Though he never even came close to inventing a perpetual motion device, Scheerbart sure as hell tried. In the firmament of perpet cranks and crackpots no star shines brighter than Paul Scheerbart (1863-1915). If anything is perpetual, it’s the persistence with which the proponents of perpetual motion (“perpets,” they’re called) flout conventional wisdom, equating it with bone-headedness and vast conspiracy theories. In grossly oversimplified terms: 1) there’s no free lunch, and 2) nothing good lasts forever. Since Bhaskara’s wheel there have been countless other devices, with some of history’s most able minds-from Leonardo da Vinci to Robert Boyle and Nikola Tesla-having a crack at it, this in spite of the fact that such an instrument violates both the first and second laws of thermodynamics: 1) the law of conservation of energy, which states that the total amount of energy in a closed system remains constant at all times, and 2) the law of entropy, which holds that the measure of degradation of the energy and matter in the universe never decreases. The dream of perpetual motion is at least as old as the Middle Ages, with the earliest known design for such a machine credited to the twelfth-century Indian mathematician Bhaskara, who conceived of a wheel of curved hollow spokes filled with mercury so that once the wheel was set in motion the heavy liquid would flow from one end of each spoke to the other, forcing the wheel to keep moving. Whether he does so to protect his brainchild from patent infringers or to prevent debunkers from discovering the electric motor hidden under its base remains to be seen. Still, as hobbies go, it’s one he takes very seriously, seriously enough to keep his device locked in a vault such as would give the Crown Jewelers many nights of sound sleep. Primarily a sculptor and painter, Finsrud’s foray into perpetual motion has been-for lack of a better word-a hobby. The Norwegian sage’s name is Reidar Finsrud. In few words the device is-or claims to be-a modern day perpetual motion machine. That is the machine’s sole raison d’étre, to keep that little ball rolling: an objective as simple as it is extraordinary, since it purports to do so without any source of energy other than that generated by the rolling ball itself. In this video posted on YouTube, a white-bearded, bespectacled, and rather sage-looking Norwegian man demonstrates an elaborate, Rube Goldbergian device that he has invented-its myriad discs, rotors, levers, flanges, magnets, springs, balances and counterbalances all connected to or hanging from a central cylindrical track around which a gleaming metal ball rolls (apparently) forever.
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