What are some examples of perpetual motion machines that people have reported to have built or tried to build?
Answers
Mark Anthony Zimara, a 16th-century Italian scholar, proposed a self-blowing windmill.[5]
Various scholars in this period investigated the topic. In 1607 Cornelius Drebbel in "Wonder-vondt van de eeuwighe bewegingh" dedicated a Perpetuum motion machine to James I of England.[6] It was described by Heinrich Hiesserle von Chodaw in 1621.[7] Robert Boyle devised the "perpetual vase" ("perpetual goblet" or "hydrostatic paradox") which was discussed by Denis Papin in the Philosophical Transactions for 1685.[8] Johann Bernoulli proposed a fluid energy machine. In 1686, Georg Andreas Böckler, designed a "self operating" self-powered water mill and several perpetual motion machines using balls using variants of Archimedes' screws. In 1712, Johann Bessler (Orffyreus), investigated 300 different perpetual motion models and claimed he had the secret of perpetual motion.[citation needed]
In the 1760s, James Cox and John Joseph Merlin developed Cox's timepiece.[9] Cox claimed that the timepiece was a true perpetual motion machine, but as the device is powered by changes in atmospheric pressure via a mercury barometer, this is not the case.
In 1775, the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris made the statement that the Academy "will no longer accept or deal with proposals concerning perpetual motion."[citation needed]