11/24/2023 0 Comments Perpetual motion machineThe spinning gear would, in turn, power the interlocked smaller gear. The weights were supposed to push the large gear away from the shaft, and the friction would cause the shaft and gear to spin. Placed on the gear were two ramps, and on the ramps were weights. Both the large gear and the shaft were able to rotate separately. Another, smaller gear interlocked with the larger one. The machine had a gravity-driven pendulum with a large horizontal gear on the bottom, according to Ord-Hume. Redheffer's machine was based on an "assumed 'principle' of perpetual motion that assumes continual downward force on an inclined plane can produce a continual horizontal force component," said Simanek. Inside was a machine he claimed could keep moving forever without ever being touched or otherwise aided. He appeared on the scene in 1812 when he opened a house near the Schuylkill River for public viewing. Historians do not know Redheffer's background prior to the hoax, according to Ord-Hume. That Redheffer was actually run out of town suggests that early 1800s audiences perhaps hadn't yet fully embraced that form of entertainment, though they would in subsequent decades. People seem to enjoy being taken in by a story that they know might be untrue, falling for it anyway and then being surprised upon learning they were duped. They heard lectures, attended theaters, went to curiosity museums, the circus and revival meetings with much the same enthusiasm."Īmy Reading, author of " The Mark Inside: A Big Swindle, a Cunning Revenge, and a Small History of the Big Con" (Vintage, 2013), notes a peculiar characteristic in the American sense of fun. Additionally, increasing literacy rates meant that more people were familiar with concepts like perpetual motion and were eager to see a machine that achieved it.īut, as Barbara Franco wrote in " The Cardiff Giant: A Hundred Year Old Hoax," "people were interested in the new sciences without really understanding them … The nineteenth century public often failed to make a distinction between popular and serious studies of subjects. According to Kimbrew McLeod, author of " Pranksters: Making Mischief in the Modern World" (NYU Press, 2014), the Age of Enlightenment's focus on science, learning and gaining knowledge through personal experience and observation led increasing numbers of people to seek out phenomena that they could judge for themselves. Nineteenth-century America was a prime time for hoaxes. It was debunked twice by engineers, which ultimately led to Redheffer being run out of town, according to " Perpetual Motion: The History of an Obsession" (Adventures Unlimited, 2015) by Arthur W.J.D. Redheffer's perpetual motion machine enthralled the Philadelphia and New York communities and brought in thousands of dollars.
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