Perpetual Motion Machine You can Believe In

[Alexioco]

This is a good idea, but thinking about it, i think IMHO after so long of running it will stop because as it pumps the water up to turn the wheel which drvies the pump, it will slowly pump less up each time as more water falls than is pumped up, until after awhile it stops...

Alex

[TechStuf]

Build it and they will come

[AhuraMazda]

It may work best in the monsoon season in tropical places!

[grayone]

It may work best in the monsoon season in tropical places!

AhuraMazda; But would it generate power or is it hart pressed to pump the water? I think it is a very interesting garden machine.

[hansvonlieven]

It is fascinating how these old ideas resurface time and again. Perpetual motion? Easy to do. All you have to do is to build a pump that pumps more water than a waterwheel needs to drive it.

Well, great minds have occupied themselves with this idea.

The earliest recorded design that I am aware of is from Francisco di Giorgio ( 1439 - 1502 )  His drawing you will find attached below. it is of an overshot water wheel driven by a pump and operating some sort of hammer-mill intended for producing flour. The drive mechanism for the pump is clearly shown. The water is pumped from a sump below the device and not shown. The pump mechanism is not shown either though described in the text.

The next one to take up Giorgio's ideas was Leonardo da Vinci ( 1452 - 1519 ) who employed an Archimedian Screw as a pumping mechanism.

After that we meet Robert Fludd [Robertus de Fluctibus] (1574 - 1637 ) who showed several designs, presumably based on Giorgio and da Vinci.

These three gentlemen are amongst the cleverest and most enlightened thinkers and innovators of the Renaissance, each one famous in his own right. Evidently, at least at some stage, they believed it possible.

In the intervening 500 years the idea has been cropping up again and again, each inventor probably thinking he has done something no-one has ever thought of. There are a number of patents relating to this, some of them recent.

Needless to say, none of them has ever worked.

Hans von Lieven