Perpetual motion seems to be gaining momentum. Just when you think the whole subject is losing impetus, it takes off again. Free-energy designs and machines are being furiously discussed, producing copious amounts of heat and sound. Perhaps it’s simply down to all those Tom Mangold programmes about the looming oil crisis.

One of the most famous examples of a supposed perpetual motion machine is that of Johann Bessler’s wheel, which was deemed by many eminent persons of its time to have achieved an aim pursued in European science since the Middle Ages: rotating a weight in such a way that more energy was produced by its fall than was needed to raise it against the force of gravity. The exact circumstances leading to Bessler’s breakthrough are obscure; one story suggests that his inspiration derived from a machine he once saw at a monastery.

For hundreds of years, thinking on the subject ran on the lines of a machine that would somehow be able to ‘trick’ gravity into reacting as if the mass of a weight in motion was less than when it was at rest. These self-moving machines, usually wheels aligned along the centre of gravity, like waterwheels, always had as their ingenious component a way of holding and releasing the weights. If the momentum of the weights could be greater than the combined forces of gravity, friction, and air resistance, such a wheel should actually not only turn by ‘itself’, it should, since one half of its rim is travelling downhill (ad infinitum), also increase its speed, producing enough surplus force to be harnessed for other purposes. 1 After Joule’s first law of thermodynamics (the conservation of energy), in which energy cannot be created, this objective wasn’t just practically insurmountable, it was officially impossible.

Yet by 1712, when he was 32, Bessler, a craftsman who had travelled widely in western Europe, was exhibiting a wheel at his house in Gera, Germany, that could self-rotate at 50 rpm. A statement written and signed by 14 pillars of the local community – aristocrats, doctors, professors – read:

“The long sought after and desired Perpetuum Mobile has been invented […] It is a unique and highly useful machine that rotates without any weights, wind, water, or spring mechanisms. […] it is also able to easily drive other machines for which a great force is necessary, such as waterworks and mills...” 2

Surely, there’s not an inventor alive who wouldn’t frame that and stick it on the wall of their workshop. Bessler, though, did not handle the situation well. Genius he may have been – at least behind closed doors, where it is said he had laboured for 10 years to achieve his goal – but when it came to affairs of business and politics, he failed to see the wider picture. He offered to sell the secret of his wheel for £20,000, a sum worth at least 20 times that today. Before long, accusations of fraud were being made, and Bessler broke up his wheel and left town.

Undeterred, he built a bigger version and performed another supervised test before a group headed by Moritz-Wilhelm, Duke of Zeitz. Having been present at an occasion on which extraordinary scientific claims were made – in my case, it was seeing Prof. Martin Fleischmann talking about Cold Fusion at the Royal Institution of Great Britain – I can imagine what it must have been like for Bessler to face his sceptical critics. But Bessler, or Orffyreus as he also liked to call himself, 3 allowed everyone present to inspect the machine’s components, and even to move it to different parts of the room, where it could be stopped and restarted with a light push. Bessler obtained his certificate, as well as testimonials (“We have demonstrated that in reality Bessler’s wheel is far removed from any deception”) from Christian Wolff, English mathematics professor.

Whether or not his detractors actually saw the invention is unknown, but the campaign to discredit him intensified. Again, he destroyed his wheel, and found patronage from Karl, the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel. In return for seeing the secret inside the wheel, Karl provided Bessler with income and lodging. The inventor was now set for his grandest and most famous demonstration.

And this is a good point to mention Steorn. As reported in FT216:12, this Dublin-based company recently announced that it had found a method of producing “free, clean, and constant energy”. 4 Aware of the perils awaiting those whose plans and prototypes litter the history of perpetual motion, they decided to take a public approach, throwing down the challenge to the world’s scientists and applying for a jury to determine the validity of their claims. At the 8 September deadline, “more than 3,000 scientists” had applied.

So, by the time you read this, 12 very smart people will be locked in a room in Dublin with the invention, and at least one of them may well be thinking: “Yes, my understanding of the fundamentals of reality is all wrong. Scientifically, we are back at year zero”. Well, that, presumably is what the founders of Steorn will be hoping for; if not, their claims of “a significant challenge to our current understanding of the Universe” and the possibility of “a world with an infinite supply of clean energy for all” are going to need more cunning explaining than the most tortuous locked-room mystery ever devised.

On 10 November 1717, Bessler found himself in a similar situation. With his third wheel ready, the test was to take place at Castle Weissenstein in front of a number of people of unquestionable integrity and learning. After all the parts were inspected and the surrounding rooms searched for concealed mechanisms and people, the wheel was put together and set in motion. On 12 November, the room containing it was locked and sealed with wax. Two military sentries stood outside the door.

On 4 January 1718 – 54 days later – the room was opened and the wheel was found to be still turning at a steady 26 rpm. There were calls for an even longer trial, but Karl wouldn’t have it, convinced that the trial was sufficient to demonstrate the wheel’s usefulness. For four more years the wheel was examined and tested. The Emperor of Austria’s architect wrote: “I am quite persuaded that there exists no reason why this machine should not have the name Perpetual Motion given to it; and I have good reason to believe that it is one.”

Everything was going perfectly for Bessler.

So, something was bound to go wrong.

From around the end of July 2006, discussions flared up at www.bessler.com, a website where engineers, inventors, tinkerers, and hucksters gather to… well, not quite share ideas about their inventions, more to drop significant hints to one other. A lot of them seem to be holding out for wealth or immortality; one, a certain Jim Kelly, claimed to have reproduced Bessler’s technique sometime in the 1960s but had lost his wheel, and the less sketchy parts of the design – i.e., the really clever bit – had fallen down a memory hole. As others joined in to put their cards on the table, including at least one other Bessler-cracker, Kelly made ever more grandiose pronouncements, provoking numerous online spats.

When Ken Toliver, another Bessler claimant, proclaimed: “As the discoverer of the mechanism Bessler used, I will be remembered longer than he is”, you had to admire the man’s confidence. Kelly must have read this, retorting with: “Gentlemen: I am coming down the home stretch!!!! Get the Roses ready. My alternate fuel engine is ready!!!” By now I was cancelling my electricity supply and drawing up plans for a Kelly machine-powered off-the-grid indoor sauna and faux-volcanic heated outdoor swimming pool.

What struck me, though, was that no one seemed to want to admit to having read anything about the history of weight- and gravity-powered perpetual motion devices. If they were familiar with the literature, they’d know that every text agrees that building a PM machine simply can’t be done. Every attempt has been shown to be a failure…

Except that of Johann Bessler – who, despite claims of fraud that went on for years, never divulged how he had done it. His reputation became so damaged he never could get the asking price he wanted for his wheel. Eventually, he broke up the parts, documents, and models so they could not be stolen, and wrote a book that dangles the solution in front of the reader in the form of hints and codes – an alchemical tract for engineers. He died in 1745, aged 65, while working on a windmill design.

It would be a poor thing if the fate of Bessler’s wheel befell Steorn’s device. The story of Bessler’s invention shows how even the most positive conclusions by the most qualified people are only a part of the long and difficult process of being accepted as a revolutionary inventor.