The Century of Inventions of the Marquis of Worcester / from the Original MS., with Historical and Explanatory Notes and a Biographical Memoir

by Marquis of Edward Somerset Worcester

No. LV.

A double water-screw, the innermost to mount the water, and the outermost for it to descend more in number of threads, and consequently in quantity of water, though much shorter than the innermost screw, by which the water ascendeth, a most extraordinary help for the turning of the screw to make the water rise.

NOTE.

This appears one of those extraordinary slight of hand discoveries in which the noble author is too apt to indulge; and though we may readily admit that two water-screws may be most advantageously employed in turning of any water-wheel, where an abundant supply is found at the top of the machine, it yet requires a greater share of penetration than we choose to take credit for, to discover how a larger quantity of water can descend than has been previously raised, or, if so, how the machine could be at all applied to the raising of water.

No. LVI.

To provide and make, that all the weights of the descending side of a wheel shall be perpetually farther from the centre than those of the mounting side, and yet equal in number and heft of the one side as the other. A most incredible thing, if not seen, but tried before the late king of happy and glorious memory, in the Tower, by my directions; two extraordinary ambassadors accompanying his Majesty, and the Duke of Richmond, and Duke Hamilton, with most of the court attending him. The wheel was fourteen feet over, and forty weights of fifty pounds a-piece. Sir William Belford, then Lieutenant of the Tower, can testify it, with several others. They all saw, that no sooner these great weights passed the diameter line of the upper side, but they hung a foot farther from the centre; nor no sooner passed the diameter line of the lower side, but they hung a foot nearer. Be pleased to judge the consequence.

NOTE.

The celebrated problem of a self-impelling power, though denied by Huygens and de la Hire, who have attempted to demonstrate its fallacy, has yet been supported by some of the most celebrated among the ancient as well as modern philosophers. Innumerable have been the machines to which the idea of the perpetual motion has given birth; but the most celebrated among the moderns is the Orffyrean wheel. This machine, according to the description given of it by M. Grævesande, in his Œuvres Philosophiques, consisted of a large circular wheel or drum, twelve feet in diameter, and fourteen inches in depth. It was composed of a number of thin deals, the spaces between which were covered with wax cloth, in order to conceal the interior parts of it. On giving the wheel, which rested on the two extremities of an iron axis, a slight impulse in either direction, its motion was gradually accelerated; so that after two or three revolutions it is said to have acquired so great a velocity as to make twenty-five or more turns in a minute: and it appears to have preserved this rapid motion for the space of two months, during which time the Landgrave of Hesse, in whose chamber it was placed to prevent a possibility of collusion, kept his own seal on the outer door. At the end of that time it was stopped to prevent the wear of the materials. Grævesande, who had been an eye-witness to the performance of this machine, examined all the external parts of it, and was convinced that there could not be any communication between it and the adjacent rooms. Orffyreus, however, having been informed of the ill-timed curiosity of the professor, and incensed at the refusal of a premium of twenty thousand pounds, which he had made a sine quâ non for disclosing the mechanism of its construction, broke the whole apparatus into atoms, and his life was soon after sacrificed to chagrin at his disappointment. The analogy between the Marquis's description and the Orffyrean wheel is sufficiently evident; and the experiment having been made in the Tower, more than fifty years prior to the attempt of the German mechanic, it is more than probable that the idea was derived from the noble author's work.

No. LVII.

An ebbing and flowing water-work in two vessels, into either of which, the water standing at a level, if a globe be cast in, instead of rising, it presently ebbeth, and so remaineth, until a like globe be cast into the other vessel, which the water is no sooner sensible of, but that the vessel presently ebbeth, and the other floweth, and so continueth ebbing and flowing, until one or both the globes be taken out, working some little effect besides its own motion, without the help of any man within sight or hearing: but if either of the globes be taken out, with ever so swift or easy a motion, at that instant the ebbing and flowing ceaseth; for if, during the ebbing, you take out the globe, the water of that vessel presently returneth to flow, and never ebbeth after, until the globe be returned into it, and then the motion beginneth as before.