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You’ll generate your own electricity with the box and it’ll be wireless. The idea is to one day replace the big power plants and transmission line grid, the way the laptop moved in on the desktop and cell phones supplanted landlines.

It has a lot of smart people believing and buzzing, even though the company has been unusually secretive – until now.

K.R. Sridhar invited “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl for a first look at the innards of the Bloom box that he has been toiling on for nearly a decade.

Looking at one of the boxes, Sridhar told Stahl it could power an average U.S. home.

“The way we make it is in two blocks. This is a European home. The two put together is a U.S. home,” he explained.

“‘Cause we use twice as much energy, is that what you’re saying?” Stahl asked.

“Yeah, and this’ll power four Asian homes,” he replied.

“So four homes in India, your native country?” Stahl asked.

“Four to six homes in our country,” Sridhar replied.

“It sounds awfully dazzling,” Stahl remarked.

“It is real. It works,” he replied.

He says he knows it works because he originally invented a similar device for NASA. He really is a rocket scientist.

“This invention, working on Mars, would have allowed the NASA administrator to pick up a phone and say, ‘Mr. President, we know how to produce oxygen on Mars,'” Sridhar told Stahl.

“So this was going to produce oxygen so people could actually live on Mars?” she asked.

“Absolutely,” Sridhar replied.

When NASA scrapped that Mars mission, Sridhar had an idea: he reversed his Mars machine. Instead of it making oxygen, he pumped oxygen in.

He invented a new kind of fuel cell, which is like a very skinny battery that always runs. Sridhar feeds oxygen to it on one side, and fuel on the other. The two combine within the cell to create a chemical reaction that produces electricity. There’s no need for burning or combustion, and no need for power lines from an outside source.

In October 2001 he managed to get a meeting with John Doerr from the big Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins.

“How much do you think, ‘I need to come up with the next big thing’?” Stahl asked Doerr.

“Oh, that’s my job,” he replied. “To find entrepreneurs who are going to change the world and then help them.”

Doerr has certainly changed our world: he’s the one who discovered and funded Netscape, Amazon and Google. When he listened to Sridhar, the idea seemed just as transformative: efficient, inexpensive, clean energy out of a box.

“But Google: $25 million. This man said, ‘How much money?'” Stahl asked.

“At the time he said over a hundred million dollars,” Doerr replied.

But according to Doerr that was okay.

“So nothing he said scared you?” Stahl asked.

“Oh, I wasn’t at all sure it could be done,” he replied.

But there was a selling point: clean energy was an emerging market, worth gazillions.

“I like to say that the new energy technologies could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century,” Doerr explained.

He told Stahl it was the firm’s first clean energy investment.

Many followed, and the clean tech revolution in Silicon Valley was off and running with start-ups that produce thin flexible solar panels, harness wind with giant balloons, or develop new fuels from algae.

But Bloom is among the most expensive. “I heard actually so far, not just from Kleiner Perkins, but total $400 million,” Stahl remarked.

“You’re in the ballpark,” Sridhar acknowledged.

With that kind of money comes a lot of buzz. “In Silicon Valley, every time a company raises over $100 million, and they haven’t come out with a product yet, everybody starts getting the heebie-jeebies,” Michael Kanellos, editor-in-chief of the Web site GreenTech Media, told Stahl.

Kanellos admitted he is skeptical. “I’m hopeful but I’m skeptical. ‘Cause people have tried fuel cells since the 1830s,” he explained. “And they’re great ideas, right? You just need producing energy at an instant. But they’re not easy. They’re like the divas of industrial equipment. You have to put platinum inside there. You’ve got zirconium. The little plates inside have to work not just for an hour or a day, but they have to work for 30 years, nonstop. And then the box has to be cheap to make.”

One thing stoking his skepticism: Sridhar has been hyper-secretive – there’s no sign on his building, a cryptic Web site, and no public progress reports.

Given the stealthiness, we were surprised when Sridhar showed us – for the very first time – how he makes the “secret sauce” of his fuel cell on the cheap.

He said he bakes sand and cuts it into little squares that are turned into a ceramic. Then he coats it with green and black “inks” that he developed.

Sridhar told Stahl there is a secret formula. “And you take that and you apply that. You paint that on either side of this white ceramic to get a green layer and a black layer. And…that’s it.”

Sridhar told Stahl the finished product, a skinny fuel cell, would generate power.

One disk powers one light bulb; the taller the stack of disks, the more power it generates. In between each disk there’s a metal plate, but instead of platinum, Sridhar uses a cheap metal alloy.

The stacks are the heart of the Bloom box: put 64 of them together and you get something big enough to power a Starbucks.

Sridhar offered to give Stahl a sneak peek inside the Bloom box.

“All those modules that we saw go into this big box. Fuel goes in, air goes in, out comes electricity,” he explained.

Asked if Bloom box is intended to get rid of the grid, John Doerr told Stahl, “The Bloom box is intended to replace the grid…for its customers. It’s cheaper than the grid, it’s cleaner than the grid.”

“Now, won’t the utility companies see this as a threat and try to crush Bloom?” Stahl asked.

“No, I think the utility companies will see this as a solution,” Doerr said. “All they need to do is buy Bloom boxes, put them in the substation for the neighborhood and sell that electricity and operate.”

“They’ll buy these boxes?” Stahl asked.

“They buy nuclear power plants. They buy gas turbines from General Electric,” he pointed out.

To make power, you’d still need fuel. Many past fuel cells failed because they needed expensive pure hydrogen. Not this box.

“Our system can use fossil fuels like natural gas. Our system can use renewable fuels like landfill gas, bio-gas,” Sridhar told Stahl. “We can use solar.”

“You know, it’s very difficult for us to come in here and make an evaluation. How are we supposed to know whether what you’re saying is true?” Stahl asked.

“Why don’t we talk to our first customers?” he replied.

Yes, he already has customers. Twenty large, well-known companies have quietly bought and are testing Bloom boxes in California.

Like FedEx. We were at their hub in Oakland, the day Bloom installed their boxes, each one costing $700-800,000.

One reason the companies have signed up is that in California 20 percent of the cost is subsidized by the state, and there’s a 30 percent federal tax break because it’s a “green” technology. In other words: the price is cut in half.

“We have FedEx, we have Walmart,” Sridhar explained.

He told Stahl the first customer was Google.

Four units have been powering a Google datacenter for 18 months. They use natural gas, but half as much as would be required for a traditional power plant.

Sridhar told Stahl that three weeks in at Google, suddenly one of the boxes just stopped.

Asked if he panicked, he told Stahl, “For a short while… yes.”

He fixed that; then there was another incident. “The air filters clog up and air is not coming into the system because the highway is kicking dirt. You just flip the system around, and the problem is gone,” he explained.

Another company that has bought and is testing the Bloom box so Sridhar can work out the kinks is eBay. Its boxes are on the lawn in the middle of its campus in San Jose.

John Donahoe, eBay’s CEO, says its five boxes were installed nine months ago and have already saved the company more than $100,000 in electricity costs.

“It’s been very successful thus far. They’ve done what they said they would do,” he told Stahl.

eBay’s boxes run on bio-gas made from landfill waste, so they’re carbon neutral. Donahoe took us up to the roof to show off the company’s more than 3,000 solar panels. But they generate a lot less electricity than the boxes on the lawn.

“So this, on five buildings, acres and acres and acres,” Stahl remarked.

“Yes. The footprint for Bloom is much more efficient,” Donahoe said. “When you average it over seven days a week, 24 hours a day, the Bloom box puts out five times as much power that we can actually use.”

But not everyone is convinced that even if the technology works, Bloom – that now makes one box a day – will ever be able to be as big as its backers say.

“Going from a few to mass-manufacturing’s going to be tough. And then making them so people won’t run away at the price tag. It needs to be cheaper than solar. It needs to be cheaper than wind,” GreenTech Media’s Michael Kanellos told Stahl.

“What if he can get the price way down? He claims he can,” she asked.

“And if he can, the problem is then G.E. and Siemens and other conglomerates probably can do the same thing. They have fuel cell patents; they have research teams that have looked at this,” Kanellos replied.

“What do you think the chances are that in ten-plus years you and I will each have a Bloom box in our basements?” Stahl asked.

“Twenty percent,” Kanellos replied. “But it?s going to say ‘G.E.'”

“Companies that you have bet on, they haven’t all succeeded?” Stahl asked John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins.

“I have some famous failures,” he acknowledged.

Doerr is praying that Bloom is not the next Segway, as he and Sridhar get ready for the company’s official launch this Wednesday. They’re pulling out all the stops, including high profile endorsements.

“I have seen the technology and it works,” former Secretary of State Colin Powell said.

He joined Bloom’s board of directors last year.

Asked if this is the answer to our energy problems, Powell told Stahl, “I think that’s too big a claim to make. I think it is part of the transformation of the energy system. But I think the Bloom boxes will make a significant contribution.”

To make a contribution, in Sridhar’s mind, Bloom boxes will power not just our richest companies, but remote villages in Africa and all our houses.

“In five to ten years, we would like to be in every home,” he told Stahl.

He said a unit should cost an average person less than $3,000.

“You are an idealist,” Stahl remarked.

“You know, it’s about seeing the world as what it can be and not what it is,” Sridhar replied.

“I see you seeing a Bloom box in the basement of the White House,” she said.

“Absolutely. I would love that to go on the lawn,” he replied.

“So, forget?the basement. You want the Bloom box in the Rose Garden?” Stahl asked.

In findings that appear to paint a darker employment picture than official U.S. data, Gallup estimated that about 30 million Americans are underemployed, meaning either jobless or able to find only part-time work.

Underemployed people spent 36 percent less on household purchases than their fully employed neighbors in January, while six out of 10 were not hopeful about their chances of finding adequate work in the coming month, the poll said.

“The situation is fairly poor for a lot of states around the country. In fact, most states,” Vermont Governor Jim Douglas, who is chairman of the association, said at a press conference at its annual meeting.

“What we’re finding out from a fiscal standpoint is that the worst is yet to come,” Douglas said.

In a survey conducted last week of 45 of the 50 states, the group found that states have $18.8 billion of budget gaps yet to be closed in fiscal 2010. This comes after they have already imposed measures to eliminate budget imbalances totaling $87 billion in the fiscal year, which for most started last summer.

In the budgets they are drafting for fiscal 2011, states foresee shortfalls of $53.6 billion and for fiscal 2012 $61.6 billion.

“Economists have declared the national recession over. But for those who are still unemployed, for those who have lost their homes, it’s clear that as a nation we have a long way to go,” said Douglas, who added that states’ revenues have plummeted for four quarters in a row.

States’ economic recoveries usually lag national recoveries because of state governments’ increased spending on help for the unemployed and declines in tax payments.

All states except for one, Vermont, are required to balance their budgets, so during the recession they have drastically cut spending on basic programs, laid off workers and boosted revenue through raising taxes and fees.

…

Will Twitter and Facebook come to the rescue and fill in the void left by more conventional tools of diplomacy? Will the oppressed masses in authoritarian states join the barricades once they get unfettered access to Wikipedia and Twitter?

This seems quite unlikely. In fact, our debate about the Internet’s role in democratization—increasingly dominated by techno-utopianism—is in dire need of moderation, for there are at least as many reasons to be skeptical. Ironically, the role that the Internet played in the recent events in Iran shows us why: Revolutionary change that can topple strong authoritarian regimes requires a high degree of centralization among their opponents. The Internet does not always help here. One can have “organizing without organizations”—the phrase is in the subtitle of “Here Comes Everybody,” Clay Shirky’s best-selling 2008 book about the power of social media—but one can’t have revolutions without revolutionaries.

…

In an environment like this—where it’s impossible to distinguish whether your online interlocutors are your next-door neighbors, some hyperactive Iranians in the diaspora, or a government agent masquerading as a member of the Green Movement—who could blame ordinary Iranians for not taking the risks of flooding the streets only to find themselves arrested?

Not even if I could get environmentally correct food. Walmart’s move into organics was then getting under way, but it just seemed cynical—a way to grab market share while driving small stores and farmers out of business. Then, last year, the market for organic milk started to go down along with the economy, and dairy farmers in Vermont and other states, who had made big investments in organic certification, began losing contracts and selling their farms. A guaranteed large buyer of organic milk began to look more attractive. And friends started telling me I needed to look seriously at Walmart’s efforts to sell sustainably raised food.

Really? Wasn’t this greenwashing? I called Charles Fishman, the author of The Wal-Mart Effect, which entertainingly documents the market-changing (and company-destroying) effects of Walmart’s decisions. He reiterated that whatever Walmart decides to do has large repercussions—and told me that what it had decided to do since my Natchez foray was to compete with high-end supermarkets. “You won’t recognize the grocery section of a supercenter,” he said. He ordered me to get in my car and find one.

In a regulatory filing submitted by GM this past week, the company has confirmed that Whitacre will now remain as CEO with an annual salary of $1.7 million plus more than $7 million worth of stock payable over the next couple of years.

Interestingly, this figure is significantly higher than the $1.3 million Henderson would have received as CEO, even after GM’s executive pay came under the scrutiny of U.S. pay czar Kenneth Feinberg.

Under the terms of a plea agreement, the prosecution and the defense recommended that Judge Stephen C. Robinson sentence Mr. Kerik to 27 to 33 months in prison. But the judge departed from the sentencing recommendations, giving Mr. Kerik a longer sentence because he said he had betrayed the public’s trust.

“I think it’s fair to say that with great power comes great responsibility and great consequences,” Judge Robinson said. “I think the damage caused by Mr. Kerik is in some ways immeasurable.”

Federal prosecutors had denounced Mr. Kerik, a former police detective who rose to the upper echelons of power, as a corrupt official who sought to trade his authority for lavish benefits. He pleaded guilty on the eve of his trial in November.

Wearing a pinstriped navy-blue suit, Mr. Kerik was thinner and clean-shaven — without the mustache he was long identified with — as he entered the courtroom in United States District Court here. He surveyed the gallery, packed with friends and supporters, embracing some, nodding to others.

When Judge Robinson offered him a chance to speak before sentencing, Mr. Kerik rose from the defense table and spoke in a low and gravelly voice.

“I make no excuses,” he said. “I take full responsibility for the grave mistakes I’ve made. Believe me when I say I have learned from this and I have become and will continue to become a better person. I know I must be punished. I only ask that you allow me to return to my wife and two little girls as soon as possible.”

…

The case against Mr. Kerik centered on charges that a New Jersey construction company, the Interstate Industrial Corporation, which was suspected of ties to organized crime, had paid for renovations at his home in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. Prosecutors said company officials had hoped Mr. Kerik would help them obtain a city license.

In June 2006, Mr. Kerik pleaded guilty in State Supreme Court in the Bronx to two misdemeanors tied to the renovation of his apartment. He paid $221,000 in fines and penalties but avoided any jail time.

California Institute of Technology (Caltech) researchers said the wires are made up of 98 percent plastic, potentially lowering the cost of photovoltaics by using just 1/50th the amount of semiconductor material used today. In tests, the experimental solar cells demonstrated over 90 percent quantum efficiency, compared with 25 percent for the best silicon solar cells.

“By developing light-trapping techniques for relatively sparse wire arrays, not only did we achieve suitable absorption, but we also demonstrated effective optical concentration,” claimed Harry Atwater, director of Caltech’s Resnick Institute.

The silicon wires measure just 1 micron in diameter, but can be as long as 100 microns and can be embedded in a transparent polymer. Light is converted into electricity only inside the wires, but light not immediately absorbed bounces around inside the matrix until it enters another wire. The result, researchers said, is both high concentration and high efficiency in the material.

Solar cells based on the technique could potentially be very inexpensive to manufacture since only 2 percent of the materials are expensive semiconductors while the remainder is made from inexpensive plastic.

The new material is about the same overall thickness as a conventional solar cells–about 100 microns–but contain as much silicon as a solar cell measuring just 2 microns in thickness.

Atwater said he is now working to increase the operating voltage and size of the solar cells so that they can eventually be manufactured in flexible sheets using inexpensive roll-to-roll fabrication equipment.