The Seven Follies of Science [2nd ed.]

sopher's stone. And while it has been claimed in favor of this delusion that the pursuit of it has given rise to valuable discoveries in mechanics and physics, some even going so far as to ur

of, and it is very certain that this delusion had no place in the thoughts of Rumford, Black, Davy, Young, Joule, Grove, and others when they devoted their atten

ention in ancient times, while the mathematical problems were regarded as amongst the highest branches of philosophy, and the search for the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life appealed alike to priest and layman. We have records of attempts made 4000 years ago to square the circle, and the history of the p

ho have attempted to solve this problem have avowed this to be their object, many going so far as to claim for their contrivances the ability to supply unlimited power at no cost whatever, except the interest on a small investment, and the trifling amount of oil required for lubrication. But it is evident that a machine which would of itself maintain a regular and constant motion would b

and which by means of the simplest kind of a water-wheel would give constant motion to any light machinery. Even the wind, the emblem of fickleness and inconstancy, may be harnessed so that it will furnish power, and it does not require very much mechanical ingenuity to pro

ved from variations in the quantity, and consequently in the weight of the mercury, which was forced up into a glass tube closed at the upper end and having the lower end immersed in a cistern of mercury after the manner of a barometer. It was fully described by James Ferguson, whose lectures on Mechanics and Nat

a clock which was an ingenious illustration of such perpetual motion. The energy, which was stored up in it to maintain the motion of the pendulum, was provided by the expansion of a silver rod. This expansion was caused by the daily rise of temperature, and by means of a train of levers it wound

winding a watch is thus d

eight is moved up by the action of the person who has it in his pocket, and in falling the weight winds up the spring of the watch. On the face is a small dial showing the number of hours for which the watch is wound up. As soon as the hand of this dial points to fifty-six hours, the train of l

ndeed the probability is that many persons now living will see the time when all our railroads, factories, and lighting plants will be operated by the tides of the ocean. It is only a question of return for capital, and it is well known that that has been falling stead

this increases the action, for if the paper be artificially dried and kept in a perfectly dry atmosphere, the apparatus will not work. A pair of these piles, each containing two or three thousand disks the size of a quarter of a dollar, may be arranged side by side, vertically, and two or three inches apart. At the lower ends they are connected by a brass plate, and the upper ends are each surmounted by a small metal bell and between these bells a gilt ball, suspended by a silk thread, keeps vibrating perpetually. Many years ag

g piece of bric-a-brac, especially if the bells have a sweet tone, but the cont

ons are not to be classed with the regular perpetual-motion-mongers. The purposes for which these arrangements were invented were legitimate, and the contrivances answered fully the ends for which they were intended. The real perpetual-motion-seekers a

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nd even gone so far as to take out patents before they have tested their inventions by constructing a working machine. It is said, that at one time the United States Patent Office issued a circular refusal to all applicants for patents of this kind, but at present instead of sending such a circular, the applicant is quietly requested to furnish a working model of his invention and that usually ends the matter. While I have no direct information on the subject, I sus

is described in a sketch book of the thirteenth century by Wilars de Honecourt, an architect of the period, and sin

the radius continued. This being supposed, it is evident that when the wheel turns in the direction ABC, the weights A, B, and C will recede from the center; consequently, as they act with more force, they will carry the wheel towards that side; and as a new lever will be thrown out, in proportion as the wheel revolves, it thence follows, say they, that the wheel will c

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imilar kind is thus desc

ain quantity of quicksilver. In consequence of this disposition, the balls or quicksilver must, on the one side, ascend by approaching

l Philosophy," Dr. Thomas Young spea

eponderance on the side of the descent: for this purpose the weights have either been fixed on hinges, which allow them to fall over at a certain point, so as to become more distant from the center, or made to slide or roll along grooves or planes which lead them to a more remote part of the wheel, from whence they return as

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ing a perpetual motion; the descending balls acting at a greater distance from the center, but being fewer in numb

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s of motion is placed. Each of these arms is furnished with a receptacle in the form of a pair of bellows: but those on the opposite arms stand in contrary directions, as seen in the figure. The movable top of each receptacl

pen, and those on the other must shut; consequently, the mercury will pass from the

; but those acquainted with the true principles of mechanics will not hesitate to bet a h

practical mechanics, and yet the fundamental idea which is embodied in this and the other examples which we have just give

rivance, represented here (Fig. 9), was to solve the renowned problem of the perpetual motion. It was goblet-shaped, lessening gradually towards the bottom until it became a tube, bent upwards at c and pointing with an open extremity into the goblet again. He reasoned thus: A pint of water in the goblet a must

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é de la Roque, in "Le Journal des S?avans," Paris, 1686. The instrument was a U tube, one leg longer than the other and bent over, so that any liquid might drop into the top end of the short leg,

print and immortalizes himself as the author of a blunder. It is safe to say that this absurd invention will do more to perpetuate his name than all his learning and real achievements

tion into practice, but innumerable machines of this kind, and of the most crude arrangement, have been sketched and described in magazines and papers. Figures of wheels driving an ordinary pump, which returns to an elevated reservoir the water which has driven the wheel, are so common that it is not worth whi

d, and by that means convey as much water up as is required to move it; so that the motion must needs be continual since the same weight which in its fall does turn the wheel, is, by the turning of the wheel, carried up again. Or, if the water, falling upon one wheel, would not be forcible enough for this effect, why then

shall consequently give a circular motion to the whole screw. Or, if this alone should be too weak for the turning of it, then the same water which falls from the wheel H, being received into the other vessel F, may from thence again descend on the wheel I, by which means the force of it will be doubled. And if this be yet insufficient, then may the water, which falls on the second wheel I, be received into the other vessel G, and from

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o turn it round, then half of it would serve with two wheels, and the rest may b

so infallible a way for the effecting of a perpetual motion that nothing could be so much as probably objected against i

s will not make any consi

plied, will not be of force e

they had discovered a successful perpetual motion, if they had only given

used instead of water, is thus described by a cor

d round, receives the mercury which falls from the top; there is a pipe, which, by the force of gravity, conveys the mercury from the reservoir C on to (what for want of a better term may be called) the float-board E, fixed at right angles to the center [axis] of the screw, and furnished at its circumference with ridges or flo

esses that he has never tried it, and to any practical mechanic it is very obvious that the machine will not work. Bu

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in pump which delivered them upon the circumference of a large wheel, which was thus caused to revolve. It was claimed for this invention that it kept going for s

will not overflow, has been a startling surprise to the would-be inventors. Perhaps the most notable instance of a mistake of this kind occurred in the case of the famous Sir William Congreve, the inventor of the military rockets that bore

ned by means of capillary attraction; and, indeed, there seems but little doub

e sources of springs and the heads of rivers; and thus by an endless round of ascending and descending waters, form, on the great scale of nature, an incessant cause of perpetual motion, in the purest acceptance of the term, and precisely on the principle that was contemplated by Boyle. It is probable, however, that any imitation of this process on the limited scale pract

founded on this principle of capillary attraction, which, it is apprehended, will not be subject to the general refutation appli

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erpendicular side AB will, in all positions of the band and chain, be in equilibrium with the hypothenuse AC, on the principle of the inclined plane. Now, if the frame in which these rollers are fixed be placed in a cistern of water, having its lower part immersed therein, so that the water's edge cuts the upper part of the rollers BC, then, if th

the chain of weights compresses the band at the water's edge, and squeezes out any water that may have previously accumulated in it; so that the band rises in a dry state, the weight of the chain having been so proportioned to the breadth and thickness of the band as to be sufficient to produce this effect. The load, therefore, on the descending side AB, not being opposed by any similar

, therefore, the band and sponge be one foot thick and six feet broad, the area of its horizontal section in contact with the water would be 864 square inches, and the weight of the accumulation

ever worked. Some time afterwards Sir William, at considerable expense, published a pamphlet in which he explained and defended his views. If he had only had a working model mad

otion machines offer their poverty as an excuse for not making a model or working machine. Thus Dircks, in his "Perpetuum Mobile" gives an account of "a mechanic, a model maker, who had a neat brass model of a time-piece, in which were two steel balls A and B;-B to fall into a semicircu

as standing a fallacy as ever. Joseph Hutt, a frame-work knitter, in the neighborhood of the enlightened town of Hi

rangement was described in "The

y obvious. The original idea was this-to enable a body which would float in a heavy medium and sink in a lighter one, to pass successively through the one to the other, the continu

alls inside, which float or fall as they travel from air through water and from water through air. The

their centers; they all open downwards. The whole apparatus is supposed to be air and water-tight. The round figures represent hollow balls, which will sink one-fourth of their bulk in water (of course will fall in air); the weight therefore of three balls resting upon one

m A to B. The said ball (No. 8) having passed through the valve No. 3, will, by appropriate weights or springs, close; the ball will proceed upwards to the next valve (No. 2), and perform the same operation there. Having arrived at A, it will float upon the surface three-fourths of its bulk out of water. Upon another ball in due course arriving under it, it will be lifted quite out of the water, and fall over the point D, pass into the right leg (containing air), and fall to valve No. 5, strike

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found in the Encyclop?dia Britannica, Vol. XVIII, page 555. Some of the premises on which he depends are, however, impossibilities, and Professor Chrystal concludes his notice of the invention thus: "One really is at a loss with Bernoulli's wonderful theory, whether to admire most the conscientious sta

ed recently by a correspondent o

e tube with practically little or no friction, and also without leakage. The tube is then filled with water. The rope above the line WX balances over the pulley, and so does that

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d of puzzle than as a sober attempt to solve the famous

or friction offered by the air to

its bearings of the

uired to bend an

water from z to x and its tendency to raise a por

mechanical impossibility. In order to have the joint water-tight, the tube must hug the rope very tightly and this would make friction enough to prevent any motion. And

thematical Magick" describes one of the many devices which have been invented with this end in view. He says: "But amongst all these kinds of invention, that is most likely, wherein a loadstone is so disposed that it shall draw unto it on a reclined plane a bullet of steel, which steel as it ascends near to the loadstone, may be co

this plane, its own gravity (which is supposed to exceed the strength of the loadstone) will make it fall into that hole at E; and the force it receives in this fall will carry it with such a violence unto the other end of thi

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the bishop himself, after carefully and conscientiously discussing the objections, comes to the same conclusion. He ends by saying: "So that none of all these magnetical experiments, which have

ual motion might be obtained. Several inventors have claimed that they had discovered such a non-conducting substance, but it is needless to say that their claims had no foundation in fact, and if they had discovered anything of the kind, it would have required just as much force to interpos

iage." He describes it as a machine which, were it possible to make its parts hold together unimpaired by rotation or the ravages of time

ming an acute angle), and being raised to the summit, descend on the next (having parallel sides), at the

property of this contrivance is, that its speed increases the more it is laden; and when checked on any part of the road, it will, when the cause of stoppage is removed, proceed on its journey by mere power of gravity. Its path may be a circ

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must be a puzzle to every sane mechanic. I therefore give it as a climax to the absurdities which have been proposed in sober earnest. As a fitting close,

he top I would hang a great weight, and at the bottom I would hang a number of little weights; then the great weight would turn the wheel half round and sink to the bo

, and if it be not perfectly unintelligible, which it often is, it always proves that he expects to find certain of his

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lent contrivances on the part of the inventor, they seem to produce results which have a tendency to afford to certain enthusiasts a basis o

teamship starting from New York with 1000 gallons of liquid air, could not only cross the Atlantic at full speed but could reach the other side with more than 1000 gallons of liquid air on board-th

ough the idea of calling it perpetual motion was sternly repudiated by all concerned-the term "perpetual motion" having become thorough

of doing an enormous amount of work, and that under some conditions there is apparently more power developed than was originally required to liquefy the air, is undoubtedly true, but when a careful quantitative examination is made of the outgo and the income of energy, it will be found in this, as in every similar case, that instead of a gain there is a very decided and serious loss. The cor

ntly of the other. They had a fierce conflict over the patent, but this does not concern us except to this extent, that the records of the case may therefore be found in the archives of the Patent Office at Washington, D.C. Hughes was backed by the wealth of a well-known lawyer of Rochester, whose son subsequently occupied a high office in the state of New York, and he constructed a beautiful little steam-engine and boiler, made of the very finest materials and with such skill and accuracy that it gave out a very considerable amount of power in proportion to its size. The source of heat was a series of lamp

far lowered that the engine revolved very slowly, and then, on a little bisulphide being injected into the boile

ed from a very severe illness and was making a living by teaching mechanical drawing and making drawings for inventors and others, and in the course of business he was brought into contact with some parties who thought of investing in the new and apparently wonderful invention. They employed him to examine it and give an opinion as to its value. After careful consideration and as thorough a calculation as the data then at command would allow, he showed his clients that the tests which had been e

d they failed to see that this spurt, if I may use the expression, was simply due to a draft upon capital previously stored up. The capacity of bisulphide of carbon for heat is quite low, when compared with that

liquid air, and this was the underlying fallacy in

FRA

en they proceed by means of flaring prospectuses and liberal advertising, to gather in the dupes who are attracted by their seductive promises of enormous returns for a very small outlay. Perhaps the most widely known of these fraudulent schemes of recent years was the notorious Keeley motor, the originator of which managed to hoodwink a respectable old lady, and to dra

gineers and scientific men were deceived by Mr. Keeley's nonsense. The very fact that he refused to allow a complete examination of his machine by intelligent practical men, ought to have been enough to condemn his scheme, for if he had rea

tory of perpetual motion is permeated with frauds of this kind, some of them having been so simple that they were obvious to even the most unskilled observer, while others were exceedingly complicated and most ingeniously concealed. Many years ago a number of these fraudule

en accounts of quite a number of these impostu

ious and simple manner, but it deceived only for a time. When thoroughly examined inwardly and outwardly, some time after his death, it was found that the

ring is running down. The owner was in great anger and directly put the wheel into its proper position, and the machine again went around as before. The circumstance was mentioned to an intelligent person who determined to find out and expose the imposture. He took with him a friend to view the machine and they seated themselves one on each side of the table upon which the machine was placed. They then took hold of the wheel and trundle and lifted them up, there being some play in the pivo

of Mr. Lukens was turned to the subject, and although the actual moving cause was not discovered, yet the deception was so ingeniously imitated in a machine of similar appearance made by him and moved by a spring so well concealed, that the deceiver

ar kind might be mul

ne the two closely printed volumes in which Mr. Dircks has collected almost everything of the kind, will be astonished at the sameness which prevails amongst the offerings of these would-be inventors. Amongst the hundreds, or, perhaps, thousands, of contrivances which have been described, there is probably not more than a dozen kinds which di

but in such cases it will be found, on close examination, to owe its apparent complexity

sure of the success of their schemes that they do not even take the trouble to test their plans but announce them as accomplished facts, and publish their sketches and descriptions as if the machine was already working without a hitch. Indeed, so far was one invento

ade so positively and by such apparently good authority, would be at once condemned as deliberate falsehoods. That falsehood, pure and simple, has formed the basis of a good many claims of this kind, there can be no

lain the statements which have been made in regard to Orffyreus and the claims of the Marquis of Worcester? For both of these men it is claimed

arquis in 1663, four years before his death, the celebrat

memory) in the Tower, by my directions, two Extraordinary Embassadors accompanying His Majesty, and the Duke of Richmond and Duke Hamilton, with most of the Court, attending Him. The Wheel was 14. Foot over, and 40. Weights of 50. pounds apiece. Sir William Balfore, then Lieutenant of the Tower, ca

of the weights on one side hung a foot further from the center than did weights on the other side is also no doubt true, but, as the judging of the "consequence" is

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quis of Worcester," gives an engraving of a wheel which complies with a

e next right-hand spoke one foot below the upper end, or on the inner ring; proceed in like manner with every other spoke in succession; and it will be found that, at A, the cord will have the position shown outside the wheel; while at B, C, and D, it will also take the respective positions, as shown on the outside. The result in this case will be, that all the weights on the side A, C,

d by the Marquis was like one of the "overbalancing

screpancy between the suggested claim made by the Marquis and what we know must have been the actual results, is easily explained. The Marquis felt sure that the thing ought to

ccasion of the king's visit to the tower. If he only had had a little more time he would have made a machine

as educated for the church, but turned his attention to mechanics and became an expert clock maker. His character, as given by his contemporaries was fickle, tricky, and irascible. Having devised a scheme for perpetual motion he constructed several wheels which he cl

n a room which was then locked, and the lock secured with the Landgrav

ndeavored to perform his work thoroughly; this so irritated Orffyreus that the latter broke the machine in pieces, an

e huge axle. As already stated, Orffyreus was at one time a clock maker; now clocks have been made to go for a whole

t old professor whose confidence in humanity was probably unbounded. The crowning argument against the genuineness of the motion was the fact that the inven

roblems, and will recur again and again to the end of the chapter:

, and the creation of energy is essential to the successful working of a perpetual-motion machine because some power must always be lost through friction and other resistances and must be supplied from some source if the machine is to keep on moving. And since