This is in the interests of trying to correct misleading information relating to Bessler/Orffyreus
Since posting information about Floriano's website at www.orffyreus.it, I've received a number of emails questioning the sketch which, according to him, was done by professor Willem 's Gravesande, and sent to Sir Isaac Newton. This sketch was actually drawn by Sir Isaac himself. about 24 years before Gravesande was born! In my first book about Bessler (Perpetual Motion, An Ancient Mystery Solved?) I included the drawing, shown below, because it indicated that Newton considered that a perpetual motion machine could be possible when interacting with gravity.
Since posting information about Floriano's website at www.orffyreus.it, I've received a number of emails questioning the sketch which, according to him, was done by professor Willem 's Gravesande, and sent to Sir Isaac Newton. This sketch was actually drawn by Sir Isaac himself. about 24 years before Gravesande was born! In my first book about Bessler (Perpetual Motion, An Ancient Mystery Solved?) I included the drawing, shown below, because it indicated that Newton considered that a perpetual motion machine could be possible when interacting with gravity.
I wrote that, 'It is a little known fact that in his early notebooks under the heading "Quaestiones"[sic] Newton speculates that gravity (heaviness) is caused by the descent of a subtle matter which strikes all bodies and carries them down. "Whither ye rays of gravity may bee stopped by reflecting or refracting ye, if so a perpetual motion may bee made one of these two ways." Adjacent to these words, Newton added two sketches of perpetual motion powered by the "flux of the gravitational stream".
In full he wrote,
"Try whither the weight of a body may be altered by heate or cold, by dilatation or condensition, beating , poudering, transfering to severall places or severall heights or placing a hot or heavy body over it or under it or by magnetisme whither leade or its dust spread abroade, whither a plate flat ways or edg ways in heaviest, whither the rays of gravity may bee stopped by refecting or refracting them, if so a perpetuall motion may bee made one of these two ways.
The gravity of bodys is as their solidity, because all body{s} descend equall spaces in equal {times} consideration being had to the Resistance of the aire &c"
Now people may well have come to the conclusion that such machines are impossible but it seemed to me then and I remain convinced of it, that if Newton himself considered it possible and actually drew his ideas on paper why should subsequent thinkers dismiss it?
Now people may well have come to the conclusion that such machines are impossible but it seemed to me then and I remain convinced of it, that if Newton himself considered it possible and actually drew his ideas on paper why should subsequent thinkers dismiss it?
In the lower half of the above drawing, Newton also shows his thoughts on using magnets too.
"Atraction Magneticall
1 The motion of any magneticall ray may bee knowne by attracting a needle in a corke on water.
2 Whither a magneticall pendulum is perpendicular to the Horizon or not, & whither iron is heaviest when impregnated, or when the north pole or southpole is upmost. Coroll. A perpetuall motion .
3 Whither magneticall rays will blow a candle move a red hot copper or iron needle, or passe through a red hot plate of copper or iron
4 A perpetuall motion .
5 Whither a loadestone will not turne around a red hot iron fashioned like wind mill sailes as the wind doth them. Perhaps cold iron may reflect the magn: rays with that pole which shuns the lodestone."
He never published an opinion later on whether he believed such devices were possible or not.
For the modern rendering of Newton's Quaestions" notebook see http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00092
JC
