“GO FOR EVER”

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 41, 11 May 1927, Page 10

“GO FOR EVER”

PERPETUAL MOTION DREAMS TRICKSTERS FOOL SCIENCE To attempt to produce power sufficient to drive a turbine by harnessing tropical seas sounds a hopeless undertaking. Two French scientists, however, believe this can be done, and that the necessary apparatus will work automatically once the initial impetus has been given. If these men succeed in putting their theory into practice they will have devised a perpetual motion machine that may revolutionise industry. The problem of constructing a machine possessing the power of supplying its own motion so that it will work for ever has attracted inventors for hundreds of years. Immense fortunes have been squandered in the quest and hundreds of grotesque machines produced, many the product of deliberate fraud. One machine, constructed by a man named Redheffer, was examined by Robert Fulton, a distinguished engineer. Suspecting that the contrivance was worked by a crank, Fulton seized the table on which it stood, discovering a cord leading through one leg and into the floor. In the back yard he found the motion, a white-headed beggar grinding at a crank. A Mouth-Organ Hoax A trickster named Keeley hoaxed scientists for 25 years with a perpetual motion machine which he pretended to start by playing a tune on a mouthorgan. Large sums were sunk in the contrivance, and Keeley netted a handsome income. After the inventor’s death the fraud was discovered. Wires which were thought to be solid were really hollow and the contrivance was worked by high-pressure hydraulic power.

An equally brazen deception was that of a cobbler named Spence, who duped Sir David Brewster, inventor of the kaleidoscope, with a magnetic contraption in which a pendulum was supposed to swing perpetually. Later, it transpired that the motion was produced by machinery hidden in the stand.

Incidents which would be amusing were they not spiced with pathos chequer the history of the search for perpetual motion. One man, whose machine ultimately declined to start, was so certain of the effectiveness of his contrivance that he feared he would be unable to stop it. Genuinely perturbed at the thought of starting a machine that might turn into an engine of destruction, he made a huge cloth with which to smother it if it got beyond control. Broken-hearted Inventor An old Somersetshire carpenter stinted himself for years to build a machine the secret of which he claimed had been revealed to him in a dream. On the day that the apparatus was to be set in motion the villagers feared it would break loose from its lashings. Not until they found the brokenhearted old man beside his useless contrivance were their fears assuaged. Napoleon I. is said to have carried a watch containing a lever so finely balanced that his motions while walking caused it to move up and down thus working a cog-wheel that wound the watch. This was not a true perpetual motion machine, however, and not until Lord Eayleigrh invented his radium clock over 13 years ago was anything approaching success achieved in this quest.

Discovering that the rays shot out from radium carry an electrical charge, which, under suitable conditions, will cause two gold leaves, contained in a glass tube from which all air has been expelled, to open and shut at regular intervals, Lord Rayleigh designed a clock to work perfectly without attention.