Inventor and Scientist Michael Redwine was studying the Biblical account of the prophet Elijah on top of Mt. Carmel. According to 1 Kings 18, Elijah performed a miracle before the Israelites by calling upon God to send fire from the sky that consumed a sacrifice placed on an altar drenched with water. Being both a man of God and a man of science, Michael reasoned that a bolt of lightning had struck the wet altar and that it could only have created a fire intense enough to completely burn everything it touched if the water itself had contributed as fuel.

With scientists across the U.S. scrambling for a solution to the OPEC oil crisis facing the Western world during the 1970s, Michael was intrigued by the possibility of using water as a sole source of fuel. He knew the answer dealt with harnessing the power of hydrogen. The “easiest,” way to separate hydrogen from oxygen in water molecules at that time was via electrochemical reduction. The problem Michael faced was that generating the amount of heat required to trigger electrolysis necessitated the use of an outside energy source.

Michael was convinced that all the components needed to trigger the reaction and create such a powerful reaction had been contained in Elijah’s altar almost 3,000 years ago. Michael built the first apparatus in early 1976, began experimenting with different catalyst configurations. As months and months went by without results, friends and coworkers of Michael’s jokingly hung a sign on the apparatus, calling it “Redwine’s Folly.” But persistence paid off. In the same way that Elijah’s miracle on Mount Carmel proved the presence and mighty power of God to the doubting Israelites, when one of Michael’s experiments finally produced a small flame, it proved his hypothesis correct—and opened the door for the boundless possibilities of truly clean, renewable fuel. So why did it take nearly 40 years to progress the technology?

As proven by that first small flame, Michael’s apparatus was producing a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen gas. Hydrogen gas on its own is flammable, but the presence of oxygen amplifies that flammability. This became apparent after a subsequent experiment in which a flame was ignited that produced a thrust so powerful a coworker’s eyebrows were singed from over 25 feet away.

Fortunately no one was seriously harmed, but Michael realized he needed to find a way to separate the gases. Unfortunately, at that time selective gas separation technologies were prohibitively expensive and had limited applications. Michael decided to postpone further development until he could devote the time and effort to safely develop the technology.

In 2015, ONE SCIENTIFIC was founded to finish the ground breaking work that Michael began almost 4 decades prior.

Today, our mission is to make clean hydrogen affordable and accesssible worldwide—an idea worthwhile.