REMARKABLE BELL

Southland Times, Issue 21823, 28 September 1932, Page 11

REMARKABLE BELL

RINGS FOR 92 YEARS. Has the secret of perpetual motion been discovered?. Well, very nearly, says a London newspaper. At least, there is a bell in Oxford which has been ringing unceasingly for 92 years of its own accord, and looks good enough to go on for ever. The bell, which was made by a Charing Cross instrument maker in 1840, stands in the Clarendon Laboratory. It has never been repaired, or had a part replaced. It is worked by a “dry pile” battery consisting of 5000 small paper discs coated with zinc and copper, and encased in two glass tubes. A little metal gong is connected by wire to each tube, and between the gongs there hangs by a silk thread a small metal ball. As the battery charges each gong, the ball, attracted and repelled, swings to and fro, and the ringing can be heard seven feet away, though the apparatus is in a sealed glass case only ten inches high. That seems near enough to perpetual motion, but there is a “snag.”. “It is a wonderful thing,” said an official of the museum recently, “but naturally some part of it will wear out one day.”