The funniest part was the wheelchair-bound and incredibly old and feeble British version of the oligarch Montgomery Burns. The conundrum of an indestructible cloth was pre-dated by the storied razor blade that never gets dull and is kept off the market by Gillette.

Then, there's the car that gets incredible gas mileage, but the oil companies bought out the inventor and kept it off the market. As if Toyota or Nissan wouldn't pay more than Exxon or BP! I've heard of this film for years but never saw it. One of the local channels has been running some old British movies at odd hours, so I will have to keep looking.

It already happened with synthetic fuel since WW2. Germany ran 85% off synthetics during the war from 16 coal hydrogenation plants (coal gasification). The Allies shut-down the plants and even moved one to Brownsville, Tx to test the plant and products for a decade, compiling information. That information was held by Texas A&M and after the trials, the plant was closed and the US Army came to Texas A&M and confiscated all data. Big oil filed the findings away. But Texas A&M also had the files held on microfilm and recently those documents were revisted. Back postwar the cost of a barrel of crude was around $3 and the German synthetic was much higher to make... but it remained a future threat and so was suppressed. With crude oil now at over $110/barrel the German synthetic would be much cheaper to make and with better technology. It would eliminate all foreign oil needs as the US has a 300 year coal supply. The Germans also came up with a range of synthetic materials that were suppressed and medical technology as well as an aerodynamic car with drag coeffcient of 0.11. FYI

Neat one. The Fischer-Tropsch synthesis also allowed South Africa to thrive during the trade embargo in the Apartheid period - they simply made all the gasoline and diesel they needed from coal by the FT process.

A movie was made about the coal hydrogenation starring George C. Scott called "The Formula" in the early 1980s. It describes "Operation Genesis" in detail. It's hard to find in normal video stores but some Biglots! in the US sell it in a video slimcase for $3!!! The first process the Germans used prior to FT was the Bergius method and another plant was set-up postwar in Missouri to test that. Worked as well and was suppressed. The Germans wanted to move all synthetic fuel production underground by 1945 with 3 million sq ft facility, but only completed 700,000 sq ft! Another giant facility of 12 million sq ft would allocate space for synthetics of all types! In addition to the 16 hydrogenation plants, Germany also had 112 separate synthetic fuel research facilities! The US got 175 tons of documents on synthetic fuels from the Reich! Germans made synthetic rubber too (Buna), stealth materials (Opanol, Tarnmatte, Schornsteinfeger), synthetic penecillin substitute 3065, synthetic blood and blood plasma (capain and periston), supermetals (Luftschwamm, Nitriding of steel and aluminium, Viktalen, atomic alchemy), substances (N-Stoff, Red Mercury Antimony), supercompressed munitions (Sauer Amboss gun), rail and electric guns (Peenemunde 15cm Metalstrahl and Hansler 40mm electric gun), helical gun (15cm HF-15), engine-stopping devices (electrostatic, EM wave- Motorstoppmittel), X-Ray and Microwave weapons, disc-aircraft, and time-travel experiments!!!