(word processor parameters LM=1, RM=70, TM=2, BM=2) Taken from KeelyNet BBS (214) 324-3501 Sponsored by Vangard Sciences PO BOX 1031 Mesquite, TX 75150 PMOTION2.ASC This is a story from a book called FOIBLES AND FALLACIES OF SCIENCE, written by Mr.Daniel Hering in 1924. History relates several types of perpetual motion machines. The inventor's motives range from the ideal of pure invention to an attempt to defraud the public. Perpetual motion machines have been traced back for several hundred years. As of this date there has been no known account of a working perpetual motion machine which can be built and demonstrated by anyone other than the inventor. Although, we have heard many claims, we have yet to see a working model. This does not rule out the possibility that one could actually be made and practically demonstrated. The U.S.Patent Office receives about one hundred applications a year on perpetual motion machines but they are usually rejected by the office, without research into their workability. The keywords which bring about the rejection are perpetual motion. contributed by Ron Barker ----------------------------------------------------------------- THE REDHEFFER FIASCO ----------------------------------------------------------------- One American invention played a conspicuous if not very creditable part among perpetual motion machines. This was the invention of Charles Redheffer who exhibited it in Philadelphia in 1812 and 1813. Although it continued in operation apparently as long as its maker desired, it was perhaps not inherently more or less plausible than some others but it became une cause celebre. There were two circumstances connected with it that gave it celebrity, and entitle it to special notice: It created so much of a furore that the legislature of Pennsylvania thought it worth while to appoint a commission. This was a dignity to which such machines rarely attained. The other circumstance was the exceedingly clever way in which the fraudulent character of the machine was twice detected; once, by the eye, trained to observe the niceties of mechanical action; and once, by the ear, skilled to detect any peculiarity in the sound of moving machinery. At an appointed time the commission visited the house in which the machine was exhibited, on the Schuykill near Philadelphia, but arrived there only to find the house locked and the key missing. They did not get the opportunity to examine the machine and could only inspect it through a barred window. They saw a vertical shaft carrying a horizontal disc on which two inclined planes bore weighted cars that descended and rose at certain points in the rotation of the disc. This action of the planes and cars drove the shaft and disc which, in its turn, propelled further mechanism. The horizontal disc was a spur wheel and the teeth in its edge engaged with those of a smaller wheel and so, ostensibly, drove the rest of the machinery. One of the visiting commissioners, Mr. Nathan Sellers, took with him his young son, Coleman Sellers, who was a mechanical genius, and was keenly interested in the whole affair. Young Sellers saw something that escaped the others; his attention was caught by the appearance of the cogs in these two wheels. They were not much worn, only smoothed a little, but what little effect of rubbing together they did show was on the wrong side of the cogs! The faces of the cogs that will show wear depends upon which wheel is driving the other and, in this instance, the small wheel proved to be driving the larger. If the fact is the reverse of this, as it was represented to be, then to the mechanic whose eye detects this discrepancy, such a machine would appear to be running backwards. Although the source of propulsion was not discovered the deception was unmistakable. After returning home the young man told his father what he had discovered; the latter then employed a skilful mechanic to make a small model just like the Redheffer machine, but propelled by a clockwork mechanism concealed in an ornamental post of the framework. This mode exactly duplicated the behavior of the larger machine, to the astonishment and mystification of Redheffer himself to whom Sellers showed it. Conscious of his own trickery he was scared by the idea that another had actually achieved what he pretended to do, and proposed to buy out young Sellers, offering him a handsome share in the profits to be derived from the machine. (See Article on the Redheffer Perpetual Motion Machine, by Henry Morton, in the Journal of the Franklin Institute, Vol. 139, 1895, p.246.) An exposure like this which did not actually reveal the secret of the machine was not sufficient to check the interest of those who wanted to believe in it, and the exhibitions were continued. In 1813, soon after the fiasco in Philadelphia, this same machine or a duplicate of it was placed on exhibition in New York, where it was to meet its second reverse, The sequel is well told by Mr. C. D. Colden in his Life of Robert Fulton. " One of these perpetual motions," says Mr. Colden, speaking of the Redheffer machine, "commenced its career in this city" (New York), "in eighteen hundred and thirteen. Mr. Fulton was a perfect unbeliever in Redheffer's discovery, and although hundreds were daily paying their dollar to see the wonder, Mr. Fulton could not be prevailed upon for some time to follow the crowd. After a few days, however, he was induced by some of his friends to visit the machine. It was in an isolated house in the suburbs of the city. " In a very short time after Mr. Fulton had entered the room in which it was exhibited, he exclaimed, `why, this is a crank motion.' His ear enabled him to distinguish that the machine was moved by a crank, which always gives an unequal power, and therefore an unequal velocity in the course of each revolution; and a nice and practised ear may perceive that the sound is not uniform. If the machine had been kept in motion by what was its ostensible moving power, it must have had an equable rotary motion, and the sound would have been always the same. " After some little conversation with the showman, Mr. Fulton did not hesitate to declare, that the machine was an imposition, and to tell the gentleman that he was an impostor. " Notwithstanding the anger and bluster which these charges excited, he assured the company that the thing was a cheat, and that if they would support him in the attempt, he would detect it at the risk of paying any penalty if he failed. " Having obtained the assent of all who were present, he began by knocking away some very thin little pieces of lath, which appeared to be no part of the machinery, but to go from the frame of the machine to the wall of the room, merely to keep the corner posts of the machine steady. " It was found that a catgut string was led through one of these laths and the frame of he machine, to the head of the upright shaft of a principal wheel: that the catgut was conducted through the wall, and along the floors of the second story to a back cockloft, at a distance of a number of yards from the room which contained the machine, and there was found the moving power. This was a poor old wretch, with an immense beard and all the appearance of having suffered a long imprisonment; who when they broke in upon him, was unconscious of what had happened below, and who, while he was seated on a stool, gnawing a crust, was with one hand turning a crank. " The proprietor of the perpetual motion soon disappeared. The mob demolished his machine, the destruction of which immediately put a stop to that which had been, for so long a time, and to so much profit, exhibited in Philadelphia!" Besides the numberless variations in the methods of applying the principles of mechanics to secure a return of more power than is expended to secure a return of more power than is expended on the machine, consciously or unconsciously the principles of thermodynamics were invoked by inventors for the same purpose. The fallacy was the same. Only two generalizations are needed to comprise all known principles of heat in connection with work, and these are called the two laws of thermodynamics. They are to the effect that (1) a definite amount of heat has an exact equivalent in a definite amount of mechanical work, and either of these can be transformed into the other; (2) if by any means we cause heat to be transferred from some outside source; no self-acting machine will do it of itself. While the first of these laws is universally and unreservedly accepted, the second has always been a subject of dispute and still is so. The desire to get something for nothing and the belief in the possibility of dong so are too strong to yield to a dictum the demolition of which would seem to assure this possibility. To disprove a law by a process of reasoning is one thing, to violate it by a process of action is another. In theory the law has been controverted repeatedly, and disproved, at least in the opinion of the controverts, and if it could only be violated in practice the perpetual motion could be obtained ; the " working model " demanded by the Patent Office might be forthcoming. Submitted by: Ronald Barker, Vangard Sciences ***** SPECIAL NOTE ***** There are several other articles on the Keelynet BBS that you can download on perpetual motion. 1. KeelHoax.ASC = The Story of Keely being a Hoax. 2. Pmotion1.ASC = Overall history of Perpetual Motion. 3. Pmotion2.ASC = The Redhffer Fiasco Story. 4. Pmotion3.ASC = The Liquefaction of Air and The Hopes It Aroused: Perpetual Motion of The Second Kind. Jerry Decker and I will be working on some drawings that can be included into some of the articles. The current problem involves the time necessary to scan and edit the images as well as choosing the graphic formats (.PCX, .TIF, etc..) to use which will allow everyone to view them easily. Ron Barker L