(FORTUNE Magazine) – It was a wonderful dream: a tiny atomic lattice of palladium that could do basically the same thing as the mammoth machines of conventional fusion research. University of Utah chemist B. Stanley Pons and his British collaborator Martin Fleischmann claimed that ions of deuterium -- a heavy form of hydrogen -- were catalyzed somehow by the palladium and combining to form helium. Cold fusion was generating heat, they said, putting out more energy than their tabletop contraption consumed. They thought they had suddenly made possible unlimited supplies of power. The University of Utah thought it would get rich and asked for $25 million in federal funds for more research. The world's scientific establishment, largely unable to duplicate the results, thought otherwise. Most investigators said Pons and Fleischmann had erred in their measurements and were merely feeding a chemical reaction -- not fusion -- with their electrodes. The Utah team was sticking by its claims.