Perpetuum Mobile
The very first know design of a perpetual motion machine dates back to 1150. It is called the Bhaskara Wheel, and was designed by an Indian mathematician Bhaskara II. Over time, people tried to improve the original design — using mercury, weights on articulated arms, rolling balls, etc.
All of these designs tried to shift mass to a larger radius from the wheel’s axle, in an attempt to have more mass on one side of the axle, unbalancing the wheel to sustain rotation.
The interesting thing about basically all the variations of the Bhaskara Wheel is how seductive and convincing the suggestion looks to someone with limited knowledge of mechanics. The schematics of the Wheel have convinced quite a lot of people, including some famous intellectuals. “This should work” — was a rather common reaction to it.
The Bhaskara Wheel is truly the Quintessential Perpetuum Mobile — in a sense that the original design was reinvented over and over again over the course of centuries, with its latest reincarnation dating back to 1969. Basically, every 50 years someone comes up with a new variation, and this new thing called “the first law of thermodynamics” does not seem to have influenced the frequency of the reincarnations.
Well, since people are brave enough to question if the Earth is spherical, it would be strange to expect them to be scared of the first law of thermodynamics.
It is interesting to note that Leonardo da Vinci drew a number of overbalanced wheels — while being generally against such devices — still was rather curious about them.
The time between 1150 and 1775, when the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris stopped accepting proposals “concerning perpetual motion”, was the Wild Era of the Perpetuum Mobiles — everyone was inventing and building them left and right — demonstrating them to kings and masses for a nice fee.
But of course, it would be naive to expect the idea of a perpetual motion machine to just die off because patent offices around the world, following the French Royal Academy, stopped accepting the applications.
Plus, some countries were more opened to the idea, and in 1868 Alois Drasch received a US patent for his variant of a Perpetuum Mobile based on “thrust key-type gearing”. It is hard to say if all of the
“inventors” were just delusional or motivated by financial greed during this slightly less wild, yet still chaotic era, but some of them made millions.
One of the more known names on the list of inventors of perpetual motion machines during this era is Nikola Tesla, who claimed to have invented one, even though in a rather vague way:
“A departure from known methods — possibility of a “self-acting” engine or machine, inanimate, yet capable, like a living being, of deriving energy from the medium — the ideal way of obtaining motive power.”
In the modern era the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) was still opened to the idea:
• 1977 Emil T. Hartman receives the patent №4,215,330 for “Permanent magnet propulsion system”
• 1979 Howard R. Johnson receives the patent №4,215,330 for “Electrical generator or motor structure, dynamoelectric, linear”
In 1983 USPTO finally started to catch up and rejected Joseph Westley Newman’s application for a perpetual direct current electrical motor he filed in 1979.
Just kidding, in 2000’s USPTO granted a patent №6,362,718 to Tom Bearden for the “motionless electromagnetic generator”, and even though the American Physical Society issued a statement against the granting, it feels like if you have a sketch of a Perpetuum Mobile of your own–you still can try patenting it.
My own sketch would involve the corpse of the unknown original author of the first law of thermodynamics spinning in the grave–and I’m 101% positive it would work just fine.
