The Device of Dixon Vallance. England, 1825
This inventor was certain he had overtaken and captured the ever-illusive Perpetual Motion. He gives a description of his happiness and his machine in the following effusively joyous language:
The annexed drawing shows how I have at length taken this enticing jilt (perpetual motion), though after a long and weary chase—
Through pleasant and delightful fields,
Through barren tracts and lonely wilds;
'Mongst quagmires, mosses, muirs and marshes,
Where deil or spunkie never scarce is!
By chance I happened on her den,
And took her when she didna ken.
W W W W represents a wheel with twelve hollow spokes, in each of which there is a rolling weight or ball. C C C C is a chain passing over two pulleys P P. There is an opening round the wheel from the nave to the circumference, so as to allow the chain to pass freely and to meet the weights. The weights are met by the chain as the wheel revolves, and are raised from the circumference till they are at last brought close to the nave, where they remain till, by the revolution of the wheel, they are allowed to roll out to the circumference. By this arrangement the weights are, on one side of the wheel, always at the circumference, so that that side is more powerful than the other, which causes the wheel continually to revolve. F F F F is the frame of the machine; M M M M the mortices for joining the two sides of the frame by cross rails. The arrows point out the direction in which the wheel turns.—I am, yours, &c., Dixon Vallance. Liberton, Lanarkshire, Nov. 10, 1825.
