Perpetual motion technology has attracted people at all times. Today it is considered more pseudoscientific and impossible than vice versa, but this does not stop people from creating more and more outlandish gizmos and gizmos in the hope of breaking the laws of physics and making a world revolution. Here are ten historical and extremely entertaining attempts to create something that looks like a perpetual motion machine.
In the 1950s, the Romanian engineer Nicolae Vasilescu-Carpen invented the battery. Now located (albeit not on display stands) at the National Technical Museum of Romania, this battery is still working, although scientists still disagree on how and why it continues to work at all.
The battery in the device remains the same single-voltage battery that Karpen installed in the 1950s. For a long time, the car was forgotten, until the museum was able to display it in a quality manner and ensure the safety of such a strange contraption. It was recently discovered that the battery works and still delivers a stable voltage - after 60 years.
Having successfully defended his doctorate on magnetic effects in moving bodies in 1904, Karpen surely could have created something out of the ordinary. By 1909, he was researching high-frequency currents and the transmission of telephone signals over long distances. Built telegraph stations, researched environmental heat and advanced fuel cell technology. However, modern scientists still have not come to common conclusions about the principles of the work of his strange battery.
Many guesses have been put forward, from the conversion of thermal energy into mechanical energy in the course of a cycle, the thermodynamic principle of which we have not yet discovered. The mathematical apparatus of his invention seems incredibly complex, potentially including concepts like the thermosiphon effect and the temperature equations of the scalar field. Although we have not been able to create a perpetual motion machine capable of generating endless and free energy in huge quantities, nothing prevents us from rejoicing in a battery that has been working continuously for 60 years.
Joe Newman's Power Machine
In 1911, the US Patent Office issued a huge decree. They will no longer issue patents for perpetual motion machines, since it seems scientifically impossible to create such a device. For some inventors, this meant that the battle to get their work recognized by legitimate science was now going to be a little more difficult.
In 1984, Joe Newman got on the CMS Evening Newsletter with Dan Rather and showed something incredible. People living during the oil crisis were delighted with the inventor's idea: he presented a perpetual motion machine that worked and produced more energy than it consumed.
Scientists, however, did not believe a single word of Newman.
The National Bureau of Standards tested the scientist's device, which consisted mostly of batteries charged by a magnet rotating inside a coil of wire. During the tests, all of Newman's statements were empty, although some people continued to believe the scientist. So he decided to take his energy machine and go on tour, demonstrating how it works along the way. Newman claimed that his machine produces 10 times more energy than it absorbs, that is, it works at an efficiency of over 100%. When his patent applications were rejected, and the scientific community literally threw his invention into a puddle, his grief knew no bounds.
As an amateur scientist who didn't even graduate high school, Newman did not give up, even when no one supported his plan. Convinced that God sent him a machine that should change humanity for the better, Newman always believed that the true value of his machine was always hidden from the powers that be.
Water screw by Robert Fludd
Robert Fludd was a kind of symbol that could only appear at a certain time in history. Half scientist, half alchemist, Fludd described and invented different things around the turn of the 17th century. He had some rather strange ideas: he believed that lightning was the earthly embodiment of the wrath of God, which strikes them if they do not run. At the same time, Fludd believed in a number of principles that we accepted today, even if most people at that time did not accept them.
His version of a perpetual motion machine was a water wheel that could grind grain while constantly spinning under the action of recirculating water. Fludd called it the "water screw". In 1660, the first woodcuts appeared depicting such an idea (the origin of which is attributed to 1618).
Needless to say, the device didn't work. However, Fludd was not only trying to break the laws of physics in his machine. He was also looking for a way to help the farmers. At that time, the processing of huge volumes of grain depended on flows. Those who lived far from a suitable source of flowing water were forced to load their crops, drag them to the mill, and then back to the farm. If this machine with a perpetual motion machine worked, it would greatly simplify the lives of countless farmers.
Bhaskara wheel
One of the earliest mentions of perpetual motion machines comes from the mathematician and astronomer Bhaskara, from his writings of 1150. Its concept was an unbalanced wheel with a series of curved spokes inside filled with mercury. As the wheel spun, the mercury began to move, providing the push needed to keep the wheel spinning.
Over the centuries, variations on this idea have been invented great amount... It is perfectly understandable why it should work: the wheel, which is in a state of imbalance, tries to bring itself to rest and, in theory, will continue to move. Some designers believed so strongly in the possibility of creating such a wheel that they even designed brakes in case the process got out of control.
With our modern understanding of force, friction and work, we know that an unbalanced wheel will not achieve the desired effect, since we cannot get all the energy back, we cannot extract it either much or forever. However, the idea itself was and remains intriguing for people unfamiliar with modern physics, especially in the Hindu religious context of reincarnation and the circle of life. The idea became so popular that wheel-shaped perpetual motion machines were later included in Islamic and European scriptures.
Cox's watch
When the famous London watchmaker James Cox built his perpetual motion watch in 1774, it worked exactly as the accompanying documentation explained why the watch did not need to be wound up. A six-page document explained how the watch was created based on "mechanical and philosophical principles."
According to Cox, the diamond-powered perpetual motion machine of the watch and the reduced internal friction to almost no friction ensured that the metals from which the watch was constructed would decay much more slowly than anyone had ever seen. In addition to this grand announcement, many of the new technology presentations at the time included mystical elements.
Besides being a perpetual motion machine, Cox's watch was a watch of genius. Enclosed in glass, which protected the internal working components from dust, allowing them to be viewed as well, the watch worked from changes in atmospheric pressure... If the mercury column grew or fell inside the hour barometer, the movement of the mercury turned the inner wheels in the same direction, partially winding up the watch. If the watch was wound up constantly, the gears came out of the grooves until the chain was loosened to a certain point, after which everything fell into place and the watch began to wind itself again.
The first widely accepted perpetual motion clock was shown by Cox himself in the Spring Garden. He was later seen at weekly exhibitions at the Mechanical Museum, and later at the Clerkenville Institute. At that time, the display of these watches was such a miracle that they were captured in countless works of art, and crowds regularly came to Cox to gaze at his wonderful creation.
"Testatika" by Paul Baumann
The watchmaker Paul Baumann founded the spiritual society Meternitha in the 1950s. In addition to abstaining from alcohol, drugs and tobacco, members of this religious sect live in a self-sufficient, environmentally conscious atmosphere. To achieve this, they rely on the wonderful perpetual motion machine created by their founder.
A machine called the Testatika can harness supposedly unused electrical energy and turn it into energy for the community. Due to its closed nature, "Testatik" could not be fully and completely investigated by scientists, although the machine became the subject of a short documentary in 1999. Not much has been shown, but enough to understand that the sect almost idolizes this sacred machine.
The plans and features of "Testatika" were sent down to Baumann directly by God while he was serving a prison sentence for seducing a young girl. According to the official legend, he was saddened by the darkness of his cell and the lack of light for reading. Then he was visited by a mysterious mystical vision, which revealed to him the secret of perpetual motion and endless energy that can be drawn directly from the air. Members of the sect confirm that the Testatika was sent to them by God, noting also that several attempts to photograph the car revealed a multi-colored halo around it.
In the 1990s, a Bulgarian physicist infiltrated the sect to ferret out the design of the machine, hoping to reveal the secret of this magical energy device to the world. But he failed to convince the sectarians. Having committed suicide in 1997, jumping out of the window, he left a suicide note: "I did what I could, let those who can do better."
Bessler's wheel
Johann Bessler began his research in the field of perpetual motion with a simple concept, like the wheel of Bhaskara: apply weight to the wheel on one side, and it will be constantly unbalanced and constantly moving. On November 12, 1717, Bessler sealed his invention in a room. The door was closed and the room was guarded. When it was opened two weeks later, the 3.7-meter wheel was still moving. The room was sealed again, the scheme was repeated. Upon opening the door in early January 1718, people discovered that the wheel was still turning.
Although becoming a celebrity after all this, Bessler did not expand on the principles of the wheel, noting only that it relies on weights to keep it unbalanced. Moreover, Bessler was so secretive that when one engineer sneaked in to get a closer look at the engineer's creation, Bessler freaked out and destroyed the wheel. Later, the engineer said that he had not noticed anything suspicious. However, he saw only the outer part of the wheel, so he could not understand how it worked. Even in those days, the idea of a perpetual motion machine was met with some cynicism. Centuries earlier, Leonardo da Vinci himself had scoffed at the idea of such a machine.
Yet the concept of the Bessler wheel has never completely disappeared from sight. In 2014, Warwickshire engineer John Collins revealed that he had studied the design of the Bessler wheel for years and was close to unraveling its mystery. Bessler once wrote that he destroyed all the evidence, blueprints and drawings about the principles of his wheel, but added that anyone who is smart enough and quick-witted will be able to understand everything for sure.
Otis T. Carr's UFO engine
The objects included in the Register of Copyright Objects (third series, 1958: July-December) seem a little strange. Despite the fact that the US Patent Office long ago ruled that it would not grant any patents for perpetual motion devices because they could not exist, OTC Enterprises Inc. and its founder, Otis Carr, are listed as the owners of the "free energy system", the "peaceful atom energy" and the "gravity drive".
In 1959, OTC Enterprises planned to carry out the maiden voyage of its "space transport of the fourth dimension", powered by a perpetual motion machine. While at least one person briefly became familiar with the messy parts of the well-guarded project, the device itself was never opened or "lifted off the ground." Carr himself was hospitalized with vague symptoms on the day the device was to set off on its first journey.
His illness may have been a clever way to get away from the demonstration, but it wasn't enough to keep Carr behind bars. By selling options on a technology that did not exist, Carr got the investors interested in the project, as well as people who believed that his apparatus would take them to other planets.
To get around the patent restrictions of his crazy projects, Carr patented the whole thing as an "entertainment device" that simulates trips to outer space. It was U.S. Patent # 2,912,244 (November 10, 1959). Carr claimed that his spacecraft was working because one had already taken off. The propulsion system was a "circular foil of free energy" that provided an endless supply of energy needed to propel the craft into space.
Of course, the strangeness of what was going on paved the way for conspiracy theories. Some people have suggested that Carr did indeed assemble his perpetual motion machine and flying machine. But, of course, he was quickly pinned down by the American government. Theorists could not agree, either the government does not want to disclose the technology, or it wants to use it on its own.
"Perpetuum Mobile" by Cornelius Drebbel
The strangest thing about Cornelius Drebbel's perpetual motion machine is that while we don't know how or why it worked, you've definitely seen it more often than you think.
Drebbel first demonstrated his car in 1604 and amazed everyone, including the English royal family. The machine was a kind of chronometer; it never needed to be zipped and showed the date and phase of the moon. Driven by changes in temperature or weather, Drebbel's machine also used a thermoscope or barometer, much like a Cox clock.
No one knows what provided movement and energy to Drebbel's device, since he spoke of curbing the "fiery spirit of the air" like a real alchemist. At the time, the world was still thinking in terms of the four elements, and Drebbel himself experimented with sulfur and saltpeter.
As stated in a letter from 1604, the earliest known representation of the device showed a central sphere surrounded by a glass tube filled with liquid. Golden arrows and markers tracked the phases of the moon. Other images were more complex, showing the car adorned with mythological creatures and ornaments in gold. Drebbel's perpetuum mobile also appeared in some paintings, in particular in the brushes of Albrecht and Rubens. In these pictures, the strange toroidal shape of the machine does not resemble a sphere at all.
In his self-proclaimed "Incredibly True Life Story," David Hamel claims to be an ordinary carpenter with no formal education who was chosen to be the custodian of the machine of eternal energy and the spacecraft that must be powered by it. After meeting with aliens from the planet Kladen, Khamel stated that he received information that should change the world - if only people believe him.
While all this is a little discouraging, Khamel said that his perpetual motion machine uses the same energies as spiders jumping from one web to another. These scalar forces cancel out the attraction of gravity and allow us to create an apparatus that will allow us to reunite with our Kladen relatives, who provided Khamel with the necessary information.
According to Khamel, he has already built such a device. Unfortunately, it flew away.
After working 20 years to build his interstellar device and engine using a series of magnets, he finally turned it on, and this is what happened. Filled with a glow of colorful ions, his anti-gravity machine took off and flew over the Pacific Ocean. To avoid a repetition of this tragic event, Khamel builds his next car with heavier materials like granite.
To understand the principles behind this technology, Hamel says you need to look at the pyramids, study some forbidden books, accept the presence of invisible energy, and imagine scalars and the ionosphere almost like milk and cheese.
Human nature is such that from time immemorial people have tried to create something that works by itself, without any external influences. Subsequently, this device was given the definition Perpetuum mobile or . Many famous scientists from different times have tried unsuccessfully to create it, including the great Leonardo da Vinci. He spent several years creating a perpetual motion machine, both by improving existing models, and trying to create something fundamentally new. In the end, having figured out why nothing works, he was the first to formulate a conclusion about the impossibility of creating such a mechanism. However, the inventors were not convinced by its formulation, and they are still trying to create the impossible.
Bhaskar wheel and similar projects of perpetual motion machines
It is not known for certain who and when the first tried to create a perpetual motion machine, but the first mention of it in manuscripts dates back to the 12th century. The manuscripts belong to the Indian mathematician Bhaskar. In them, a certain wheel is described in poetic form, with tubes attached to it along the perimeter, half filled with mercury. It was believed that due to the overflow of liquid, the wheel itself will rotate endlessly. Several more attempts were made to create a perpetual motion machine based on approximately the same principle. Unsuccessfully as usual.
Models built on the principle of the Bhaskar wheel
Perpetual motion machine from a chain of floats
Another prototype of a perpetual motion machine is based on the use of Archimedes' law. In theory, it was believed that the chain, consisting of hollow tanks, will rotate due to the buoyant force. Only one thing was not taken into account - the pressure of the water column on the lowest tank will compensate for the buoyancy force.
Perpetual motion machine working according to Archimedes' law
Another inventor of the perpetual motion machine is the Dutch mathematician Simon Stevin. According to his theory, a chain of 14 balls thrown over a triangular prism should start moving, because there are twice as many balls on the left side than on the right, and the lower balls balance each other. But even here the insidious laws of physics interfered with the plans of the inventor. Despite the fact that four balls are twice as heavy as two, they roll on a flatter surface, therefore, the force of gravity acting on the balls from the right is balanced by the force of gravity acting on the balls from the left, and the system remains in equilibrium.
Stevin's perpetual motion machine model and its implementation with a chain
Perpetual motion machine on permanent magnets
With the advent of permanent (and especially neodymium) magnets, the inventors of perpetual motion machines became active again. There are many variations of electric generators based on magnets, and one of their first inventors, Michael Brady, even patented this idea in the 90s of the last century.
Michael Brady working on a permanent magnet perpetual motion machine in 2002
And the video below shows a fairly simple design that anyone can make at home (if you have enough magnets). It is not known how long this thing will spin, but even if we do not take into account the energy loss from friction, this engine can be considered only conditionally eternal, because the power of the magnets weakens over time. But all the same, the spectacle is mesmerizing.
Of course, we did not talk about all the variants of perpetual motion machines, because human imagination, if not endless, is very inventive. However, all existing models of perpetual motion machines are united by one thing - they are not eternal. That is why the Paris Academy of Sciences since 1775 decided not to consider projects of perpetual motion machines, and the US Patent Office has not issued such patents for over a hundred years. And yet, in the International Patent Classification, there are still sections for some types of perpetual motion machines. But this only concerns the novelty of design solutions.
Summing up, we can only say one thing: despite the fact that it is still believed that the creation of a truly perpetual motion machine is impossible, no one forbids trying, inventing and believing in the unrealizable.
In 1685 in one of the issues of the London scientific journal "Philosophical Works" was published a project proposed by the Frenchman Denis Papin for a hydraulic perpetuum mobile, the principle of which was supposed to refute the well-known paradox of hydrostatics. As shown in the figure, this device consisted of a vessel tapering into a C-shaped tube, which curved upward and hung over the edge of the vessel with its open end.
The author of the project assumed that the weight of water in the wider part of the vessel will necessarily exceed the weight of the liquid in the tube, i.e. in the narrower part of it. This meant that the liquid, by its weight, would have to squeeze itself out of the vessel into the tube, through which it would again have to return to the vessel, thereby achieving the required continuous circulation of water in the vessel.
How do you guess why the "perpetual motion machine" works in the video?
Unfortunately, Papen did not realize that the decisive factor in this case is not the different amount (and with it the different weight of the liquid in the wide and narrow parts of the vessel), but above all the property inherent in all communicating vessels without exception: the pressure of the liquid in the very vessel and curved tube will always be the same. The hydrostatic paradox is precisely explained by the peculiarities of this essentially hydrostatic pressure.
Otherwise called Pascal's paradox, he claims that the total pressure, i.e. The force with which the liquid presses on the horizontal bottom of the vessel is determined only by the weight of the liquid column above it, and does not depend at all on the shape of the vessel (for example, on whether its walls are narrowing or expanding) and, therefore, on the amount of liquid.
Sometimes even people who worked at the very forefront of modern science and technology were victims of such delusions. An example is Denis Papin himself (1647-1714) - the inventor of not only the "Papa's boiler" and the safety valve, but also the centrifugal pump, and most importantly - the first steam engines with a cylinder and a piston. Papin even established the dependence of vapor pressure on temperature and showed how to obtain on its basis both a vacuum, and high blood pressure... He was a student of Huygens, corresponded with Leibniz and other prominent scientists of his time, was a member of the English Royal Society and the Academy of Sciences in Naples. And here is such a person who is rightfully considered a major physicist and one of the founders of modern heat power engineering (as the creator steam engine), works on a perpetual motion machine! Not only that, he offers such a perpetual motion machine, the fallacy of the principle of which was completely obvious to contemporary science. He publishes this project in the journal Philosophical Works (London, 1685).
Rice. 1 .. Model of a hydraulic perpetual motion machine by D. Papin
Papin's idea of a perpetual motion machine is very simple - it is essentially a Zonka tube turned upside down (Fig. 1). Since the weight of the water is greater in the wide part of the vessel, its force must exceed the force of the weight of the narrow column of water in the thin tube C. Therefore, water will constantly drain from the end of the thin tube into the wide vessel. It remains only to substitute a water wheel under the stream and the perpetual motion machine is ready!
Obviously, it won't actually work that way; the surface of the liquid in a thin tube will settle at the same level as in a thick one, as in any communicating vessels (as in the right side of Fig. 1.).
The fate of this idea by Papin was the same as that of other variants of hydraulic perpetual motion machines. The author never returned to it, having occupied himself with a more useful business - the steam engine.
The story of D. Papin's invention prompts a question that constantly arises when studying the history of perpetual motion machines: how to explain the amazing blindness and strange behavior of many very educated and, most importantly, talented people that arise every time it comes to the invention of a perpetual motion machine?
We will come back to this issue later. If we continue the conversation about Papin, then another thing is not clear. Moreover, it does not take into account the already known laws of hydraulics. Indeed, at this time he was in the position of "temporary curator of experiments" at the Royal Society of London. With his experimental skills, Papin could easily test his idea of a perpetual motion machine (just as he tested his other proposals). It is easy to carry out such an experiment in half an hour, even without having the capabilities of a "curator of experiments." He did not do this and for some reason sent the article to the journal without checking anything. A paradox: an outstanding experimental scientist and theorist publishes a project that contradicts the already established theory and has not been verified experimentally!
In the future, many more hydraulic perpetual motion machines were proposed with other methods of lifting water, in particular capillary and wick (which, in fact, is the same) [. They proposed to lift liquid (water or oil) from the lower vessel to the upper one through a wetted capillary or wick. Indeed, it is possible to raise a liquid to a certain height in this way, but the same surface tension forces that caused the rise will prevent the liquid from draining from the wick (or capillary) into the upper vessel.
What happens in the video?
When liquid is poured into the funnel, then, according to the law of communicating vessels, the levels should be the same, and it flows into the tube with a large delay, therefore, under the wooden tripod there is still a vessel from which water is pumped, since it will stop in the middle and will not flow. hydraulic perpetuum mobile of the Middle Ages, in which there is a mistake, as if the greater weight of the funnel would displace water from the tube, but this is not the case. Any tube diameter and any shape does not matter, the levels are simply leveled
Perpetual motion technology has attracted people at all times. Today it is considered more pseudoscientific and impossible than vice versa, but this does not stop people from creating more and more outlandish gizmos and gizmos in the hope of breaking the laws of physics and making a world revolution. Here are ten historical and extremely entertaining attempts to create something that looks like a perpetual motion machine.
Karpen's battery
In the 1950s, the Romanian engineer Nicolae Vasilescu-Carpen invented the battery. Now located (albeit not on display stands) at the National Technical Museum of Romania, this battery is still working, although scientists still disagree on how and why it continues to work at all.
The battery in the device remains the same single-voltage battery that Karpen installed in the 1950s. For a long time, the car was forgotten, until the museum was able to display it in a quality manner and ensure the safety of such a strange contraption. It was recently discovered that the battery works and still delivers a stable voltage - after 60 years.
Having successfully defended his doctorate on magnetic effects in moving bodies in 1904, Karpen surely could have created something out of the ordinary. By 1909, he was researching high-frequency currents and the transmission of telephone signals over long distances. Built telegraph stations, researched environmental heat and advanced fuel cell technology. However, modern scientists still have not come to common conclusions about the principles of the work of his strange battery.
Many guesses have been put forward, from the conversion of thermal energy into mechanical energy in the course of a cycle, the thermodynamic principle of which we have not yet discovered. The mathematical apparatus of his invention seems incredibly complex, potentially including concepts like the thermosiphon effect and the temperature equations of the scalar field. Although we have not been able to create a perpetual motion machine capable of generating endless and free energy in huge quantities, nothing prevents us from rejoicing in a battery that has been working continuously for 60 years.
Joe Newman's Power Machine
In 1911, the US Patent Office issued a huge decree. They will no longer issue patents for perpetual motion machines, since it seems scientifically impossible to create such a device. For some inventors, this meant that the battle to get their work recognized by legitimate science was now going to be a little more difficult.
In 1984, Joe Newman got on the CMS Evening Newsletter with Dan Rather and showed something incredible. People living during the oil crisis were delighted with the inventor's idea: he presented a perpetual motion machine that worked and produced more energy than it consumed.
Scientists, however, did not believe a single word of Newman.
The National Bureau of Standards tested the scientist's device, which consisted mostly of batteries charged by a magnet rotating inside a coil of wire. During the tests, all of Newman's statements were empty, although some people continued to believe the scientist. So he decided to take his energy machine and go on tour, demonstrating how it works along the way. Newman claimed that his machine produces 10 times more energy than it absorbs, that is, it works at an efficiency of over 100%. When his patent applications were rejected, and the scientific community literally threw his invention into a puddle, his grief knew no bounds.
An amateur scientist who never even finished high school, Newman didn't give up even when no one supported his plan. Convinced that God sent him a machine that should change humanity for the better, Newman always believed that the true value of his machine was always hidden from the powers that be.
Water screw by Robert Fludd
Robert Fludd was a kind of symbol that could only appear at a certain time in history. Half scientist, half alchemist, Fludd described and invented different things around the turn of the 17th century. He had some rather strange ideas: he believed that lightning was the earthly embodiment of the wrath of God, which strikes them if they do not run. At the same time, Fludd believed in a number of principles that we accepted today, even if most people at that time did not accept them.
His version of a perpetual motion machine was a water wheel that could grind grain while constantly spinning under the action of recirculating water. Fludd called it the "water screw". In 1660, the first woodcuts appeared depicting such an idea (the origin of which is attributed to 1618).
Needless to say, the device didn't work. However, Fludd was not only trying to break the laws of physics in his machine. He was also looking for a way to help the farmers. At that time, the processing of huge volumes of grain depended on flows. Those who lived far from a suitable source of flowing water were forced to load their crops, drag them to the mill, and then back to the farm. If this machine with a perpetual motion machine worked, it would greatly simplify the lives of countless farmers.
Bhaskara wheel
One of the earliest mentions of perpetual motion machines comes from the mathematician and astronomer Bhaskara, from his writings of 1150. Its concept was an unbalanced wheel with a series of curved spokes inside filled with mercury. As the wheel spun, the mercury began to move, providing the push needed to keep the wheel spinning.
Over the centuries, a huge number of variations of this idea have been invented. It is perfectly understandable why it should work: the wheel, which is in a state of imbalance, tries to bring itself to rest and, in theory, will continue to move. Some designers believed so strongly in the possibility of creating such a wheel that they even designed brakes in case the process got out of control.
With our modern understanding of force, friction and work, we know that an unbalanced wheel will not achieve the desired effect, since we cannot get all the energy back, we cannot extract it either much or forever. However, the idea itself was and remains intriguing for people unfamiliar with modern physics, especially in the Hindu religious context of reincarnation and the circle of life. The idea became so popular that wheel-shaped perpetual motion machines were later included in Islamic and European scriptures.
Cox's watch
When the famous London watchmaker James Cox built his perpetual motion watch in 1774, it worked exactly as the accompanying documentation explained why the watch did not need to be wound up. A six-page document explained how the watch was created based on "mechanical and philosophical principles."
According to Cox, the diamond-powered perpetual motion machine of the watch and the reduced internal friction to almost no friction ensured that the metals from which the watch was constructed would decay much more slowly than anyone had ever seen. In addition to this grand announcement, many of the new technology presentations at the time included mystical elements.
Besides being a perpetual motion machine, Cox's watch was a watch of genius. Enclosed in glass, which protected the internal working components from dust, allowing them to be viewed as well, the watch was operated by changes in atmospheric pressure. If the mercury column grew or fell inside the hour barometer, the movement of the mercury turned the inner wheels in the same direction, partially winding up the watch. If the watch was wound up constantly, the gears came out of the grooves until the chain was loosened to a certain point, after which everything fell into place and the watch began to wind itself again.
The first widely accepted perpetual motion clock was shown by Cox himself in the Spring Garden. He was later seen at weekly exhibitions at the Mechanical Museum, and later at the Clerkenville Institute. At that time, the display of these watches was such a miracle that they were captured in countless works of art, and crowds regularly came to Cox to gaze at his wonderful creation.
The watchmaker Paul Baumann founded the spiritual society Meternitha in the 1950s. In addition to abstaining from alcohol, drugs and tobacco, members of this religious sect live in a self-sufficient, environmentally conscious atmosphere. To achieve this, they rely on the wonderful perpetual motion machine created by their founder.
A machine called the Testatika can harness supposedly unused electrical energy and turn it into energy for the community. Due to its closed nature, "Testatik" could not be fully and completely investigated by scientists, although the machine became the subject of a short documentary in 1999. Not much has been shown, but enough to understand that the sect almost idolizes this sacred machine.
The plans and features of "Testatika" were sent down to Baumann directly by God while he was serving a prison sentence for seducing a young girl. According to the official legend, he was saddened by the darkness of his cell and the lack of light for reading. Then he was visited by a mysterious mystical vision, which revealed to him the secret of perpetual motion and endless energy that can be drawn directly from the air. Members of the sect confirm that the Testatika was sent to them by God, noting also that several attempts to photograph the car revealed a multi-colored halo around it.
In the 1990s, a Bulgarian physicist infiltrated the sect to ferret out the design of the machine, hoping to reveal the secret of this magical energy device to the world. But he failed to convince the sectarians. Having committed suicide in 1997, jumping out of the window, he left a suicide note: "I did what I could, let those who can do better."
Bessler's wheel
Johann Bessler began his research in the field of perpetual motion with a simple concept, like the wheel of Bhaskara: apply weight to the wheel on one side, and it will be constantly unbalanced and constantly moving. On November 12, 1717, Bessler sealed his invention in a room. The door was closed and the room was guarded. When it was opened two weeks later, the 3.7-meter wheel was still moving. The room was sealed again, the scheme was repeated. Upon opening the door in early January 1718, people discovered that the wheel was still turning.
Although becoming a celebrity after all this, Bessler did not expand on the principles of the wheel, noting only that it relies on weights to keep it unbalanced. Moreover, Bessler was so secretive that when one engineer sneaked in to get a closer look at the engineer's creation, Bessler freaked out and destroyed the wheel. Later, the engineer said that he had not noticed anything suspicious. However, he saw only the outer part of the wheel, so he could not understand how it worked. Even in those days, the idea of a perpetual motion machine was met with some cynicism. Centuries earlier, Leonardo da Vinci himself had scoffed at the idea of such a machine.
Yet the concept of the Bessler wheel has never completely disappeared from sight. In 2014, Warwickshire engineer John Collins revealed that he had studied the design of the Bessler wheel for years and was close to unraveling its mystery. Bessler once wrote that he destroyed all the evidence, blueprints and drawings about the principles of his wheel, but added that anyone who is smart enough and quick-witted will be able to understand everything for sure.
Otis T. Carr's UFO engine
The objects included in the Register of Copyright Objects (third series, 1958: July-December) seem a little strange. Despite the fact that the US Patent Office long ago ruled that it would not grant any patents for perpetual motion devices because they could not exist, OTC Enterprises Inc. and its founder, Otis Carr, are listed as the owners of the "free energy system", the "peaceful atom energy" and the "gravity drive".
In 1959, OTC Enterprises planned to carry out the maiden voyage of its "space transport of the fourth dimension", powered by a perpetual motion machine. While at least one person briefly became familiar with the messy parts of the well-guarded project, the device itself was never opened or "lifted off the ground." Carr himself was hospitalized with vague symptoms on the day the device was to set off on its first journey.
His illness may have been a clever way to get away from the demonstration, but it wasn't enough to keep Carr behind bars. By selling options on a technology that did not exist, Carr got the investors interested in the project, as well as people who believed that his apparatus would take them to other planets.
To get around the patent restrictions of his crazy projects, Carr patented the whole thing as an "entertainment device" that simulates trips to outer space. It was U.S. Patent # 2,912,244 (November 10, 1959). Carr claimed that his spacecraft was working because one had already taken off. The propulsion system was a "circular foil of free energy" that provided an endless supply of energy needed to propel the craft into space.
Of course, the strangeness of what was going on paved the way for conspiracy theories. Some people have suggested that Carr did indeed assemble his perpetual motion machine and flying machine. But, of course, he was quickly pinned down by the American government. Theorists could not agree, either the government does not want to disclose the technology, or it wants to use it on its own.
"Perpetuum Mobile" by Cornelius Drebbel
The strangest thing about Cornelius Drebbel's perpetual motion machine is that while we don't know how or why it worked, you've definitely seen it more often than you think.
Drebbel first demonstrated his car in 1604 and amazed everyone, including the English royal family. The machine was a kind of chronometer; it never needed to be zipped and showed the date and phase of the moon. Driven by changes in temperature or weather, Drebbel's machine also used a thermoscope or barometer, much like a Cox clock.
No one knows what provided movement and energy to Drebbel's device, since he spoke of curbing the "fiery spirit of the air" like a real alchemist. At the time, the world was still thinking in terms of the four elements, and Drebbel himself experimented with sulfur and saltpeter.
As stated in a letter from 1604, the earliest known representation of the device showed a central sphere surrounded by a glass tube filled with liquid. Golden arrows and markers tracked the phases of the moon. Other images were more complex, showing the car adorned with mythological creatures and ornaments in gold. Drebbel's perpetuum mobile also appeared in some paintings, in particular in the brushes of Albrecht and Rubens. In these pictures, the strange toroidal shape of the machine does not resemble a sphere at all.
Drebbel's work attracted the attention of royal courts across Europe, and he toured the continent for some time. And, as often happens, he died in poverty. As an uneducated son of a farmer, he received the patronage of Buckingham Palace, invented one of the first submarines, became a regular in pubs closer to old age, and eventually embarked on several projects that tarnished his reputation.
David Hamel's anti-gravity machine
In his self-proclaimed "Incredibly True Life Story," David Hamel claims to be an ordinary carpenter with no formal education who was chosen to be the custodian of the machine of eternal energy and the spacecraft that must be powered by it. After meeting with aliens from the planet Kladen, Khamel stated that he received information that should change the world - if only people believe him.
While all this is a little discouraging, Khamel said that his perpetual motion machine uses the same energies as spiders jumping from one web to another. These scalar forces cancel out the attraction of gravity and allow us to create an apparatus that will allow us to reunite with our Kladen relatives, who provided Khamel with the necessary information.
According to Khamel, he has already built such a device. Unfortunately, it flew away.
After working 20 years to build his interstellar device and engine using a series of magnets, he finally turned it on, and this is what happened. Filled with a glow of colorful ions, his anti-gravity machine took off and flew over the Pacific Ocean. To avoid a repetition of this tragic event, Khamel builds his next car with heavier materials like granite.
To understand the principles behind this technology, Hamel says you need to look at the pyramids, study some forbidden books, accept the presence of invisible energy, and imagine scalars and the ionosphere almost like milk and cheese.
Since the discovery of magnetism, the idea of creating a perpetual motion machine on magnets has not left the brightest minds of mankind. Until now, it has not been possible to create a mechanism with an efficiency greater than unity, for the stable operation of which an external source of energy would not be required. In fact, the concept of a perpetual motion machine in its modern form does not at all require violation of the basic postulates of physics. The main task of the inventors is to get as close as possible to one hundred percent efficiency and ensure long-term operation of the device at minimal cost.
Real prospects for creating a perpetual motion machine on magnets
Opponents of the theory of creating a perpetual motion machine say that it is impossible to violate the law on conservation of energy. Indeed, there are absolutely no prerequisites for getting energy out of nothing. On the other hand, a magnetic field is not emptiness at all, but a special type of matter, the density of which can reach 280 kJ / m³. It is this value that is the potential energy that theoretically can be used by a perpetual motion machine on permanent magnets. Despite the absence of ready-made samples in the public domain, numerous patents speak about the possibility of the existence of such devices, as well as the fact of the presence of promising developments that have remained classified since Soviet times.
Norwegian artist Reidar Finsrud created his own version of a perpetual motion machine with magnets
Famous physicists and scientists applied their efforts to the creation of such electric generators: Nikola Tesla, Minato, Vasily Shkondin, Howard Johnson and Nikolai Lazarev. It should be immediately noted that the motors created with the help of magnets are called "eternal" conditionally - the magnet loses its properties after a couple of hundred years, and together with it the generator will stop working.
The most famous analogs of perpetual motion machine magnets
Numerous enthusiasts are trying to create a perpetual motion machine on magnets with their own hands according to a scheme in which rotational motion is provided by the interaction of magnetic fields. As you know, the poles of the same name repel each other. It is this effect that underlies almost all such developments. Competent use of the energy of repulsion of the same poles of a magnet and attraction of opposite poles in a closed loop allows for long-term non-stop rotation of the installation without the application of external force.
Lorenz anti-gravity magnetic engine
You can make a Lorenz engine yourself using simple materials
If you want to assemble a perpetual motion machine on magnets with your own hands, then pay attention to the development of Lorenz. The antigravity magnetic engine of his authorship is considered to be the easiest to implement. This device is based on the use of two discs with different charges. They are placed halfway into a hemispherical magnetic shield made of superconductors, which completely expels magnetic fields from itself. Such a device is necessary to isolate the halves of the disks from the external magnetic field. This engine is started by forcibly rotating the discs towards each other. In fact, the disks in the resulting system are a pair of half-turns with current, on the open parts of which the Lorentz forces will act.
Nikola Tesla induction magnetic motor
The asynchronous "perpetual" permanent magnet motor, created by Nikola Tesla, generates electricity through a constantly rotating magnetic field. The design is rather complex and difficult to reproduce at home.
Perpetual motion machine on permanent magnets by Nikola Tesla
"Testatika" by Paul Baumann
One of the most famous developments is Bauman's "testatics". The device resembles in its construction the simplest electrostatic machine with Leyden jars. "Testatic" consists of a pair of acrylic discs (for the first experiments we used ordinary music records), on which 36 narrow and thin strips of aluminum are glued. 
Still from the documentary: a 1000-watt lamp was connected to Testatika. Left - inventor Paul Bauman
After the discs were pushed in opposite directions by the fingers, the running engine continued to run indefinitely at a stable rotational speed of the discs at the level of 50-70 rpm. In the electrical circuit of the Paul Baumann generator, it is possible to develop a voltage of up to 350 volts with a current strength of up to 30 amperes. Due to the small mechanical power, it is rather not a perpetual motion machine, but a generator on magnets.
Sweet Floyd Vacuum Triode Amplifier
The difficulty of reproducing the Sweet Floyd device lies not in its design, but in the technology of making magnets. This engine is based on two ferrite magnets with dimensions of 10x15x2.5 cm, as well as coreless coils, of which one is a working one with several hundred turns, and two more are exciting. A simple 9V pocket battery is needed to start the triode amplifier. After switching on, the device can work for a very long time, independently feeding itself by analogy with an auto-generator. According to Sweet Floyd, an output voltage of 120 volts with a frequency of 60 Hz was obtained from the operating unit, the power of which reached 1 kW.
Rotary ring Lazarev
The scheme of a perpetual motion machine based on Lazarev's project is very popular. Today, its rotor ring is considered a device, the implementation of which is as close as possible to the concept of a perpetual motion machine. An important advantage of Lazarev's development is that even without specialized knowledge and serious costs, you can assemble a similar perpetual motion machine on neodymium magnets with your own hands. Such a device is a container divided into two parts by a porous partition. The author of the development used a special ceramic disc as a partition. A tube is installed in it, and liquid is poured into the container. Volatile solutions (such as gasoline) are best suited for this, but plain tap water can also be used.
The mechanism of operation of the Lazarev engine is very simple. First, the liquid is fed through the baffle to the bottom of the container. Under pressure, the solution begins to rise through the tube. A wheel with blades is placed under the resulting dropper, on which magnets are installed. Under the force of the falling drops, the wheel rotates, forming a constant magnetic field. On the basis of this development, a self-rotating magnetic electric motor was successfully created, on which one domestic enterprise registered a patent.
Shkondin wheel motor
If you are looking for interesting options on how to make a perpetual motion machine from magnets, then be sure to pay attention to the development of Shkondin. Its linear motor design can be described as a "wheel within a wheel". This simple, but at the same time efficient device is successfully used for bicycles, scooters and other transport. Pulse-inertial motor-wheel is a combination of magnetic tracks, the parameters of which are dynamically changed by switching the windings of electromagnets.
General diagram of a linear motor by Vasily Shkondin
The key elements of the Shkondin device are the outer rotor and the stator of a special design: the arrangement of 11 pairs of neodymium magnets in a perpetual motion machine is made in a circle, which forms a total of 22 poles. The rotor has 6 horseshoe-shaped electromagnets, which are installed in pairs and offset to each other by 120 °. There is the same distance between the poles of the electromagnets on the rotor and between the magnets on the stator. Changing the position of the poles of the magnets relative to each other leads to the creation of a gradient of the magnetic field strength, forming a torque.
A neodymium magnet in a perpetual motion machine based on the design of the Shkondin project is of key importance. When an electromagnet passes through the axes of neodymium magnets, a magnetic pole is formed, which is of the same name in relation to the overcome pole and opposite to the pole of the next magnet. It turns out that the electromagnet is always repelled from the previous magnet and attracted to the next. Such influences provide the rim rotation. De-energizing the electromagnet when reaching the axis of the magnet on the stator is ensured by placing a current collector at this point.
A resident of Pushchino, Vasily Shkondin, invented not a perpetual motion machine, but highly efficient motor-wheels for transport and power generators.
The efficiency of the Shkondin engine is 83%. Of course, this is not yet a completely non-volatile perpetual motion machine on neodymium magnets, but a very serious and convincing step in the right direction. Due to the design features of the device at idle, it is possible to return part of the energy to the batteries (recuperation function).
Perpetual motion machine Perendeva
A high quality alternative engine that generates energy exclusively from magnets. The base is a static and dynamic circle on which several magnets are located in a planned order. A self-repulsive force arises between them, due to which the rotation of the moving circle occurs. Such a perpetual motion machine is considered to be very profitable to operate.
Perpetual magnetic engine Perendeva
There are many other EMDs, which are similar in principle of operation and design. All of them are still imperfect, since they are not able to function for a long time without any external impulses. Therefore, work on the creation of perpetual generators does not stop.
How to make a perpetual motion machine using magnets with your own hands
You will need:- 3 shafts
- Lucite disc, 4 '' diameter
- 2 lucite discs 2 '' diameter
- 12 magnets
- Aluminum bar
Disadvantages of EMD
Care should be taken when planning to actively use such generators. The fact is that the constant proximity of the magnetic field leads to a deterioration in well-being. In addition, for the normal functioning of the device, it is necessary to provide it with special working conditions. For example, protect against exposure external factors... the total cost ready-made structures turns out to be high, and the generated energy is too low. Therefore, the benefit from the use of such structures is questionable.Experiment and create own versions perpetual motion machine. All perpetual motion machines continue to be improved by enthusiasts, and many examples of real-world successes can be found on the web. The World of Magnets online store offers you a profitable purchase of neodymium magnets and your own hands to assemble various devices in which the gears would spin non-stop due to the effects of repulsive and attractive magnetic fields. Choose from the presented catalog products with suitable characteristics (dimensions, shape, power) and place an order.