shares of £5 each, and so had done fairly well. The onus was on the Crown to prove that the money was obtained by false pretences. Accused had no working model as proof of the invention, his whole stock in trade being a prospectus. The case is proceeding.