This is a story from a book called FOIBLES AND FALLACIES OF SCIENCE, written by Daniel Hering in 1924. History relates several types of perpetual motion machines. The inventor's motives range from the ideal of pure invention to an attempt to defraud the public. Perpetual motion machines have been traced back for several hundred years. As of this date there has been no known account of a working perpetual motion machine which can be built and demonstrated by anyone other than the inventor. Although, we have heard many claims, we have yet to see a working model. This does not rule out the possibility that one could actually be made and practically demonstrated. The U.S.Patent Office receives about one hundred applications a year on perpetual motion machines but they are usually rejected by the office, without research into their workability. The keywords which bring about the rejection are perpetual motion.
While the baffling mathematical problems and the search for their solution date back several thousands of years, authentic records of The Perpetual Motion Machine are probably not more than five hundred or six hundred years old, but of the many mechanical vagaries unquestionably this has been the most absorbing. If, by a machine that would produce perpetual motion, we mean simply a contrivance that will go on indefinitely without human or animal assistance, the problem is not only solvable but is in the constant act of being solved. With the ordinary forces of nature any machine may be kept continually in operation. The incessant flow of water over a waterfall is perpetual motion, and needs only a wheel placed under the falling water to communicate power to other machinery. The turbines under Niagara are examples. Alternations of temperature which cause a body to expand and contract will accomplish the same result. "Perpetual Motion" as a mere fact is a commonplace of science if it is not understood to imply a perpetual supply of power from nowhere.
The ceaseless flow of rivers, the incessant tides, the movements of the earth and other heavenly bodies are perpetual motion, sufficient for all human purposes. But these do not express the purpose of the inventors of perpetual motion. Their idea was and is to produce a device which, when set going, would of itself develop power enough to keep it in operation without drawing upon extraneous sources. The effect of gravity, whether helpful or harmful, was always within their purview, but no other physical agency. The inventions have been of multifarious design, employing about every known principle of mechanics and some that are not known, but they all fall into a few classes. One type, comprising many of the inventions, is some sort of pump to keep enough water flowing to a waterfall to keep it going. Another type is a wheel with jointed arms or spokes that hang down from the side of the hub that is rising, but when passing the top, an arm swings out into a horizontal position and having a weight at the end, it propels the wheel. There are always one or more extended weighted arms on one side of the wheel, to raise the slack pendent arms on the other side. Instead of jointed arms the wheel may have radial tubes containing balls that roll out from the hub to the rim on the side that is descending, and roll in from the rim to the hub on the other side, thus serving the same purpose as the arms with weights at the end. The wheel is overbalanced. A favorite variation is a clock that shall be self-winding. Where the winding up has been accomplished by utilizing cleverly some of the work of the descending weights, this has been as fallacious as the scheme of pumps.
This type of automatic renewal, like many others that began honestly, has been exploited fraudulently to victimize the credulous, by the introduction of some auxiliary contrivance which is skilfully concealed, and for a while escapes detection. But genuine self-winding clocks have been constructed, and consequently perpetual motion, in a qualified sense, has been secured, by using other natural agencies. Expansion and contraction of a piece of metal in the clock, properly geared to the winding machinery has served the purpose and so, too, has the varying pressure of the atmosphere. But these, though genuine, are not instances of perpetual motion as originally understood and sought after.
The Mechanics' Magazine (London, 1823 - 1872) at first opened its columns freely to the consideration of perpetual motion. No amount of ridicule or criticism could quench the ardor of the perpetual motion enthusiasts rather, opposition seemed to stimulate it. Disappointments were recounted by the editor and correspondents, and frauds and tricks of all sorts were exposed ; never were propagandists more steadily admonished or more vainly. And yet, only the frauds were supported by actual working models ; in the sincere attempts, the inventors relied wholly upon drawings and descriptions to establish their contention, with an insistence that the machine would work, and a challenge to the editor and everybody else to prove that it would not work, and to show why it would not. For a long time an impression was general in England that there was an outstanding offer from the Government of a large reward for the successful invention of such a machine, and in spite of the efforts of publishers to correct this error, one inventor after another asks for information how to proceed to get the reward, in case his invention is accepted. In response to such an inquiry, the editor of The Mechanic's Magazine for January 29, 1848 says : "No reward has been offered by government; it has done many foolish things but none so foolish as this. Before our correspondent wastes any more time on his schemes, let him first seat himself on a three legged stool, and try to lift himself by the legs of his stool. If he succeeds in that, he may go on - the want of government reward notwithstanding."
The mental attitude of present-day seekers after perpetual motion is severely censured by Mr. Dircks, but his strictures are founded altogether on the record. He says: "A more self-willed, self-satisfied, or self-deluded class of the community, making at the same time pretension to superior knowledge, it would be impossible to imagine. They hope against hope, scorning all opposition with ridiculous vehemence, although centuries have not advanced them one step in the way of progress." He enumerates the classes of the people high, low, ignorant, educated that have essayed to produce the perpetual motion, and says: "There is something lamentable, degrading, and almost insane in pursuing the visionary schemes of past ages ... not a solitary discovery is on record, not one absolutely ingenious scheme projected, or one simple self-motive model accomplished...." (cr. Perpetuum Mobile: A History of the Search for Self Motive Power from the 13th to the 19th Century). But when one has made an illusion part of his very existence can he welcome its destruction? Is there a more pitiful being in the world than a man with shattered illusion?
Perpetual Motion inventors are still numerous, and in most cases are plainly cranky; they are obsessed with the infallibility of their scheme which, at the worst, lacks only some trifling change or addition to make it a success and their persistence makes them actual nuisances. They are always `open to conviction' but never can or never will see what is wrong about their device, no matter how plainly it is shown to them. Often their idea is so crude, so crass, that no intelligent mechanic would fail to see its absurdity, but in other instances the invention is diabolically clever, and even if the scientist does appreciate its fault, he has difficulty in pointing it out or explaining it. It might be expected that applications for patenting perpetual motion machines would become embarrassing to the government unless the Patent Office adopted some definite policy regarding them. As the impression has prevailed at some times and places that the U.S. Patent Office had decided to reject outright all such applications, the author addressed an inquiry to the Commissioner of Patents as to the attitude of the Office on this subject.
Visit a workshop - it matters little what shop, or where - talk with the mechanic skilled or unskilled, his name is Legion, and you will find that he has present in his mind or discarded in his garret a device for perpetual motion. You would be likely to make the same discovery if you consulted a clerk in a counting house, a minister in his study, or the president of a bank. Turn to the man of all men in the whole country who is most familiarly associated with the wizardry of invention - perhaps you know his name - and see if he has not at some time been inoculated with this same virus. When it began to work cannot be known but historically this "folly" is not so old as some of the others.
(Source: Taken from KeelyNet BBS (214) 324-3501Sponsored by Vangard Sciences PO BOX 1031 Mesquite, TX 75150 - Contributed by Ron Barker)