I wonder how many of us engaged in the search for the solution to Bessler’s wheel, - or, come to that, the solution to creating a perpetual motion machine - have an idea or dream, of what their lives might be like if and when they succeed? Is it fame and fortune, or the supreme pleasure gained from seeing the so-called experts who dismissed our ideas from the outset, proven utterly and disastrously wrong? Maybe just a simple acknowledgement that you did it; or perhaps the earnest hope that it would provide a potential solution to the climate-warming proponents.
Many people plan to patent the design, but not I, because the cost of maintaining intellectual copyright would be an onerous and expensive task. There is another aspect to it that may or may not become a problem for a would-be patentee.
It has been suggested that Bessler discovered the only configuration that could produce a continuously rotating gravity-enabled wheel. If, as has been suggested by many people, including myself, that Bessler embedded the design of his wheel in plain sight in some drawings he left for us, good enough for someone with a discerning mind to find and copy, then surely if true, then any working device produced in the near future would have a similar configuration to Bessler’s. Seeing as Bessler published the design, albeit disguised, more than 300 years ago, would that preclude the granting of a patent?
JC
If a patent examiner rejects your application by pointing at Bessler's Apologia or his codes, your patent attorney would argue:
ReplyDelete"Bessler’s drawings have been public for 300 years. During that time, thousands of people—including top physicists and engineers—have looked at them, and not a single person successfully built a working device. Therefore, Bessler's drawings are not 'enabling.' My client is the first person to provide the actual, specific, working engineering required to make this physics-defying device function."
Because you actually made it work, you must have solved the specific mechanical tolerances, weight distributions, or magnetic/gravitational triggers that Bessler kept hidden. Those specific solutions are what you would patent, not the vague concept of "a gravity wheel."
I looked at that "dustpan magnetic pm machine" in the last blog's comments. It certainly looks like a runner although not in wheel form. How did it affect it's inventor's life?
ReplyDeleteDid he get rich off of it? No. In three years he only got seven thousand views of it which, for a monetized channel, is negligible for producing serious ad revenue. Did he sell plans, kits, or completed ones to rake in some profits? No. His video was just another one of the hundreds uploaded to youtube per MINUTE! Did the world rush to build it and use it to generate electrical power? No (although maybe a few lurkers on this blog bought the parts and are trying to build one). His video was uploaded three years ago. Does anybody even know the inventor's name? No. What has come of it? So far NOTHING! My prediction is that is what will mostly happen to those trying to solve the Bessler wheel mystery. If by some miracle anyone is actually successful, a few will say "How interesting. It might make a nice toy for kids and bored executives to play with." and then, even if it is mentioned on some nightly news show, the world will quickly get on to the next big international news story. Will all of the scientists be astonished and rush to build them? Have any of them rushed to build that dustpan gadget? No. The majority of them will ignore it saying it's either a hoax or there is some simple explanation for it that they can't be bothered to try to find and get back to whatever particular trivial research that they are involved in.
I think that people involved in pm research have a grossly inflated view of how important what they are looking for will actually be. Unless they can find devices that can reliably compete watt for watt with the current energy sources we have and are now using, governments and the corporate world won't invest a penny in it. Without such investment all that the inventor can look forward to is a patent somewhere with his name on it and maybe selling it to some Chinese toy manufacturer if he's lucky and one of them that has not already started mass producing and selling it without giving him a penny for it!
I'm sure my analysis will depress a lot of pm chasers, but it is the truth as far as I see it. Unfortunately, 99.9999% of the efforts they are making or ever will make to achieve overbalanced wheel type pm will be nothing more than a total waste of their time, effort, and money. If they are so obsessed with finally achieving pm, they might do far better trying to build that dustpan thing from the last blog. Maybe once they do that and get it working reliably, it can be used to produce some sort of rotary motion and if the device is big enough, maybe it could run a small electric generator. That MIGHT actually get it a second look from governments, scientists, and corporations...no guarantee though...🤔
"I'm sure my analysis will depress a lot of pm chasers..."
DeleteYou're right. It makes the search for pm sound as hopeless as trying to count all of the grains of sand on all of the beaches of the world! But, it also makes me appreciate the frustration Bessler had to endure for a decade and how elated he must have been when he realized all of his suffering had finally led to a runner. I can only imagine what was going through his mind for the first hour after his prototype started and continued moving. He must have felt higher than he ever had. Of course he considered it a true miracle from God...anybody would have. But he was actually just a phenomenally luck man...someone who comes along maybe once every few centuries. Thinking one is certain to be as lucky as he was is not realistic thinking...it is nearly pure fantasizing. 💭🦄
John wrote "Seeing as Bessler published the design, albeit disguised, more than 300 years ago, would that preclude the granting of a patent?"
ReplyDeleteIn order to be considered as "prior art" which cannot be patented, Bessler's design could not have been published in the form of hidden and nearly impossible to decipher clues which many here assume he actually did. He would have had to have published at least one easily recognized drawing of the design which he did not do. However, if someone currently has successfully decoded his clues and published a design based on them, than that would immediately make it prior art which cannot be published. That brings us to the Ken B design. He claims it is not just similar, but is actually exactly the same as the one Bessler used and that his version of it comes directly from many clues hidden in the various Bessler drawings that he successfully decoded. That's a rather bold claim to make. If he is right, then his publication of it makes it prior art which cannot now be patented. Why did he not patent it himself? That's a good question and maybe the real reason, aside from the discouraging bother and expense of the process, is that he did not feel it would be ethical to patent another inventor's invention? If I was in the same situation I would probably do the same thing. To feel like my patent was truly valid and the invention mine alone, it would have to be some design neither I nor anyone else had ever seen before. Considering how many different overbalanced pm wheel designs one can easily find online nowadays, that's a difficult requirement to meet.
"Considering how many different overbalanced pm wheel designs one can easily find online nowadays, that's a difficult requirement to meet."
DeleteHe uses those Y shaped levers in his version of the Bessler pm wheel and to me they certainly do look unique. I've seen many overbalanced wheel designs over the years but none with that particular shape to their levers.
If Bessler had not removed and destroyed the drawings in MT that showed how his wheels worked, I wonder where we'd all be right now. This blog would probably not exist and we'd all be busy riding around in cars powered by some advanced version of his wheels that maybe used our super powerful magnets instead of lead weights. EV's? Who would need them? We'd have self powered cars that would never need to go to a gas station again except maybe for a new set of tires. 🚗🧲🥰
With all of the CO2 not coming out of hundreds of millions of cars worldwide everyday, maybe the UK government would start letting their citizens use air conditioning during heatwaves? 🥵🆒😃
@anon 07:37.
DeleteIf someone could make an MV or "Magnetic Vehicle" like you suggest, then it should be possible to make an air conditioner that are also is self powered using some sort of magnetic motor driving its compressor. That way the UK's sweating masses can finally stay cool during heatwaves and that should reduce the number of fatalities they are experiencing. Also, it might even help them achieve their dream of Net Zero by 2050 or maybe a little earlier!
(This a two part comment because of its length)
ReplyDeleteAnon 16:44 wrote "If someone could make an MV or "Magnetic Vehicle" like you suggest, then..."
Actually, that's ALREADY been done!
In the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica they mention a Scottish shoemaker from Linlithgow named John Spence. He was born in 1798 and became obsessed with magnets as a child. Although lacking formal education, he claimed he had found a gummy black substance that could block magnetic fields and around the year 1818 he used it to regularly construct small perpetually moving devices such as rocking beams, pendulums, and even wheels. These were being bought by local shopkeepers to put into their windows to attract customers.
As the story goes, he eventually managed to make a permanent magnet motor powerful enough to drive a small, three wheel carriage equipped with a brake and tiller type steering mechanism on its single front wheel. Some big professors at Edinburgh University heard about his invention and politely invited him to their campus to demonstrate it to them. They were all quite sure he was just another clever hoaxer who they would take much delight in quickly exposing as such.
On the appointed day, Spence arrived at the university along with his little self powered car that he carried to the school on a horse drawn cart. It was no bigger than Ford's first four wheel car which was the 1896 "Quadricycle" that could carry two people and was powered by a small 4 horsepower, two cylinder internal combustion engine. Spence invited each of the big professors, one at a time, to take a short ride with him on his little permanent magnet motor powered car around the university campus which they all did. The vehicle's top speed was only about five miles per hour.
When his demonstration was completed, the professors were stunned and demanded that he explain to them the details of his little car's magnetic motor. Spence did the best he could to explain it to them, but, not being educated, he had made up his own technical terms to explain how it worked. While they made perfect sense to him, the professors didn't have any idea of what he was taking about! He tried making sketches for them, but his artistic abilities left much to be desired and they conveyed no useful information to the professors.
(This is the second part)
DeleteThey then begged him to leave the little vehicle with them for analysis, but he refused because it was the only one he had and had taken him years to construct. By the end of the day he left and they never saw him again.
The exact date of John Spence's death is unknown but may have been in the 1870's. However, a few years before his death he did will some of his papers, drawings, and a small box to a much younger acquaintance of his who had impressed Spence with his keen interest in magnets. That person just put them all into an old chest in a closet in his home and basically forgot about them for the next twenty years.
One day, he was cleaning out the closet and decided to open the chest. He found Spence's old letters and drawing in it along with the little box which had never been opened because its lid had been closed and kept shut with several wax seals. He then decided to scrape off the seals and finally open the little box in case it contained something of value like gold coins or jewelry.
When it was opened it contained an amazing little device. It was the brass balance wheel from a old pocket watch which had two small iron nails attached to it that had their heads cut off and both of their other ends sharpened to points and pointing outward from the center of the balance wheel in opposite directions. The balance wheel itself was mounted between two small horseshoe shaped magnets and each of them had a small block of Spence's secret formula black substance between and covering their pole faces.
The balance wheel was not stationary though. It was in a state of high speed rotation, but could be easily stopped by touching it with a finger. When released it would immediately speed up again. Spence's acquaintance carefully inspected the pivots of the balance wheel that were held in jewel bearings which looked like genuine rubies. The holes in the jewels were worn enough so that the balance wheel could wobble slightly when its edge was touched while it was not in rotation. It was obvious this could only have happened if the balance wheel had been spinning continuously for decades!
I have done much research into the Spence story and am convinced it actually happened as I have described above. Unfortunately, no one knows what happened to his magnetically powered car or that little device he bequeathed to his acquaintance. After much searching, I finally found what may be an accurate drawing of the device which you can view here:
https://i.postimg.cc/B6jy0346/spence-magnet-motor.jpg
Now all we have to do is figure out the secret formula of Spence's magnetic field blocking substance and we can then begin to duplicate his various pm inventions!
Awesome story! It shows what can be achieved by a dedicated amateur. I'd never heard of him before, but I suspect if he'd lived a century earlier in Saxony he and Bessler would have been the best of buddies! ☺️
DeleteI studied that drawing that anon 00:18 showed us and I think Spence's little inheritance for his friend was actually a nice example of a working monopole magnetic motor. Monopoles are theoretically possible, but none have been found in nature. What Spence did was simulate them with the magnetized points on those little iron nails he attached to the brass balance wheel in his pm motor. Even though his black stuff extinguished the magnetic fields between the opposite poles of the SAME magnet, it would have permitted weak magnetic fields to exist between the opposite poles of the two facing horseshoe magnets. That meant for about 180° of each full rotation of the balance wheel, its two little nail point monopoles found themselves in weak, but somewhat uniform magnetic fields that rapidly pushed them from a horseshoe magnet's north pole over to the opposite horseshoe magnet's south pole. The momentum developed from that torque would keep the balance wheel spinning and when its two nail points were nearest the pieces of the black stuff placed between the poles of each magnet, there was no magnetic field there and so the two nails felt no torque on them that would slow the spin of the balance wheel. The balance wheel's maximum speed would mostly have been limited by the air drag working on the moving nails and to a lesser amount by the balance wheel staff's end pivots which were probably well lubricated (but any lube would have broken down after after two decades). That drag have been low so the maximum balance wheel spin speed would have been high like hundreds of rpm's.
DeleteI'm a really bad artist, but I took the drawing and used ms paint to add some colored lines to it to show how the various magnetic fields would have interacted with each other. Red color indicates repulsive forces at work and blue color indicates attractive forces at work.
https://postimg.cc/Th9LzWt4
I think John Spence had some real working pm devices. I agree that anyone trying to duplicate his inventions needs to find out what his secret formula was for that black stuff he used, but good luck with something like that. It's like the equivalent of trying to find out what was in those pages that Bessler removed from MT and destroyed!
Yes, it certainly is an awesome story and sounds authentic to me. I'm fascinated by the mention of that "magnetic blocking substance". Find that and one should indeed be able to duplicate Spence' pm inventions including his self-propelled car.
DeleteFrom reading the account I get the feeling that Spence may have stumbled upon a very advanced form of what is currently referred to as "magnetic cloaking". This uses the newly developing nanotechnology and tries to neutralize magnetic fields using specially engineered materials at the microscopic level. Unfortunately, so far the results have not been that impressive. I think Spence somehow managed to do it by just using some common materials of his age.
If I had to guess how he made his secret substance, I think he would have used a simple blend of diamagnetic elements. These, when penetrated by an external magnetic field respond by creating an identical magnetic field with reversed polarity. That then neutralizes any external magnetic field penetrating the blend of diamagnetic elements and can do so without violating Maxwell's Laws because the external magnetic field is actually neutralized along its entire path through space including through the inside of its permanent magnet source (or inside of the core of its electromagnet source). You cannot just cut off a magnetic field abruptly at some point in space which is what many looking for magnetic "shields" are trying to do without success.
What materials would an early 19th century shoemaker like Spence have had access to and used? My guess here is that he would probably have used the two best diamagnetic materials ever discovered: the metal bismuth and a nonmetallic form of carbon called graphite. He would have ground them into a fine dust and then embedded them in some sort of inert, nonmagnetic binder material. The description of his "black gummy substance" makes me think he might have used simple beeswax as a binder. It is amber to brown in color when unprocessed and, with the addition of the bismuth and graphite dust, would have appeared black in color. He could have used the heat of his palms to soften it and then finger pressure to mold small putty-like pieces of it into whatever shapes he needed for his pm inventions. Upon cooling it would have hardened somewhat to retain its new shape. However, if I'm right about his secret formula, then anybody trying to duplicate it will have to experiment with a lot of mixtures of bismuth and graphite until he finds the one that works best.
Anyway, thanks anon 00:15 / 00:18 for taking the time to share this most interesting story with us. I enjoyed reading it.👍👍👍
Amazing how you guys have, in only a day's time, reverse engineered a pm magnet motor that we aren't even completely sure ever existed! You should all be working for NASA or the DOE! 😮
DeleteMy guess would be that for his magnetic pm motor car, Spence would have used a motor that was very simple yet rugged in construction. It would have had an outer cylindrical steel stator firmly bolted to the car's chassis with long steel bar magnets attached lengthwise with bolts to its inner surface. Their inner facing edges would all have been the same polarity. Near them would be the rotor, another steel cylinder with another set of long steel bar magnets attached with bolts to it lengthwise with their outer facing edges all having the same polarity. The magnetized edges of the sets of stator and rotor permanent magnets might only be separated from each other by less than an inch! The two polarities nearby bar magnets could have been either N/S or N/N or S/S. It does not make any difference as long as the result was to produce a strong torque on the rotor and its external bearing mounted shaft that would drive both of the vehicle's rear wheels through a differential gear so they could turn at different speeds when the car went around a corner.
DeleteThis is where his revolutionary black gummy magnetic field neutralizing substance would be critical to making such a magnetic motor work. By carefully coating only one long edge of each of the bolted on bar magnets with the substance, Spence could create a situation were the rotor was always being pulled or pushed in only one rotational direction. It would be a rotary perpetual motion machine with a high power output. I think for a small three wheel car, maybe 10 horsepower would be enough to let it hit 5 mph.
He would only have to equip his car with two controls. One would be a friction type brake that could, when fully engaged, completely stop the magnetic motor's rotor shaft from turning and act like an "off" switch. It would serve the same purpose as the rope tethers we see in the Bessler drawings that he used to keep his one direction wheels from constantly running. When the brake was completely disengaged, the car would accelerate up to a cruising speed of 5 mph and stay at that speed. When partially engaged, the brake would drag and the car's speed would drop to a lower value. Without a transmission, he would have no reverse gear which could be a problem if he had to back up. But, a three wheel vehicle could have a nearly zero turn radius, so that a reverse gear might not be necessary. Also, without a transmission with a low gear in it, climbing a hill would be a problem. If the grade was too steep, the vehicle would not be able to climb it even at low speed. Finally, he would need to steer his car. I prefer a steering wheel, but a steering tiller can work as well.
One problem with early cars like these is that they tended to have open passenger sections that exposed drivers to bad weather such as rain, cold wind, snow, and hot sun. Also, there was no protection in case the car rolled over during a too sharp turn and the driver could only hope to be thrown clear enough so that the vehicle did not roll on top of him! There is more danger of such a rollover with a three wheel vehicle than with a four wheel one.
I think I'd have an easier time believing this "story" about John Spence if there was a surviving one of those pm store window displays that he supposedly made for shopkeepers in Scotland. If they existed and were so amazing, one would think one of those shopkeepers would have kept his as a novelty and passed it down from generation to generation. But, where are they? Did they all eventually fall apart and get dumped out with the trash?
DeleteOf course, we cannot prove that one of them does not still exist somewhere. Maybe its remains are sitting in someone's attic right now and it doesn't work because some part in it failed after working for years? Maybe we could put an ads on the internet, radio, and tv in Scotland offering a big $$$ reward for anyone who searched his attic or basement and found one of the devices? I'm sure a lot of fake ones would be produced by scammers so we'd have to carefully analyze any to see if could be made to work again with a small repair. If it still had some of that black gummy stuff on it that blocks magnetic fields, we could have it chemically analyzed to find out what its exact composition was.
I also found the Spence history interesting especially that part about his magnetic pm motor powered three wheel car. It rang a bell in my mind.
DeleteI spent years collecting vintage photos of later half 19th century inventions that also include the inventor and now have over 400 of them in a single folder. I was sure one of them showed a car with only three wheels although the few car photos I have usually show flimsy four wheel vehicles that look more like oversized bicycles than modern cars. So it was time for me to start looking for it.
I got lucky and found it after only looking at the first hundred photos. Here it is:
https://i.postimg.cc/dtx9xXSf/Scottish-invention-1866.png
All that my file for the photo says is "Scottish invention 1866" and I don't recall the source. I cannot say for sure that it shows Spence and his three wheel pm car, but the car certainly looks like it matches the description that anon 00:15 gave us. It's a two seater (as long as the driver is not too fat!), has three wheels, and some sort of tiller type steering. The driver has his hand on a rod that might be a brake for the front wheel or maybe a throttle for a magnetic motor? The driver looks like a man in his 60's which would be about the right age of Spence if he died in the 1870's.
The car in my photo cannot be a gasoline engine powered car because the first one did not appear until 1886, twenty years later, that was constructed by Carl Benz and which coincidentally also had three wheels. The car in the photo also cannot be a battery powered electric motor car because the first practical one did not appear until 1888 when a German inventor named Andreas Flocken built one. So what does that leave for a three wheel vehicle that was invented in or before the year 1866 in Scotland? Could it be Spence's self-powered magnet motor car?
Omg! What else could it be, anon 22:32? Built in Scotland in 1866 and with three wheels. That has to be a genuine photo of the Spence magnet powered automobile. He must have known there was someone trying to photograph him so he applied the brake with that handle he's holding to come to a stop for a few seconds. I bet he was riding all around that town that day and the people on the sidewalks were amazed at the sight. He has a kind of proud look on his face. He knows he has something very unusual. The small crowd to his left seems to looking on in amazement at a man riding along in a vehicle not being pulled by an animal. The younger woman all the way on the left looks like she's frightened by the sight. Unlike a petrol powdered car, Spence's vehicle would have been completely silent in operation.
DeleteThanks so much for making this rare photo available to us! I have downloaded it and will keep a copy of it in my own image file folder for this blog.
I hate to put a damper on everyone's excitement over this photo, but something about it does not look right to me. I can see the tiller, but how does it turn that large front wheel to steer the car? Is it supposed to have a pinion gear at the bottom that moves a rack that has the fork for the front wheel attached to it? Also that brake handle and its rod that he grasps in his right hand. How is that supposed to work? Maybe it forces a disc against the front wheel's hub or pushes that thing on top of the wheel down to apply drag to the tire? I can't prove this is some sort of AI fake, but I am suspicious that it might be.
DeleteI also go along with the photo being some sort of fake. To me, aside from the mechanical issues anon 11:35 mentioned, it seems like there is a perspective problem with the photo. Look at the driver sitting on the car in the foreground. Next look at the small crowd of onlookers to his left. The driver and his car seem to me to be too large for their distance from the crowd. Of course, even if the photo is a fake that does not necessarily mean that Spence's pm magnet motor car never existed or worked. Maybe someone could contact Edinburgh University and see if they have any record of any of their professors being involved with Spence during the 19th century. Of course it's possible that it was some sort of private meeting and they never recorded the results for some reason. Perhaps they kept quiet about it because they were afraid of being ridiculed by their fellow scientists?
DeleteThe bottom line is that it's hard to determine what the actual truth is of the Spence "story". That is, what is true and happened and what is just a myth and never happened as described. He no doubt was an actual person and he was known as someone who CLAIMED to be making various types of working pm devices, but that is about all we know for sure. As with Bessler, we don't have a single surviving device that we can example and verify could work.
Personally, I want the entire story to be true because it would spur people to try to duplicate what Spence is supposed to have invented. Unfortunately, wishful thinking cannot turn fiction into reality as most modern pm chasers eventually have to acknowledge.
I also think that Spence car photo is a fake. If you look at the front wheel there doesn't seem to be any way to steer it. It looks like its fork is bolted right to the front end of the chassis. It might have been possible to steer the car by twisting the independent axles of the two rear wheels, but that would be a highly unusual design in one of these early cars and would greatly complicate the transmission of power to those rear wheels. I also agree that the driver of the tricycle car seems disproportionately too large compared to the group of people watching him from the nearby sidewalk. Sizing errors like this are common in AI fake photos.
DeleteFirst part
ReplyDeleteI'm no expert on vintage automobiles or how photos can be faked with AI, but I do believe that John Spence was making actual working pm machines and the key to his success was that mysterious magnetic field blocking or neutralizing substance that he developed. Could it be the simple blend of diamagnetic elements that anon 23:24 thinks he used. I guess they are certainly a good place to start looking for anyone interested in trying to duplicate Spence's pm devices.
I have been following the comments here about him with much interest and did some of my own research on the subject. I found a design for a wheel type pm machine that was published in 1799. Since Spence started building and selling his shop window attention getters around 1818, he most likely would have seen that earlier design from 1799 that I found and I believe he used a variation of it to make his rotary pm shop window displays. If he was born in 1798, he would have been about 20 years old when he found his secret compound that allowed him to achieve pm while Bessler was about 32 years old when he finally found success in 1711 or 1712.
From Spence's story it sounds like he started with simple rocking beams, then went on to swinging pendulums, then to wheels, and then was finally able to scale one up to produce enough torque to power a small tricycle automobile.
So what I've done is take that drawing I found for that 1799 magnetic pm wheel that may have influence Spence and tried to figure out how he would have modified it using his secret black substance to turn it into a runner. Here's what I came up with:
https://i.postimg.cc/QtZ3WWVQ/Window-Display-Device.jpg
How it works is obvious. It uses six bar magnets which would all be about the same length. The ends of each are either N for north or S for south. The four magnets attached to the wheel, which is like a miniature Ferris wheel, have all of their north pole ends pointing away from the axle and all of their south pole ends pointing toward the axle.
There are two stator magnets attached to the device's base which should be a nonmagnetic material like wood. Their two north poles point up.
Notice the placement of the three rectangular blocks of Spence's secret black substance. They only allow some of the magnetic fields from the upright magnets to exist in certain places in the space between the two magnets which is occupied by the wheel with the other four magnets attached to it.
Brad
Second part
DeleteConstant pm rotation of the wheel takes place because the four north poles of the wheel magnets are only allowed to feel repulsive forces pushing on them from the north poles of the two upright magnets.
How big was this device? In the original 1799 drawing I found there is no size given, but it did include that hand with the pointing index finger which I included in my drawing. If we assume the wrist to finger tip distance was 6 inches, then the wheel diameter would have been about 18 inches. If the wheel was mounted on a 2 inch thick wooden base with a clearance between the bottom of the wheel and the base of 2 inches and the base was placed on the shelf of a shop window, then the top of the wheel might have stood about 22 inches high off of the shelf. It would have stood even higher if the shop keeper placed the device's bas on a small table so his customers could see that there was nothing hidden under it to keep the wheel turning.
I can imagine small crowds of customers gathering and starring in through the shop's window and discussing what they were seeing. Some would claim it had to be a hoax while others would proclaim it genuine. Meanwhile, the happy store owner might have placed signs in the window advertising his latest items on sale. As the customers looked at the amazing little wheel, they would also be able to see into the shop at other items that were on sale. Visitors into the shop would mean more sales and more profits for the happy shop owner!
As news of the attraction caused by the device spread, other shop owners would have been contacting Spence to purchase one for their shops. Maybe he even had a price range. The cheapest device would be a simple rocking beam. The next higher priced device would be the constantly swinging pendulum. His most expensive one would be the constantly turning pm wheel. I'm not sure how skilled a craftsman he was, but I can imagine him making an elaborate version of the pm wheel that could animate small scenes.
I saw such an animated display device a few years ago that was for sale at Christmas time. It was a miniature frozen lake surrounded by trees and some small buildings, including a church, all with lights in their windows. On the lake several little figures were smoothly and mysteriously skating around in circles. The trees and ground around the lake had a white material sprayed onto them to look like it had just snowed.
How did it work? The "frozen lake" was actually just a sheet of white glass. The little skaters were mounted on little bar magnets that were attracted to similar magnets under the "lake" which were, in turn, attached to plastic gears that were all interconnected to each other and turned by a single little motor. This allowed the skaters to move in circles independently of each other. IIRC, you could also push a button on it and it would play various Christmas carols!
I'm sure that Spence's pm wheel powered animated displays would not have been so elaborate as the one I saw (and wish now that I had bought since it was made in China and not that expensive!), but even if his were very simple they would have fascinated people in the early half of the 19th century. Sadly, there is so much we do not know with certainty about what creative inventions were made and lost in that century and even more so for earlier centuries...
Brad
Hi, Brad. Maybe what you saw was this thing?
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk24X1HTDOo
If Spence made something like this it would probably have been much bigger and of course would not have any electric lighting. Small alcohol lamps could have been put into the buildings to light up their windows, but that might be a fire hazard most shop owners would not risk.
@Brad
DeleteYou've found the missing hand from the MT Toy Page!
Just kidding. You gave us a very interesting two part comment and I agree with most of it. I did an image search and found the invention drawing from 1799 that you modified and which you think inspired Spence. Seems possible to me. Here's a link to that drawing:
https://todayinsci.com/Books/MechApp/chap23/968-AlternateMagnet.jpg
It appears in this book: Gardner D. Hiscox, M.E., Mechanical Appliances and Novelties of Construction (1927), Norman W. Henley Publ. Co., page 189. Unfortunately, he neglected to tell us who the inventor was!
You guys certainly make all of those marvelous pm devices that Spence supposedly created sound so real. My simple question is if they were real then why do we not have any of them today? Were they all tossed in the garbage when they finally broke down? Did the capitalists who were making big money off of coal decide to buy them all up and make sure no more were made? Did they hire an assassin to eliminate Spence and destroy his remaining supply of the black goo needed to make a pm machine work? Or was he just another delusional pm chasing shoemaker who was using fake gadgets to scam shopkeepers out of some money? That would seem impossible to do with a very simple device with all of its internal parts easy to view. I wish we had some more accurate information about Spence other than a story about him that might be more myth than history. I think if we check the history of pm we'd find that there were dozens maybe even hundreds of other guys just like Spence. All produced some pm gadget that witnesses claimed worked, but for one reason or another the inventor and his invention suddenly disappeared from the scene.
DeleteConsider the case of that retired Turkish policeman named Muammer Yildiz. He demonstrated a permanent magnet motor at Tufts University in the Netherlands in 2010 that took him a decade to refine and that once started could output hundreds of watts of power. It ran for about 30 minutes after which he partially disassembled it and handed the parts around to the professors and students there who witnessed the amazing device in action. He had plans to set up a factory to make generators using them that could produce up to 5,000 watts so a homeowner could put one in his cellar, plug it into any 220 vac outlet, and power his entire home forever for free! After 2023 Yildiz just suddenly disappeared along with his motor and if he's still alive his current whereabouts are unknown. Maybe Big Oil handed him a few billion to buy his silence...or they paid far less to just have him "erased"? We'll never know for sure. 5,000 watts is about 5.7 horsepower which would be enough to power a small car to a top speed of 30 to 40 mph. Big Oil does not like any inventions that appear which could reduce the world's use of fossil fuels like petrol and diesel.
You must have made a mistake in your calculations, anon 19:41. 5000 watts is actually about 6.7 horsepower. I do agree however that a motor with that power could get a small car up to a speed of 30 to 40 mph and maybe even more if the car's mass could be made very light using the right materials. There are currently experimental ultralight cars that weigh 500 pounds or less.
Delete@anon 19:41
DeleteThere is an approximately repeated theme in all of the stories we read about pm machines being invented. It starts with the inventor giving a public demo of a small device which convinces average people he's actually done it. The news quickly spreads by word of mouth and the media of the day. Interest begins to quickly grow. The intelligentsia learn of it an demand an official test. That test is granted subject to certain restrictions by the inventor and his invention passes. News of the successful test spreads, but some always say that the test was not sufficient enough to prove that the invention is pm. More tests are demanded which the inventor declines. The masses of average people still believe he's got something that is revolutionary and when he promises to start making bigger and more powerful versions, they are eager to invest in his plans.
He scoops in a lot of money. Initially, updates are regularly issued saying that the project is going well but he still needs a little more money to perfect the larger and far more powerful version of his invention. Suddenly, the updates stop and none of the investors can get in contact with him. His residence is found empty and his workshop has been stripped of all of the equipment along with the scaled up prototype. No one knows where he and the invention are. Even the police cannot find him. Was he a crook who stole the investors' money or the victim of sinister financial rivals that wanted him and his invention gone. No one can say for sure and his story becomes another part of the colorful history of pm.
"Was he a crook who stole the investors' money..."
DeleteYes, most likely he is a crook and the grab a bundle and disappear scheme is used in a lot of places other than pm. Beware of anyone sending you emails asking you to "invest" is some project that they are sure will be the next cash bonanza guaranteed to make you rich. ALL of such emails are from scammers in foreign countries who send out millions of similar emails hoping to hook a few suckers per day. They will almost all request that you send your money to them as bitcoins. You are guaranteed to lose it all if you are stupid enough to do it.
@anon 19:41
DeleteIIRC someone took a 20 minute video during Yildiz' demonstration of his permanent magnet motor at Tufts University and that video was subjected to a later acoustic test. The test showed that the frequency of the vibrations given off by his motor during the 20 minutes slowly decreased. That is what one would expect from a motor being powered by lithium ion batteries that were being drained at maximum current output and had a drop off of their voltage. The conclusion is that he had a clever fake with some lithium ion batteries hidden in it somewhere. He did disassemble parts of the motor and hand them around at Tufts University, but the central core of the motor was not removed. Most likely it contained the hidden batteries. In one of the published photos of the motor from an exhibition, you could see WIRES in the back of it. Why would a motor that supposedly only used permanent magnets have wires coming out of it? Most likely he used them to recharge the batteries after they were drained during a demonstration. No one ever saw any of his motors run for more than 30 minutes and if one stopped, he would make some excuse and then quickly wheel it off of an exhibition floor to an area behind a curtain. He was probably using a wall outlet there with an AC/DC adapter to recharge the device's batteries! No one was allowed to see what he was doing with his devices behind the curtains!
For those who did not see the Yildiz permanent magnet motor demo video made at Tuft's University and uploaded to youtube on March 15, 2013, you can see it here:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5K_wB-xsuM
He starts it up around minute 3:00 by using a small hammer to knock away a little metal wedge he used to lock his motor's rotor shaft and prevent it from spinning.
Notice how excited all of the witnesses become when his motor's fan starts spinning at high speed. They use the fan to blow air through a large tube to measure the volume of air being moved per minute. From this it was determined that his motor was outputting about 300 watts. Toward the end of the video Yildiz removes three wedge shaped pieces containing magnets and passes them around for inspection. Most of his motor is not taken apart and could have been concealing hidden batteries plus an actual electric motor that powered the his motor's rotor shaft.
I'm also convinced that Yildiz was a hoaxer because of those wires sticking out of his "permanent magnet motor" that he never explained to anyone's satisfaction.
DeleteHowever, there was another guy, a German mechanical engineer named Friedrich Lüling, who invented a permanent magnet motor in 1954 that I am convinced was real. He didn't have any hidden batteries in it or use some mystery black gum to make it work. He figured out a way to cancel the pull back magnetic forces as two attracting magnets on the rotor and stator passed each other. Here's a youtube video of a black and white, 1966 UFA newsreel film that was made showing his motor running:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0mP4qGDwoI
It's a German language video, but you can get captions in English by using the auto translate in the video's settings. Unlike Yildiz's motor, you can look right into Lüling's and see the parts moving. He claimed it could run for 10 to 20 years before its parts wore out. Unfortunately, after this newsreel was make, he and his invention just disappeared from the historical record. Again, we don't have a machine that can be given some serious testing by serious scientific types. More frustration in the attempt to make working pm devices available to the whole world.
You bring up a good point, anon 01:40.
DeleteWhat were all of those wires coming out of Yildiz's motor for?
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/SBKNTPsRFZA/maxresdefault.jpg
@anon 03:44
DeleteHere's some more photos taken during that Deft U. demo of the Yildiz motor. The white wires actually come out of the front side of his device in the photo on the left, but then he taped them down so that they wouldn't hit the fan blades:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alexander-Frolov-10/publication/356969854/figure/fig110/AS:1099813240213507@1639227318197/Magnet-motor-by-Muammer-Yildiz.ppm
Here's an exploded view diagram of his motor. The amount of those little permanent neodymium magnets he used in it is unreal!
I first thought that the best place he could have hid the lithium ion batteries that powered it would be in that large dark piece numbered 7. It would have contained the batteries and some electromagnet coils that could interact with the permanent magnets on the rotor numbered 8 to make it rotate. But after viewing the youtube video of his Deft U. demo, the radial blades of that piece seem too thin to me and they are not dark as shown in the diagram. They are white in the video and appear to be a plastic material...maybe nylon?
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.etsystatic.com%2F34604151%2Fr%2Fil%2Ff81437%2F3694980722%2Fil_1140xN.3694980722_nxzc.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=9b086bb9678dec1edfb7dc5986fdc81311acb1a2b27cd9636c4bf4ccb9876d52
So where else to hide the batteries and electromagnetic coils? My next guess is that they were in one or more of those wedge shaped sections he pulled out of the machine and handed around to the attendees to the demo that appear to contain permanent magnets. He could have hid a battery and coil under several of the permanent magnets in each of the wedges. Anyone at the demo handling those sections did not remove any of the permanent magnets from them that appear to be pressed into the sections.
It's difficult to know exactly what to make of the Yildiz motor. In certain ways it seems genuine and in other ways it seems like it was faked. All we know for sure is that it is no longer around to be examined and tested by some qualified engineers.