GO FOR EVER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19846, 21 May 1927, Page 13 (Supplement)

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 Rcdhcffer, 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 Rayleigh 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. A TASK FOR YOUTH UNIFYING EUROPEAN INTERESTS “I have no quarrel with the younger generation. I think they will give the world just as efficient business men. just as fertile artists and inventors, just as courageous pioneers, and every bit as able statesmen as their forbears,” said Mr Otto Kahn, the American banker and international financier, in an interview with a London Press representative. “The younger generation,” he declared, “are opening their eyes wide. They are looking at things for thenselves. They are not taking everything for granted simply because it happens to exist. That desire to examine things and values and find out whether they are genuine and real or false and makebelieve, I consider to be a healthy and a hopeful characteristic. I am in full sympathy with it.’’ Mr Kahn said he welcomed this tendency of the younger generation to question and find out for themselves, because what was particularly required in Europe at the present time was that nations and classes and individuals should try to give one another opportunities of co-operation, not merely from a sense of virtue, but because it was to the advantage of everybody that they should understand and co-operate. “A United States of Europe has been a dream of many generations, ’ ’ he remarked. “It is easier to dream about than to realise, but it is worth working for, none the less. Infinite complications are in tho way. Here is a task for the younger generation. Let them unravel the knots, and, as far as is compatible with varying racial, political, social, and historical elements, establish a new and active inter-rela-tiohship between the people and markets of the Old World, as well as the Now. Who Does? “Still, in spite of what you slay, I think marriage is a pretty good institution.” “Yes, but who wants to live in an institution?”