This is my attempt to see if there is anything I can do as a consumer or as a member of a consumer group to stop these high gas prices? Will you join me? The only alternative I can see is to encourage alternative fuel engines. Hydrogen seems to be the most promising in that field.

This may seem like an over simplification of the state of our economy. But it seems to me from my observations, that when the price of gas goes up, the truckers have to pay higher fuel prices. When the truckers have to pay higher fuel prices they charge more to haul the food. So the stores raise the food prices. When food prices go up then people have to pay more for food so they raise the price of other consumer goods they are selling to get enough money to buy the same amount of food. And the spiral of inflation goes on and on. It seems to me that we are caught in a vicious circle controlled by oil companies. There has to be something we can do as consumers to stop this. Gas is not the only thing made with Crude Oil. Lots of things are and the price of all of them are then of course going up too. I don't know what we can do about it, but it seems that alternative fuel is the only possible answer or at least a starting place. Surely there is some scientist now who can invent an engine that will run on something other than gas ??????

For many years, I have wondered what happened to Roger Billings' hydrogen cars. Have any of you ever heard what happened to the hydrogen engine that the BYU scantiest Roger Billings created in the 70's in Utah. His parents lived in our neighborhood in Provo when I was as student at BYU. That how we knew so much about what he was doing.

He bought the old steel mill in Springville, Utah and converted it into his lab. We heard that Winnebago gave him over a million dollars for the rights to put the engine in their motor homes once it was completed. We saw 2 cars and a UTA bus driving around Salt Lake all the time. They were all three running on his hydrogen engines. That was while we lived in Salt Lake in the late 70's.

The UTA bus was the one that went from Salt Lake to Provo. I saw it every day as I went to grad school classes at the University of Utah. It was easy to spot the cars driving around because of the 2 hoses that came out of the trunk and went up over the top down into the engine. The bus had a sign on it about the engine it was using. It was our understanding that he converted water into hydrogen and oxygen and then burned the hydrogen in the engine.

Anyone know what ever happened to those engines? THEY WORKED!

Surely if the engine was invented clear back in the late 1970's, it could be brought forward now. Does any one know anything about Roger Billings or what happened to that UTA Bus and those two cars that were driving around Salt Lake on hydrogen? If you do I would very much like to know.

Cordell Vail