My father spent at least 40 years of his life working to develop an internally-driven perpetual motion machine. And I was a true believer, at least up until college.
My father held no stock in supposed refutations by mathematicians and physicists of the possibility of such a perpetual motion machine. He disagreed that such a machine would violate one or more of the laws of motion and thermodynamics, and firmly held that in the early 1700s Johann Bessler (better known under the pseudonym “Orffyreus”) had already invented such a machine. He thought that most people, including mathematicians and physicists, were of limited imagination and mechanical ingenuity, and too conservative when it came to challenging preconceived ideas. He argued that it was the combination of a deep-seated understanding of theory, with a distinct lack of experience in actually crafting things, that engendered the skepticism and conservatism of most mathematicians and physicists. My father would therefore be the one to reinvent it, based on historical clues gleaned from extant reports of Bessler’s machine and his own imagination and mechanical ingenuity. And there is no doubt that my father was extremely imaginative and mechanically ingenious. An electrician by trade with a workshop filled with tools, parts, and materials, he could seemingly build anything, and did build many things, from a highly efficient electric motor to uniquely amazing furniture.
My father called his work on perpetual motion, “Project X.” It was to be kept strictly a secret. Our immediate family knew about it, but no others. I do not even know whether any of my grandparents knew about it. It seemed that every month, my father would come up with a new iteration of Project X, or a new idea related to the project that he would soon implement. After I had grown up and left the house for good, every time I visited he would speak to me in hushed, important tones, “Marky, let’s go down to the shop. Let me show you my new Project X. I feel really good about this one.” This secrecy only lost its urgency in the last decade or so of his life. When buying parts from local industrial suppliers he would talk about his project, much to my mother’s chagrin.
There was one unforgettable experience growing up, around the age of 12, when I believed that my father had accomplished the “impossible.” He had brought a particular version of the machine up from his workshop to the house. Similar to many of the other versions, the apparatus was 27″ to 30″ in diameter, approximately the size of a bicycle wheel, with devices made up of rods, ball bearings, magnets, springs and other elastic elements, mounted to the circular apparatus. This time he let it …
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