The Seven Follies of Science Part 5

That the inventors were honest I have no doubt. They were themselves deceived when they saw the engine start off with tremendous velocity as soon as a little bisulphide of carbon was injected into the boiler, and they failed to see that this spurt, if I may use the expression, was simply due to a draft upon capital previously stored up. The capacity of bisulphide of carbon for heat is quite low, when compared with that of water; its vaporizing point is also much lower and consequently, an ordinary boiler full of hot water contains enough heat to vaporize a considerable quant.i.ty of bisulphide of carbon at a pretty high pressure.

In even a still greater measure the same is true of liquid air, and this was the underlying fallacy in the case of the tests made with liquid-air motors.

3. FRAUDS

But while the inventors of these schemes may have been honest, there is another cla.s.s who deliberately set out to perpetrate a fraud. Their machines work, and work well, but there is always some concealed source of power, which causes them to move. As a general rule, such inventors form a company or corporation of unlimited "lie-ability," as De Morgan phrases it, and then they proceed by means of flaring prospectuses and liberal advertising, to gather in the dupes who are attracted by their seductive promises of enormous returns for a very small outlay. Perhaps the most widely known of these fraudulent schemes of recent years was the notorious Keeley motor, the originator of which managed to hoodwink a respectable old lady, and to draw from her enormous supplies of cash.

At his death, however, the absolutely fraudulent nature of his contrivances was fully disclosed, and nothing more has been heard of his alleged discovery. But, while he lived and was able to put forward claims based upon some apparent results, he found plenty of fools who accepted the idea that there is nothing impossible to science.

It is true that the Keeley motor was examined by several committees and some very respectable gentlemen acted in such a way as to give a seeming endors.e.m.e.nt of the scheme, but it must not be supposed for an instant that any well-educated engineers and scientific men were deceived by Mr.

Keeley's nonsense. The very fact that he refused to allow a complete examination of his machine by intelligent practical men, ought to have been enough to condemn his scheme, for if he had really made the discovery which he claimed there would have been no difficulty in proving it practically and thoroughly, and then he might have formed company after company that would have rewarded him with "wealth beyond the dreams of avarice."

The Keeley motor was not put forward as a perpetual motion; in these days none of these schemes is admitted to be a perpetual motion, for that term has now become exceedingly offensive and would condemn any invention; but the result is the same in the end, and the whole history of perpetual motion is permeated with frauds of this kind, some of them having been so simple that they were obvious to even the most unskilled observer, while others were exceedingly complicated and most ingeniously concealed. Many years ago a number of these fraudulent perpetual-motion machines were manufactured in America and sent over to Great Britain for exhibition, and quite a lucrative business was done by showing them in various towns. But the fraud was soon detected and the British police then made it too warm for these swindlers.

Mr. Dircks, in his "Perpetuum Mobile," has given accounts of quite a number of these impostures. The following are some of the most notable:

M. Poppe of Tubingen tells of a clock made by M. Geiser, which was an admirable piece of mechanism and seemed to have solved this great problem in an ingenious and simple manner, but it deceived only for a time. When thoroughly examined inwardly and outwardly, some time after his death, it was found that the center props supporting its cylinders contained cleverly constructed, hidden clock-work, wound up by inserting a key in a small hole under the second-hand.

Another case was that of a man named Adams who exhibited, for eight or nine days, his pretended perpetual motion in a town in England and took in the natives for fifty or sixty pounds. Accident, however, led to a discovery of the imposture. A gentleman, viewing the machine took hold of the wheel or trundle and lifted it up a little, which probably disengaged the wheels that connected the hidden machinery in the plinth, and immediately he heard a sound similar to that of a watch when the spring is running down. The owner was in great anger and directly put the wheel into its proper position, and the machine again went around as before. The circ.u.mstance was mentioned to an intelligent person who determined to find out and expose the imposture. He took with him a friend to view the machine and they seated themselves one on each side of the table upon which the machine was placed. They then took hold of the wheel and trundle and lifted them up, there being some play in the pivots. Immediately the hidden spring began to run down and they continued to hold the machine in spite of the endeavors of the owner to prevent them. When the spring had run down, they placed the machine again on the table and offered the owner fifty pounds if it could then set itself going, but notwithstanding his fingering and pus.h.i.+ng, it remained motionless. A constable was sent for, the impostor went before a magistrate and there signed a paper confessing his perpetual motion to be a cheat.

In the "Mechanic's Magazine," Vol. 46, is an account of a perpetual motion, constructed by one Redhoeffer of Pennsylvania, which obtained sufficient notoriety to induce the Legislature to appoint a committee to enquire into its merits. The attention of Mr. Lukens was turned to the subject, and although the actual moving cause was not discovered, yet the deception was so ingeniously imitated in a machine of similar appearance made by him and moved by a spring so well concealed, that the deceiver himself was deceived and Redhoeffer was induced to believe that Mr. Lukens had been successful in obtaining a moving power in some way in which he himself had failed, when he had produced a machine so plausible in appearance as to deceive the public.

Instances of a similar kind might be multiplied indefinitely.

The experienced mechanic who reads the descriptions here given of the various devices which have been proposed for the construction of a perpetual-motion machine must be struck with the childish simplicity of the plans which have been offered; and those who will search the pages of the mechanical journals of the last century or who will examine the two closely printed volumes in which Mr. Dircks has collected almost everything of the kind, will be astonished at the sameness which prevails amongst the offerings of these would-be inventors. Amongst the hundreds, or, perhaps, thousands, of contrivances which have been described, there is probably not more than a dozen kinds which differ radically from each other; the same arrangement having been invented and re-invented over and over again. And one of the strange features of the case is that successive inventors seem to take no note of the failure of those predecessors who have brought forward precisely the same combination of parts under a very slightly different form.

It is true that we occasionally find a very elaborate and apparently complicated machine, but in such cases it will be found, on close examination, to owe its apparent complexity to a mere multiplication of parts; no real inventive ingenuity is exhibited in any case.

Another singular characteristic of almost all those who have devoted themselves to the search for a perpetual motion is their absolute confidence in the success of the plans which they have brought forth. So confident are they in the soundness of their views and so sure of the success of their schemes that they do not even take the trouble to test their plans but announce them as accomplished facts, and publish their sketches and descriptions as if the machine was already working without a hitch. Indeed, so far was one inventor carried away with this feeling of confidence in the success of his machine that he no longer allowed himself to be troubled with any doubts as to the machine's _going_ but was greatly puzzled as to what means he should take to _stop_ it after it had been set in motion!

These facts, which are well known to all who have been brought into contact with this cla.s.s of minds, explain many otherwise puzzling circ.u.mstances and enable us to place a proper value on a.s.sertions which, if not made so positively and by such apparently good authority, would be at once condemned as deliberate falsehoods. That falsehood, pure and simple, has formed the basis of a good many claims of this kind, there can be no doubt, but at the same time, it is probable that some of the claimants really deceived themselves and attributed to causes other than radical errors of theory, the fact that their machines would not continue to move.

While many have claimed the actual invention of a perpetual motion it is very certain that not one has ever succeeded. How, then, are we to explain the statements which have been made in regard to Orffyreus and the claims of the Marquis of Worcester? For both of these men it is claimed that they constructed wheels which were capable of moving perpetually and apparently strong testimony is offered in support of these a.s.sertions.

In the famous "Century of Inventions," published by the Marquis in 1663, four years before his death, the celebrated 56th article reads as follows (_verbatim et literatim_):

"To provide and make that all the Weights of the descending side of a Wheel shall be perpetually further from the Centre, then those of the mounting side, and yet equal in number and heft to the one side as the other. A most incredible thing, if not seen, but tried before the late king (of blessed memory) in the _Tower_, by my directions, two Extraordinary Emba.s.sadors accompanying His Majesty, and the Duke of _Richmond_ and Duke _Hamilton_, with most of the Court, attending Him. The Wheel was 14. Foot over, and 40. Weights of 50. pounds apiece. Sir _William Balfore_, then Lieutenant of the _Tower_, can justifie it, with several others. They all saw, that no sooner these great Weights pa.s.sed the Diameter-line of the lower side, but they hung a foot further from the Centre, nor no sooner pa.s.sed the Diameter-line of the upper side, but they hung a foot nearer. Be pleased to judge the consequence."

Such is the account given by the Marquis himself, and that he exhibited such a wheel at the time and place which he names, I have not the least doubt. And that some of the weights on one side hung a foot further from the center than did weights on the other side is also no doubt true, but, as the judging of the "consequence" is left to ourselves we know that after the first impulse given to it had been expended, the wheel would simply stand still unless kept in motion by some external force.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 17.]

Mr. Dircks in his "Life, Times and Scientific Labours of the Second Marquis of Worcester," gives an engraving of a wheel which complies with all the conditions laid down by the Marquis and which is thus described:

"Let the annexed diagram, Fig. 17, represent a wheel of 14 feet in diameter, having 40 spokes, seven feet each, and with an inner rim coinciding with the periphery, at one foot distance all round. Next provide 40 b.a.l.l.s or weights, hanging in the center of cords or chains two feet long. Now, fasten one end of this cord at the top of the center spoke C, and the other end of the cord to the next right-hand spoke one foot below the upper end, or on the inner ring; proceed in like manner with every other spoke in succession; and it will be found that, at A, the cord will have the position shown outside the wheel; while at B, C, and D, it will also take the respective positions, as shown on the outside. The result in this case will be, that all the weights on the side A, C, D, hang to the great or outer circle, while on the side B, C, D, all the weights are suspended from the lesser or inner circle. And if we reverse the motion of the wheel, turning it from the right to the left hand, we shall reverse these positions also (the lower end of the cord sliding in a groove towards a left-hand spoke), but without the wheel having any tendency to move of itself."

But it is quite as likely that the wheel constructed by the Marquis was like one of the "overbalancing" wheels described at the beginning of this article.

It is upon this "scantling" that has been based the claim that the Marquis really invented a perpetual motion, but to those who have seen much of inventors of this kind, the discrepancy between the suggested claim made by the Marquis and what we know must have been the actual results, is easily explained. The Marquis felt sure that the thing _ought to work_, and the excuse for its not doing so was probably the imperfect manner in which the wheel was made. Only put a little better work on it, says the inventor, and it will go.

Caspar Kaltoff, mechanician to the Marquis, probably got the wheel up in a hurry so as to exhibit it on the occasion of the king's visit to the tower. If he only had had a little more time he would have made a machine that would have worked. (?) I have heard the same excuse under almost the same circ.u.mstances, scores of times.

The case of Orffyreus was very different. The real name of this inventor was Jean Ernest Elie-Bessler, and he is said to have manufactured the name Orffyreus by placing his own name between two lines of letters, and picking out alternate letters above and below. He was educated for the church, but turned his attention to mechanics and became an expert clock maker. His character, as given by his contemporaries was fickle, tricky, and irascible. Having devised a scheme for perpetual motion he constructed several wheels which he claimed to be self-moving. The last one which he made was 12 feet in diameter and 14 inches deep, the material being light pine boards, covered with waxed cloth to conceal the mechanism. The axle was 8 inches thick, thus affording abundant s.p.a.ce for concealed machinery.

This wheel was submitted to the Landgrave of Hesse who had it placed in a room which was then locked, and the lock secured with the Landgrave's own seal. At the end of forty days it was found to be still running.

Professor Gravesande having been employed by the Landgrave to make an examination and p.r.o.nounce upon its merits, he endeavored to perform his work thoroughly; this so irritated Orffyreus that the latter broke the machine in pieces, and left on the wall a writing stating that he had been driven to do this by the impertinent curiosity of the Professor!

I have no doubt that this was a clear case of fraud, and that the wheel was driven by some mechanism concealed in the huge axle. As already stated, Orffyreus was at one time a clock maker; now clocks have been made to go for a whole year without having to be rewound, so that forty days was not a very long time for the apparatus to keep in motion.

Professor Gravesande seems to have had some faith in the invention, but then we must remember that it would not have been very difficult to deceive an honest old professor whose confidence in humanity was probably unbounded. The crowning argument against the genuineness of the motion was the fact that the inventor refused to allow a thorough examination, although a wealthy patron stood ready with a large reward if the machine could be proved to be what was claimed.

And now comes up the question which has arisen in regard to other problems, and will recur again and again to the end of the chapter: Is a perpetual motion machine one of the scientific impossibilities?

The answer to this question lies in the fact that there is no principle more thoroughly established than that no combination of machinery can create energy. So far as our present knowledge of nature goes we might as well try to create matter as to create energy, and the creation of energy is essential to the successful working of a perpetual-motion machine because some power must always be lost through friction and other resistances and must be supplied from some source if the machine is to keep on moving. And since the law of the conservation of energy makes it positive that no more power can be given out by a machine than was originally supplied to it, it seems as certain as anything can be that the construction of a perpetual-motion machine is one of the impossibilities.

V

TRANs.m.u.tATION OF THE METALS

The "accursed thirst for gold" has existed from the earliest ages and, as the apostle says, "is the root of all evil." Those who have a greed for power, a craving for luxury, or a fever for l.u.s.t, all think that their wildest dreams might be realized if they could only command sufficient gold. Never was there a more lurid picture of a mind inflamed with all these evil pa.s.sions than that set forth by Ben Jonson in the Second Act of "The Alchemist," and who can doubt but that such desires and dreams spurred on many, either to engage in an actual search for the philosopher's stone, or to become the dupes of what Van Helmont calls "a diabolical crew of gold and silver sucking flies and leeches."

As we might naturally expect, the early history of alchemy is shrouded in myths and fables. Zosimos the Panopolite tells us that the art of Alchemy was first taught to mankind by demons, who fell in love with the daughters of men, and, as a reward for their favors, taught them all the works and mysteries of nature. On this Boerhaave remarks:

"This ancient fiction took its rise from a mistaken interpretation of the words of Moses, 'That the sons of G.o.d saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose.'[2] From whence it was inferred that the sons of G.o.d were daemons, consisting of a soul, and a visible but impalpable body, like the image in a looking-gla.s.s (to which notion we find several allusions in the evangelists); that they know all things, appeared to men and conversed with them, fell in love with women, had intrigues with them and revealed secrets. From the same fable probably arose that of the Sibyl, who is said to have obtained of Apollo the gift of prophecy, and revealing the will of heaven in return for a like favor. So p.r.o.ne is the roving mind of man to figments, which it can at first idly amuse itself with, and at length fall down and wors.h.i.+p."

This idea of the supernatural origin of the arts permeates the ancient mythology which everywhere teaches that men were taught the sacred arts of medicine and chemistry by G.o.ds and demiG.o.ds.

Modern science discards all these mythological accounts. Whatever knowledge the ancients acquired of medicine and chemistry was, no doubt, reached along two lines--pharmacy and metallurgy. That the pharmacist or apothecary exercised his calling at a very early period we have positive knowledge; thus in the Book of Ecclesiastes we are told that "dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savor,"

and that men at a very early day found out the means of working iron, copper, gold, silver, etc., is evident from the accounts given of Vulcan and Tubalcain, as well as from the remains of old tools and weapons. And that Alchemy, as it is generally understood, is a comparatively modern outgrowth of these two arts, is pretty certain. No mention of the art of converting the baser metals into gold, and no account of a universal medicine or elixir of life is to be found in any of the authentic writings of the ancients. Homer, Aristotle, and even Pliny are all silent on the subject, and those writings which treat of the art, and which claim an ancient origin, such as the books of Hermes Trismegistus, are now regarded by the best authorities as spurious--the evidence that they were the work of a far later age being irrefragable.

Several writers have taken the ground that the alchemical treatises which have come down to us from the early writers on the subject, are purely allegorical and do not relate to material things, but to the principles of a higher religion which, in those days, it was dangerous to expound in plain language. One or two elaborate works and several articles supporting this view have been published, but the common-sense reader who will glance through the immense collection of alchemical tracts gathered together by Mangetus in two folio volumes of a thousand pages each, will rise from such examination, very thoroughly convinced that it was the actual metal gold, and the fabled universal medicine that these writers had in view.

There can be little doubt that Geber, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Raymond Lully, Helvetius, Van Helmont, Basil Valentine, and others, describe very substantial things with a minuteness of detail which leaves no room for doubt as to their materiality though we cannot always be sure of their ident.i.ty.

Some confusion of thought has been caused by the difference which has been made between the terms alchemy and chemistry and their applications. The word _alchemy_ is simply the word chemistry with the Arabic word _al_, which signifies _the_, prefixed, and the history of alchemy is really the history of chemistry--wild and erratic in its beginnings, and giving rise to strange hopes and still stranger theories, but ever working along the line of discovery and progress.

And, although many of the professional chemists or alchemists of the middle ages were undoubted charlatans and quacks, yet did we not have many of the same kind in the nineteenth century? We may use the word alchemist as a term of reproach, and apply it to these early workers because their theories appear to us to be absurd, but how do we know that the chemists of the twenty-second century will not regard us in a similar light, and set at naught the theories we so fondly cherish?

Only seven out of the large number of metals now catalogued by us were known to the ancients; these were gold, silver, mercury, copper, tin, lead, and iron. And as it happened that the list of so-called planets also numbered exactly seven, it was thought that there must be a connection between the two, and, consequently, in the alchemical writings, each metal was called by the name of that one of the heavenly bodies which was supposed to be connected with it in influence and quality.

In the astronomy of the ancients, as is generally known, the earth occupied the center of the universe, and the list of planets included the sun and moon. After them came Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. To the metal gold was given the name of Sol, or the sun, on account of its brightness and its power of resisting corroding agents; hence the compounds of gold were known as solar compounds and solar medicines. As might have been expected, silver was a.s.signed to Luna or the moon, and in the modern pharmacop[oe]ia such terms as lunar caustic and lunar salts still have a place. Mercury was, of course, appropriated to the planet of that name. Copper was named after Venus, and cupreous salts were known as venereal salts. Iron, probably from its being the metal chiefly used for making arms and armor, was dedicated to Mars, and we still speak of martial salts. Tin was named after Jupiter from his brilliancy, the compounds of tin being called jovial salts. The dull, leaden color of Saturn, with his apparently heavy and slow motion, seemed to fit him for a.s.sociation with lead, and we still have the saturnine ointment as a reminder of old alchemical times.

Of these metals gold was supposed to be the only one that was perfect, and the belief was general that if the others could be purified and perfected they would be changed to gold. Many of the old chemists worked faithfully and honestly to accomplish this, but the path to wealth seemed so direct and the means for deception were so ready and simple, that large numbers of quacks and charlatans entered the field and held out the most alluring inducements to dupes who furnished them liberally with money and other necessaries in the hope that when the discovery was made they would be put in possession of unbounded wealth. These dupes were easily deceived and led astray by simple frauds, which scarcely rose to the level of amateur legerdemain. In the "Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences" for 1772, M. Geoffroy gives an account of the various modes in which the frauds of these swindlers were carried on. The following are a few of their tricks: Instead of the mineral substances which they pretended to trans.m.u.te they put a salt of gold or silver at the bottom of the crucible, the mixture being covered with some powdered crucible and gum water or wax so that it might look like the bottom of the crucible. Another method was to bore a hole in a piece of charcoal, fill the hole with fine filings of gold or silver, stopping it with powered charcoal, mixed with some agglutinant so that the whole might look natural. Then when the charcoal burned away, the silver or gold was found in the bottom of the crucible. Or they soaked charcoal in a solution of these metals and threw the charcoal, when powdered, upon the material to be trans.m.u.ted. Sometimes they whitened gold with mercury and made it pa.s.s for silver or tin, and the gold when melted was exhibited as the result of trans.m.u.tation. A common exhibition was to dip nails in a liquid and to take them out apparently half converted into gold; these nails consisted of one-half iron neatly soldered to the other half, which was gold, and covered with something to conceal the color. The paint or covering was removed by the liquid. A very common trick was the use of a hollow, iron stirring rod; the hollow was filled with gold or silver filings, and neatly stopped with wax. When used to stir the contents of the crucible the wax melted and allowed the gold or silver to fall out.

These frauds were rendered all the more easy because of certain statements which were current in regard to successful attempts to convert lead and other metals into gold. These accounts were vouched for by well-known chemists and others of high standing. Perhaps the most famous of these is that given by Helvetius in his "Brief of the Golden Calf; Discovering the Rarest Miracle in Nature; how by the smallest portion of the Philosopher's Stone, a great piece of common lead was totally trans.m.u.ted into the purest transplendent gold, at the Hague in 1666." The following is Brande's abridgment of this singular account.