Perpetual Motion

by Percy Verance; Henry Dircks

Leonardo da Vinci

It is with a mingled feeling of sorrow and exaltation that we note the Perpetual Motion labors of the great Leonardo da Vinci. Of all of the men who ever gave the subject more than a passing notice he is the most famous.

Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian, born in 1452, and died in 1519. He was the illegitimate son of Florentine, lawyer. His mother has been variously described as a peasant, and as of gentle birth. Little about her is known. The father belonged to a family of lawyers, and never repudiated the son, but took him, educated him, and cared for him. It is well for the world that he did, for Leonardo da Vinci has perhaps contributed more to art and learning in the world than any other single individual that ever lived. He was a painter, a sculptor, an architect, a musician, a mechanician, engineer and natural philosopher. Each subject in art or science that he touched he not only mastered, but improved and embellished. He painted the original of the well-known picture of the Christ and His twelve Apostles, known as the "Last Supper," or the "Last Supper of Our Lord." This, and Mona Lisa, are perhaps the paintings by which he is known to the greatest number of people, and are considered by many connoisseurs the highest perfection in art ever attained by mortal man.

But, as painter and sculptor, he is to be regarded as among the greatest, if not the very greatest that ever lived. In art he ranks beside, if not ahead of Michelangelo and Raffael, and yet they are known only as artists, while he was preeminent in both art and science. The work he did in natural science was entirely original and emanated from an inherent initiative and originality, and as a scientist, he is entitled to rank below only Newton, Gallileo and Copernicus, and very few others. In all the history of the world he is the only man of whom it can be said that he attained the apex of eminence in both art and science.

The information concerning Leonardo da Vinci's devices for obtaining Perpetual Motion is extremely meager. There does not seem to be extant any detailed explanation of just how he expected his different designs to work.

All that is known concerning his efforts is sufficiently illustrated by the following cuts and language from Dircks:

Fig. 1 may be taken as a scheme belonging to the fifteenth century. It seems to be placed at the head as a simple or elementary design for future improvement. It is a chambered drum wheel, containing balls or weights, which, being always farthest from the center on one side, as compared to the other, are expected to keep the wheel constantly rotating.

Fig. 2. Failing in this scheme, the inventor next offers one with weighted levers, which are to fall outwards on one side, but to fall inwards on the opposite side, the weight at the same time sliding up the lever when vertical at the bottom, so as to be nearer the center throughout on the ascending side. But how the weight is to be made to ascend at the bottom remains to be shown.

Fig. 3. The difficulty of elevating the weight would appear to have suggested its immersion in a trough of water, as here shown. The weights seem to be attached to some contrivance to float them upwards; but we are perplexed, and so no doubt was da Vinci, how to sink them, or being sunk, how to render them again buoyant by any self-motive process.

Fig. 4. It would appear as though the difficulties observable in Fig. 3 were attempted to be met here, in a plan which evidently combines several views of the case, yet without removing the main difficulty; for although the weight at the end of the long arm may be quite capable of sinking in the liquid, we still inquire, How is it ever to be raised again?

Fig. 5 seems to be an incomplete sketch, and a mere variation on the preceding designs, with the addition either of machinery below to be worked by it, or to give it motion. Possibly it was proposed to have a magnet at the bottom of the vessel.

Fig. 6 appears to be two designs in one sketch. On one side we have long single levers, with a single weight at their ends, and a weight between each at the periphery; on the other end, double or forked levers and double weights. Its mixed character renders it probable that it was merely some preliminary sketch.

The great value of the present exhibition of these early contrivances of misdirected mechanical ingenuity consists in the convincing evidence which they afford, that all young inventors who occupy themselves in the search for self-motive machines, do little more than reproduce the blunders of a past age. After a lapse of five centuries modern inventors often become patentees of contrivances which are only more complicated than the assumed-to-be overweight wheel of Wilars de Honecort, or the six similar ones of Leonardo da Vinci. But such has hitherto been the ignorance of mechanics on this subject, that Fig. 1 of the annexed diagrams has frequently been adduced by writers on the subject, as the veritable wheel invented by the Marquis of Worcester, in the seventeenth century!