Jan. 12, 1888] 



NATURE 



255 



accordance with the programme, but the ball refuses to 

 go through the second part without coercion. 



Now most of these schemes had a very definite object 

 in view, which was to obtain motiv.e power, and not at all 

 the innocent philosophic notion of delighting future ages 

 by the sight of a machine which, like the sacred flame 

 Mark Twain tells of, had been going for so many cen- 

 turies ; in short, it was not to benefit posterity but them- 

 selves that perpetual motion seekers worked and patented 

 their inventions ; and thus the question naturally arises. 

 Did any of their inventions appear to work? Well, they 

 did ; and here we may divide these machines into two 

 classes, those which did not succeed, and those which did. 

 The former are in a strong majority, but the latter are 

 important ; and I will briefly give an account of one case, 

 perhaps the most celebrated, of the latter. About the year 

 1712 a great stir was made on the Continent by the appear- 

 ance of a wonderful machine contrived by a German 

 Pole, by name Jean Ernst Elie-Bessler, who apparently 

 (not perhaps having enough names) had assumed the 

 additional surname Orffyreus. This Orffyreus had, it 

 was said, contrived upwards of 300 perpetual motion 

 machines, and at last had got one that worked. Kings, 

 princes, landgraves, not to say professors and learned 

 men, were all convinced of the absolute certainty of the 

 action of the machine, and Baron Fischer writes to 

 the celebrated Dr. Desaguliers as seriously as Prof. 

 s'Gravesande did to Sir Isaac Newton about it as follows, 

 concerning a visit paid to this machine in the castle of 

 Wissenstein, in Cassel : — " The wheel turns with astonish- 

 ing rapidity. Having tied a cord to the axle, to turn an 

 Archimedian screw to raise water, the wheel then 

 made twenty turns a minute. This I noted several 

 times by my watch, and I always found the same regu- 

 larity. An attempt to stop it suddenly would raise a 

 man from the ground. Having stopped it in this 

 manner it remained stationary (and here is the greatest 

 proof of a perpetual motion). I commenced the move- 

 ments very gently to see if it would of itself regain its 

 former rapidity, which I doubted ; but to my great 

 astonishment I observed that the rapidity of the wheel 

 augmented little by little until it made two turns, and 

 then it regained its former speed. This experiment, show- 

 ing the rapidity of the wheel augmented from the very 

 slow movement that I gave it to an extraordinary rapid 

 one, convinces me more than if I had only seen the wheel 

 moving a whole year, which would not have persuaded 

 me that it was perpetual motion, because it might have 

 diminished little by little until it ceased altogether ; but 

 to gain speed instead of losing it, and to increase that 

 speed to a certain degree in spite of the resistance of the 

 air and the friction of the axles, I do not see how any 

 one can doubt the truth of this action." The inventor 

 himself wrote various pamphlets — with dedications 60 

 pages in length in German — entitled, " DasTriumphirende 

 Perpetuum Mobile Orffyreanum," and in Latin, " Tri- 

 umphans Perpetuum Mobile Orffyreanum." This machine 

 worked hard, raising and lowering stones or water as 

 required, being locked in a room ; the people outside could 

 see the work done by msans of a rope which passed 

 through an opening in the wall, and this ought to have 

 satisfied them. Still, there were disbelievers, and amongst 

 others we find a M. Crousaz writing as follows : — " First, 

 Orffyreus is a fool ; second, it is impossible that a fool can 

 have discovered what such a number of clever people have 

 searched for without success ; third, I do not believe in 

 impossibilities; . . . fifth, the servant who ran away from 

 his house for fear of being strangled, has in her possession, 

 in writing, the terrible oath that Orffyreus made her 

 swear ; sixth, he only had to have asked in order to have 

 had this girl imprisoned, until he had time to finish 

 this machine ; . . . eighth, it is true that there is a 

 machine at his house, to which they give the name of 

 perpetual motion, but that is a small one and cannot be 



removed." These are serious charges even if not in 

 logical sequence, and before we conclude the history of 

 this invention we will examine a machine which has been 

 made at University College, which has certainly surpris- 

 ing properties, although very simple. It is now locked, 

 for we may say of it what was said of a machine about 

 twenty years ago by the Boston Journal :—"■ It will not, 

 nay cannot, stop without a brake, as it is so fixed by 

 means of balls and arms that the descending side of the 

 wheel is perpetually farther from the centre of motion 

 than the opposition ascending." That is just our 

 machine, which, started, behaves exactly as Baron 

 Fischer describes, and raises a weight or does other 

 work. This machine is so constructed as to enable 

 complete examination to be made, and all possibility of 

 unfair play apparently detected, and yet it is a fraud,i 

 as was that of Mr. Orffyreus, which was afterwards 

 exposed. 



The conclusion we arrive at is, that it would have 

 been well for a great number of folks if the saying due to 

 Lucretius nearly 2000 years ago, " Ex nihilo nihil fit," - had 

 been appreciated and believed in by them. Thus the 

 waste of many lives of fruitless work might have been 

 avoided not only in the past but even in the present day, 

 for it is an astonishing fact that during the last twenty 

 years more than loo English and French patents for 

 perpetual motion machines have been obtained ; in one 

 case a gentleman not very far from Liverpool having 

 spent a very large sum on this profitable subject. The 

 lecturer stated that the other day he had a visit in propria 

 persona from an inventor of, and of course believer in, 

 such a machine, and after having for an hour and a half 

 discussed the question with this gentleman as calmly as 

 was possible under the circumstance?, he had grounds 

 for feeling that his lecture would be utterly incomplete if 

 he left the subject content with raising a laugh at the 

 whole matter : not so very long ago it was easy enough 

 to do this at the expense of railways and ocean steamers. 

 He would therefore briefly and simply, but he hoped 

 conclusively, state the general nature of the problem of 

 perpetual motion. Firstly, all machines such as we have 

 seen projected for creating power are as impossible as the 

 idea of creating matter. Secondly, many machines have 

 been projected for using sources of energy, such as heat, 

 as proposed by Desaguliers, and many others since, in 

 which known sources of power were to be rendered avail- 

 able. Such machines continue to work only while the 

 supply of energy lasts, therefore have not perpetual 

 motion. Thirdly, since, just as energy cannot be created, 

 so it cannot be destroyed, but can only take another 

 form, the question arises. Cannot the causes retarding a 

 body's motion be removed and the body go on moving 

 for ever ? In order to answer this reasonable question, 

 he proposed for a few moments to search for perpetual 

 motion. He then proceeded to illustrate, by means of a 

 variety of machines, what efforts had been made to reduce 

 frictional resistance. In one case, an inventor working on 

 the principle that in a wheel of half the size the friction 

 was reduced in the same proportion proposed to employ 

 two in this ratio ; no doubt with the same idea as the man 

 who, seeing a stove advertised to save half the usual 

 quantity of coal, bought two with the idea of saving 

 it all. Many people thought that, theoretically, friction 

 was entirely removed by means of rolling contact — 

 illustrated by roller and ball-bearings — but it was only 

 because the theory was imperfect, and the true nature 

 of rolling not understood ; and, by means of lantern 

 illustrations, the action of rolling surfaces was experi- 

 mentally examined. The irresistible conclusion must 

 be arrived at that friction is as universal in its action 



' Being driven by concealed cords passing down the hollow legs and 

 actuated by a youth beneath the platform. 



2 Propounded, indeed, in a different f rm by Dernocritus 400 years before 

 that. 



