The Seven Follies of Science [2nd ed.]: A popular account of the most famous scientific impossibilities and the attempts which have been made to solve them. To which is added a small budget of interesting paradoxes, illusions, and marvels — John Shaqi
The Seven Follies of Science [2nd ed.]: A popular account of the most famous scientific impossibilities and the attempts which have been made to solve them. To which is added a small budget of interesting paradoxes, illusions, and marvelsPhin, John
History
The Seven Follies of Science [2nd ed.]: A popular account of the most famous scientific impossibilities and the attempts which have been made to solve them. To which is added a small budget of interesting paradoxes, illusions, and marvels
Phin, John
Geometry -- Famous problems; Scientific recreations
The article, inspired no doubt by Sir William, then goes on to give
elaborate reasons for the success of the device, but all these are met
by the damning fact that the machine never worked. Some time afterwards
Sir William, at considerable expense, published a pamphlet in which he
explained and defended his views. If he had only had a working model
made and the thing had continued in motion for a few hours, he would
have silenced all objectors far more quickly and forcibly than he ever
could have done by any amount of argument.
And in his case there could have been no excuse for his not making a
small machine after the plans that he published and even patented. He
was wealthy and could have commanded the services of the best mechanics
in London, but no working model was ever made. Many inventors of
perpetual-motion machines offer their poverty as an excuse for not
making a model or working machine. Thus Dircks, in his "Perpetuum
Mobile" gives an account of "a mechanic, a model maker, who had a neat
brass model of a time-piece, in which were two steel balls A and B;--B
to fall into a semicircular gallery C, and be carried to the end D of a
straight trough DE; while A in its turn rolls to E, and so on
continuously; only the gallery C not being screwed in its place, we are
desired to take the will for the deed, until twenty shillings be raised
to complete this part of the work!"
And Mr. Dircks also quotes from the "Builder" of June, 1847: "This vain
delusion, if not still in force, is at least as standing a fallacy as
ever. Joseph Hutt, a frame-work knitter, in the neighborhood of the
enlightened town of Hinckley, professes to have discovered it [perpetual
motion] and only wants twenty pounds, as usual, to set it agoing."
The following rather curious arrangement was described in "The
Mechanic's Magazine" for 1825.
"I beg leave to offer the prefixed device. The point at which, like all
the rest, it fails, I confess I did not (as I do now) plainly perceive
at once, although it is certainly very obvious. The original idea was
this--to enable a body which would float in a heavy medium and sink in
a lighter one, to pass successively through the one to the other, the
continuation of which would be the end in view. To say that valves
cannot be made to act as proposed will not be to show the _rationale_
(if I may so say) upon which the idea is fallacious."
The figure is supposed to be tubular, and made of glass, for the purpose
of seeing the action of the balls inside, which float or fall as they
travel from air through water and from water through air. The foot is
supposed to be placed in water, but it would answer the same purpose if
the bottom were closed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account