It has not only pleased this mighty Prince to protect me against
my numerous enemies, but also to give me house-room in his
princely Castle of Weissenstein, near Cassel; to name me one of
his most honored servants, and restore me in a measure all the
honor and means that I had lost in my native country; wishing
no doubt to give to Hessin Cassel the high honor which belonged
to Saxony by right. In gratitude for all these gracious acts, I
consented to give another example of my Perpetuum Mobile machine.
I put all in fresh order, and began work in all possible haste,
doing everything in the manner of those I had already made and
destroyed, with only a few changes in the dimensions of the
so-named turning-wheel. For as a grindstone may be called a
wheel, so may the principal part of my machine be named. The
outward part of this wheel is drawn over or covered with waxed
linen in the form of a drum. This cylindrical basis was 12
Rhenish feet in diameter, the thickness from 15 to 18 inches,
the middle axle 6 feet long and 8 inches in thickness. It is
supported in its movement on two pointed steel balance-pegs,
each 1 inch thick; and the wheel is vertically suspended. The
movement is modified by two pendulums, as shown in the engraving
at the end of this book. The inward structure of the wheel is of
a nature according to the laws of mechanical perpetual motion,
so arranged that by disposed weights once in rotation they
gain force from their own swinging, and must continue their
movement as long as their structure does not lose its position
and arrangement. Unlike all other automata, such as clocks or
springs or other hanging weights which require winding up or
whose duration depends on the chain which attaches them, on the
contrary, these weights are the essential parts and constitute
perpetuum mobile itself; as from them is received the universal
movement which they must exercise so long as they remain out of
the center of gravity; and when they come to be placed together,
and so arranged one against another that they can never obtain
equilibrium, or the _punctum quietus_ which they unceasingly seek
in their wonderous speedy flight, one or other of them must apply
its weight vertically to the axis, which in its turn will also
move.
The author and inventor then suggests the following uses of his
machine: "raising weights, raising stampers, water," etc. He criticises
all critics of his scheme and denounces them as cunning rogues, and
fools who are contemptibly endeavoring to overthrow an incontestable
fact. He makes a quadrupled dedication of his device:
1. To God,
2. To the Public in General,
3. To Men of Learning,
4. To Himself as Discoverer,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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