The electromagnetic generator has claims of over-unity operation, which violates the first law of thermodynamics. This device is supposed to be able to sustain its own operation, and also power a load without the application or addition of any external power, through extracting vacuum energy from the surrounding environment.

The patent for the electromagnetic generator was granted to the inventors Thomas E. Bearden, Stephen L. Patrick, James C. Hayes, James L. Kenny, and Kenneth D. Moore – the US Patient 6,362,718.

In fact, many skeptical scientists say that the electromagnetic generator is like a standard transformer, a power generator, except that it has a permanent magnet and there are two actuator coils in the design. However, such a device has never been verified independently. Bearden’s concepts and methods have faced much criticism.

The electromagnetic generator has a permanent magnet in its main flux path – which distorts the hysteresis curve in sufficient quantities to cause flux saturation of the core. This generates voltage spikes on the output coils – and this contradicts the conditions of the patent which was granted.

The electromagnetic generator has a set of input coils, as well as a set of output coils, which extend around portions of the magnetic core. On the left and right of the transformer frame, there is a pair of input and output coils. In the middle of the magnetic core, a permanent magnet is fixed, this furnishes magnetic flux lines which move from the north pole, outward into the material of the core, and this results in a left and right magnetic path.

These coils extend externally between the magnetic poles of north and south. The level of magnetic flux is reduced by a driving electrical current, which flows through each of the input coils.

In the electromagnetic generator, a charge is induced by a moving magnetic field, and when a magnet is placed in between two metal plates, the flux gets an even placing.

The permanent magnet is used as a flux battery. When a current flows through one of the input coils, all the magnetic flux goes to one metal plate, and this makes the total magnetic flux change .5, because .5 of the magnetic flux had been changed to the other side. So stopping the current through that specific input coil makes the field normal, and the magnetic flux thus changes .5, this makes another current pulse through the opposite input coil. So,.5 is the magnetic flux change.

The electromagnetic generator’s core is made up of a magnetic alloy – of crystallite–of a few nanometers. This material has characteristics for rapid switching of magnetic flux. In magnetic terms, each crystallite is a single-domain particle. The alloy of cobalt-niobium-boron is one of the magnetic materials preferred, because it has almost nil magnetostriction, and reasonably strong magnetization. The mechanical strength is high, as is the resistance to corrosion.