The deceptively simple task of making a mechanism which would turn forever has fascinated many famous men and physicists throughout the centuries. In fact, the basic tenets of engineering grew from the failures of these perpetual motion machine designers. This work offers an illustrated overview of perpetual motion machines and their inventors.

This work aims to help the reader get both boys and girls excited about dance, build essential skills, and improve educational outcomes. It introduces over 100 movement experiences organized around six themes: rules; recipes; props; poetry and prose; objects and images; and integrated arts.

A study of the life and work of Johann Bessler (aka Orffyreus)who claimed that he had perfected a Perpetual Motion machine in 1712. The evidence for his claims is examined and proof of his sincerity is discussed. The previously unknown existence of a coded message is revealed and described and the possible way in which the machine was constructed is examined.

Perpetual Motion as used in this book is to be taken in its conventional, and not in its strict literal sense. The strict literal analysis of the two words implies unceasing motion. Of this we have many illustrations—the tides, the waves of the ocean, the course of the earth around the sun, and in the movements of all heavenly and astronomical bodies. In fact, it is difficult to conceive in a strictly scientific sense of any substance having an entire absence of motion. Perpetual Motion as used in this book means what it is usually understood to mean—Self-Motive Power—a machine that furnishes the power to keep its parts going as a machine. In this sense Perpetual Motion has always engaged the minds of many, many people—and what is more natural? As soon as a boy begins to take an interest in moving parts of machinery, vehicles, locomotives, and what not, he perceives that the application of power results in the motion of bodies, and again that bodies in motion are productive of power. A wheel moved by muscular, or other mechanical power, is made by machinery to elevate water, and elevated water can be made in descending to run machinery. The windlass, or other wheel, turned by applied force, lifts buckets from wells—raises stone, and elevates heavy bodies, if desired. Heavy bodies descending can be, and are used through means of machinery to make machinery run. A great many similar illustrations could be given. What, then, is more natural than that a boy with an active mind who is at all mechanically turned, as most boys are, begins to wonder why, if wheels lift stones, and if stones descending make wheels run, cannot a machine be made that will lift stones, or other weights, and in turn be run by the descent of the lifted stones, or other weights? Why, if the turning of wheels lift water, and if descending water makes wheels go, should not an adaptation be made by which the same machine will elevate water, and be run by the descent of the elevated water? That it cannot be done is now the consensus of opinion of all technically trained mechanics, but, that it can not be done, and why it can not be done, is sure not to occur to the boy, nor to the man who has only a strong natural mechanical sense to guide him, and has not the advantage of technical training. Again, it is well known that many, many men have spent considerable sums of money and given hours and hours, and days, and months, and years of close and careful thought, and experiment to the production of a machine that will accomplish Perpetual Motion, and that many have announced to the world that they had succeeded in its accomplishment, but that all their devices so far have turned out failures. It is to no purpose to tell the Perpetual Motion worker that he is seeking to attain the impossible; that the attainment of self-motive power has been demonstrated to be an impossibility. He will answer, or, at least, he will reason to himself that many things once pronounced impossibilities and claimed to be so demonstrated, have since been attained. The Perpetual Motion worker is usually a person of active intelligence, and being enamoured of mechanical projects is likely to read extensively along mechanical lines, and knows as every well-informed person knows, that there are many instances in the history of the discovery and development of the most important mechanical inventions and scientific discoveries where the persistent efforts of so-called enthusiastic dreamers and cranks finally triumphed over the settled and conventional "impossibilities" of dignified scientists.

A new exploration of how digital media assert the relevance of dance in a wired world How has the Internet changed dance? Dance performances can now be seen anywhere, can be looped endlessly at user whim, and can integrate crowds in unprecedented ways. Dance practices are evolving to explore these new possibilities. In Perpetual Motion, Harmony Bench argues that dance is a vital part of civil society and a means for building participation and community. She looks at how, after 9/11, it became a crucial way of recuperating the common character of public spaces. She explores how crowdsourcing dance contributes to the project of performing a common world, as well as the social relationships forged when we look at dance as a gift in the era of globalization. Throughout, she asks how dance brings people together in digital spaces and what dance’s digital travels might mean for how we experience and express community. From original research on dance today to political economies of digital media to the philosophy of dance, Perpetual Motion provides an ambitious, invigorating look at a commonly shared practice.

The Law of Perpetual Motion can be defined as a mechanism that never stops moving. If it starts rolling once and is left running, it would run indefinitely. People may not be aware of the Big Freeze. It is the theoretical end of everything. It is the stage at which the universe has stretched to having no leverage of thermodynamic energy. In other words, it is the threshold at which the entire universe will cease to maintain motion. The entire universe will become absolute zero. It is the coldest temperature, where everything is at a standstill. In short, the Big Freeze is a period of infinite, everlasting, and absolutely quiet darkness. It will not repeat for another 100 trillion years or more. It has to be kept in mind that an actual perpetual motion machine would be capable of running for at least that long. Many plans for perpetual motion machines may be seen online that claim to be functional. Looking at those designs, it is not illogical to believe that some of them could (if properly designed) continue running. If someone wants to succeed, the impact would be massive. There is an infinite supply of energy. However, it would be more than that by way of unrestricted energy. Perpetual motion devices governed by the Law of Perpetual Motion are, unfortunately, unattainable related to the inherent physics of the universe.

German writer, critic, and theorist Paul Scheerbart (1863–1915) died nearly a century ago, but his influence is still being felt today. Considered by some a mad eccentric and by others a visionary political thinker in his own time, he is now experiencing a revival thanks to a new generation of scholars who are rightfully situating him in the modernist pantheon. Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! is the first collection of Scheerbart’s multifarious writings to be published in English. In addition to a selection of his fantastical short stories, it includes the influential architectural manifesto Glass Architecture and his literary tour-de-force Perpetual Motion: The Story of an Invention. The latter, written in the guise of a scientific work (complete with technical diagrams), was taken as such when first published but in reality is a fiction—albeit one with an important message. Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! is richly illustrated with period material, much of it never before reproduced, including a selection of artwork by Paul Scheerbart himself. Accompanying this original material is a selection of essays by scholars, novelists, and filmmakers commissioned for this publication to illuminate Scheerbart’s importance, then and now, in the worlds of art, architecture, and culture. Coedited by artist Josiah McElheny and Christine Burgin, with new artwork created for this publication by McElheny, Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! is a long-overdue monument to a modern master.

A memoir exploring a young woman’s troubled childhood, her bond with her older brother, and the toll of drugs and alcohol on their lives. Inspired by a brother’s high school science project—a perpetual motion machine that could save the world—The Perpetual Motion Machine is a memoir in essays that attempts to save a sibling by depicting the visceral pain that accompanies longing for some past impossibility. The collection has been a science project in its study of memory, in the calculation and plotting of the moments that make up a childhood. The preparation has been “in the field” in that it is built upon the gathering of lived experience; the evidence is photo albums, family interviews, and anecdotes from friends. The project has been one giant experiment—to see if they can all make it out alive. “Full of hard-won wisdom, beautifully written and deeply moving . . . an exquisite chronicle of family and trauma and hope and longing, and announces Brittany Ackerman as an exciting new voice in letters.” —Alan Heathcock, author of VOLT and 40 “[An] instantly engaging and wildly engrossing memoir. . . . Her prose is accessible and affecting, and her family story is exquisite in its luminous detail and intimacy, full of heartbreak and humor.” ―Davy Rothbart, author of My Heart is an Idiot, creator of FOUND Magazine, and contributor to This American Life “Told in simple, spare language, Ackerman’s story is powerful not only for the story it tells, but also for the eloquent silences and chronological ruptures that symbolize the painfully fractured nature of her life and that of her brother. A brief but poignant memoir.” —Kirkus Reviews

In June of 1712, a previously obscure German-Polish inventor named Johann Ernst Elias Bessler first came to prominence in the town of Gera, Saxony, by publicly exhibiting a remarkable invention. It was a self-moving perpetual motion wheel whose secret mechanics had taken him a decade of sacrifice, toil, and the construction of about a hundred handmade models to finally obtain. In the years following, he continued to improve his successful invention and eventually constructed and demonstrated a twelve-foot-diameter wheel at a count’s castle in the town of Kassel, Saxony. By then, his marvelous wheels were the talk of European high society and had been witnessed by thousands of people. His dream was to sell one of his amazing machines and then use the money to found a religious university dedicated to teaching the many technical crafts he had learned during his life and travels. Bessler, however, fearing an unscrupulous buyer might try to learn the secret of his wheels before complete payment was made, demanded a single upfront sum that at the time was equal to the value of a ton of gold! It was an amount of money that only the richest could afford to pay, yet none seemed willing to do so unless he could know the secret of Bessler’s wheels before the sale was made in order to satisfy himself that he was not paying a king’s ransom for a worthless fake. As a consequence of this stalemate, the invention was never sold, and in November of 1745, Bessler, then sixty-five years of age, was killed in a tragic construction accident. He took the secret of his wheels to his grave, and it has remained there for the last three centuries despite the efforts of thousands of perpetual motion seekers to rediscover it. Now, however, with the publication of The Triumphant Orffyrean Perpetual Motion Finally Explained! this situation has changed. After discovering an unsuspected source of hidden instructions Bessler left to guide future reverse engineers of his wheels and then using them to construct and test over two thousand computer models, author and researcher Kenneth W. Behrendt can finally reveal the long-sought secret of Bessler’s wheels and do so with enough detail to allow them to be duplicated today! This groundbreaking treatment of the subject should be of great interest to anybody wondering about the possibility of self-motive machinery in general or seeking to explore the topic of Bessler’s wheels at a far deeper level than was previously possible.

Imprisoned for life aboard a zeppelin that floats high above a fantastic metropolis, greeting-card writer Harold Winslow pens his memoirs. His only companions are the disembodied voice of Miranda Taligent, the only woman he has ever loved, and the cryogenically frozen body of her father, Prospero, the genius and industrial magnate who drove her insane. As Harold heads toward a last desperate confrontation with Prospero to save Miranda's life, he finds himself an unwitting participant in the creation of the greatest invention of them all: the perpetual motion machine. Beautifully written, stunningly imagined, and wickedly funny, Dexter Palmer's The Dream of Perpetual Motion is a heartfelt meditation on the place of love in a world dominated by technology.