In 1980 the CBS program 60 Minutes contacted Francisco and told him they wanted to do an entire show on his invention. At last he believed on demand hydrogen would be recognized as a viable alternative energy source. Relieved and happy, he prepared for the show.
A 60 Minutes crew arrived to film his demonstration which took place in a friends barn. The demonstration included showing a hydrogen fueled burner, running an electric motor, blowing up a balloon with the gas, cutting a number 2 from a ¾" thick steel plate with a torch using the hydrogen and running a 3hp lawnmower engine. All demonstrations worked perfectly except for the lawnmower engine. Because he was going to be on national TV, Francisco went out and bought a new lawnmower for the presentation and did not have time to test it. Unfortunately, the engine choked due to the excessive amount of fuel being produced. The 60 Minutes crew reassured Francisco and told him not to worry. They said they had enough footage of the successful demonstrations to complete a program.
When the show was aired, however, it had quite a different focus. The only part of the demonstration that was shown was the failure of the lawnmower to work and was used to point out an example of an independent inventors non-working invention. Although Francisco was advised to sue the program for misrepresenting his work, he discovered that the cost to do so would be more than he could bear having already mortgaged his home to put the needed dollars into prototypes and demonstration models.
At first devastated by this betrayal, his belief system that motivated his research for 50 years, despite the obstacles and frustrations experienced along the way, kept him focused. In 1986, he wrote to the Department of Energy about his generator. He received a form letter in response from an "Information Specialist" which included brief information describing the virtues and drawbacks of hydrogen as fuel.