And of course, the title of this post reminds us that Tina Turner's legs remain the only known example of perpetual motion.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 11:49 AM on June 3 [6 favorites]

the only real evidence against Bessler's claims is the institutionalized, a priori belief that his machine was impossible

Is 'a priori' the most accurate way to describe the baseline skepticism?
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 11:51 AM on June 3 [4 favorites]

I have never heard of this. Fascinating...
posted by Windopaene at 12:09 PM on June 3 [2 favorites]

Christian Wolff, no! How can you have been so right about the value of the Chinese philosophical tradition despite it not belonging to the Christian West and yet so wrong about this charlatan?

This is a great article, and I love the way that it runs on one of my favorite inventions of the eighteenth century: Hume's argument against miracles.

I also like the way that it follows up three consecutive articles about AI on today's metafilter front page. I actually have a lot of sympathy for Wolff and others who were deceived or couldn't figure out the trick. It's hard to know in advance what is impossible, and the line between innovation and Mechanical Turkey and snake oil is much brighter in retrospect.
posted by sy at 12:13 PM on June 3 [10 favorites]

I have a perpetual motion machine for which there is no evidence against it, right next to my invisible unicorn and transparent dragon. Doesn't everyone?
posted by NotAYakk at 12:14 PM on June 3 [2 favorites]

the only real evidence against Bessler's claims is the institutionalized, a priori belief that his machine was impossible

The only real evidence against Bessler's claims is everything we know about the entire universe.

The only real evidence for Bessler's claims is that some people were fooled.

This comment brought to you by me receiving a request for funding last week for exactly the same thing, but using "electromagnetic resonance".
posted by happyinmotion at 12:27 PM on June 3 [21 favorites]

I think the wheels contained a spring, and what the servant girl who testified it was a fraud thought was a rod coming from another room to turn the wheel was actually a rod to wind the spring, and could be withdrawn once that was accomplished.

Bessler got the idea from clockmakers he’d worked with. The spring wasn’t quite powerful enough to start the wheel turning, but it could keep it rolling and even add energy once a slight push had started it.
posted by jamjam at 12:30 PM on June 3 [8 favorites]

happyinmotion: "This comment brought to you by me receiving a request for funding last week for exactly the same thing, but using "electromagnetic resonance"."

eponysterical?
posted by chavenet at 12:30 PM on June 3 [2 favorites]

What's fascinating is that this man, in spite of his obvious fraud, is still mentioned over 300 years later, alongside Newton and Leibniz. If someone had simply uncovered the true mechanism his memory would be discarded, but because nobody could be bothered to prove him obviously wrong, his legacy lives on.
posted by grog at 12:58 PM on June 3 [4 favorites]

We don't need thermodynamics to know that the wheel was a fraud, because

> In 1744 Bessler began constructing a windmill in Fürstenburg, Germany
posted by eraserbones at 1:23 PM on June 3 [4 favorites]

Somewhat relatedly, Matthias Wandel recently made a video debunking a more recent 'free energy machine'.
posted by pipeski at 1:26 PM on June 3 [3 favorites]

This sounds like gold standard science, to me.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:31 PM on June 3 [1 favorite]

So when will Chris Wright devote a section of the Department of Energy to researching perpetual motion? Although that might not be profitable for the existing players in the energy market so perhaps not.

But anyone who says perpetual motion is impossible has not seen this; convince me otherwise!
posted by TedW at 1:52 PM on June 3 [3 favorites]

When trying to figure out how a magic trick was done, we have to bear in mind, first, that eye-witnesses often describe what was suggested to them and not what they actually saw (no, you didn't actually see a woman cut in half, that's only what the magician said was happening), and second, that when a trick is presented more than once, a magician can use "cancelling methods" each of which rules out a different explanation, so that (say) one version of the trick rules out an external source of energy (an assistant in the next room turning a crank) and a different version rules out an internal source (an assistant inside the wheel). Although no single presentation rules out all explanations, witnesses combine the different presentations in their memories resulting in an apparent impossibility.
posted by cyanistes at 2:06 PM on June 3 [7 favorites]

don't need thermodynamics to know that the wheel was a fraud, because

> In 1744 Bessler began constructing a windmill in Fürstenburg, Germany
posted by eraserbones

It’s interesting he was constructing a windmill, eraserbones, because one of the big problems with windmills is that they won’t grind when there’s no wind, and waste energy when the wind is stronger than it needs to be or gusty, perhaps.

But if you were to interpose a spring in the mechanism, you could use the wind to wind the spring, and the spring could drive the grinding mechanism — and keep grinding when the wind slackened.

You’d lose some energy because of the losses associated with winding, but I bet you’d have more net output of product because the grinder would be working more of the time
posted by jamjam at 2:10 PM on June 3 [4 favorites]

I have a perpetual motion machine for which there is no evidence against it, right next to my invisible unicorn and transparent dragon. Doesn't everyone?
posted by NotAYakk

My expensive polar bear repelling rock has a 100% success rate. Best investment I ever made. Haven't been any polar bears here in my tropical home since I got it.

Have not been able to locate any crocodile repelling rocks though. Keep being sold out before I can get one.
posted by Pouteria at 2:44 PM on June 3 [1 favorite]

Have not been able to locate any crocodile repelling rocks though.

I have plenty! Don’t seem to work very well on alligators though.
posted by TedW at 3:07 PM on June 3 [1 favorite]

"Orffyreus, in the presence of all, lifted the machine described above from its original wooden support. The timber posts were carefully examined from both top and bottom, as well as in the middle, particularly where a small cut was noticed."

"ohh
the wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'
I don't know where I'll be tomorrow"
posted by clavdivs at 3:13 PM on June 3 [2 favorites]

Proposal: "perpetual motion machine LARP" as a genre of entertainment. A really good stage magician sets one up, and you and your tour group get N amount of time to try to guess how it works/prove it's a fraud. Like an escape room puzzle, but instead of "leave the room" the reward for solving the puzzle is "denounce the charlatan."
posted by Birds, snakes, and aeroplanes at 3:24 PM on June 3 [2 favorites]

To me the greatest proof that it's a fake is that no one has been able to build it, despite apparently having examined all of the workings, and having drawings. Given a clear drawing of a water wheel or a windmill or even of a clock, I think that I could build a working version. It's not at all credible that this is a real perpetual motion machine yet is not replicable.

I agree with cyanistes that he probably employed multiple different tricks to address different claims about how it could have worked. Scientists are really not hard to fool.
posted by muddgirl at 4:28 PM on June 3 [1 favorite]

Have not been able to locate any crocodile repelling rocks though. Keep being sold out before I can get one.

The trick to powering a crocodile rock is feet that won’t keep still.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:44 PM on June 3 [6 favorites]

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