Perpetual Motion (history) by Percy Verance, 1916

[coylo]

This book has been uploaded by the University of California Library.

It states on the first page that it comprises a revision of "The Search for Self-Motive Power during the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries", London, 1861, and "A History for the Search of Self-Motive Power from the 13th to the 19th Century", London, 1870, by Henry Dircks.

If someone has already posted this link then excuse my ignorance!

What an unexpected find, all 376 pages....enjoy! (click - full screen)

http://www.scribd.com/doc/445852/Perpet ... ated_doc=1

[MC]

A wonderful find...

Thanks a lot, Coylo!

MC

[DrWhat]

I like the author: "Percy Verance"! (ie a play on the word "perseverance" which is what is needed in this endeavour!)

[evgwheel]

Great Coylo. I downloaded the book in adobe (30mb) Even Bessler is mentioned in the book.
Things haven’t changed much in the last 400 hundred years. Great read and will keep me busy for a while. Well worth the download. Thanks for the link.
(Snippet from the book)
Jean-Ernest Eli-Bessler (Councillor) Orffyreus
was born in 1680, near Zittan, Alsace,
France. He was a man of great ability and attained
an eminent place in public life. The title
"Councillor," he acquired by having been selected
Councillor to the Prince of Hesse Castle. The
best information concerning him indicates that
he was of very erratic temperament, given to fits
of melancholy and extreme anger. In early life
he was a student of theology and medicine, but his
penchant was really for mechanics. He claimed
that in his search for whatever might prove curious
and valuable he had discovered Perpetual
Motion, and that between the years 1712 and
1719 he had made two successfully working
machines on his system. The following discussions
disclose all that is known of the claimed
inventions of these two distinguished Perpetual
Motion workers.

[AB Hammer]

Thanks for the info coylo

This will become good reeding and I saw a wheel in it that resembles Doc's but only in similarity.

[DrWhat]

This weekend I'm testing a totally new design. Lets hope...

[Mr.Umez]

This should be required reading for all new members! I like the author, he knows exactly who we seekers are, and we haven't changed a bit in the last hundred years!

It is believed by the author that the perusal of the present volume by anyone whose mind has been attracted by the subject of perpetual motion.... to direct his mind from a struggle with theories long ago exploed and may result in directing his efforts to things pratical and not without hope of attainment.

It's so funny because it is so true! Sometimes you just have to laugh at yourself. If someone told me this ten years ago, I probably wouldn't have done anything different. But still, what if I had taken up origami instead?

Oh well, I'll stick to PM simply because I'm getting too old for drinking, carousing and cheap women. I've also collected a lot of lego that I don't know what to do with otherwise.

Cheers everyone!

[Furcurequs]

I believe this is an edited and searchable version of the same (free) book in a 5.5 MB pdf file. It seems pretty nice.

You might want to double check me, though. I have problems with the scribd site.

For this Datum edition, the original scanned text was migrated and typeset in
Latex. All the illustrations were cleaned of spots and discoloration.

http://4dlab.info/EBook-Perpetual-Motion.htm

http://4dlab.info/PerpetualMotion.pdf

Dwayne

[getterdone]

Interesting book Dwayne, I'll have to finish reading it tommorow

[John Collins]

For those who don't know, Percy Verance was the pseudonym of Henry Dircks. In 1861, Henry Dircks, a civil engineer, from London published a work entitled "Perpetuum Mobile; or, Search for Self-Motive Power, During the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries." The book contains 599 pages, and was followed in 1870, by a second series by the same author entitled "Perpetuum Mobile, or a History of the Search for Self- Motive Power from the Thirteenth, to the Nineteenth Century." In these two books there is amassed a wonderful amount of material showing on the part of the author diligence, great patience and wide and thorough search.

I am fortunate to own copies of both volumes.

JC

[Fletcher]

Percy Verance = perseverance

[Furcurequs]

It seems I had already downloaded this as a scanned .pdf file from here:

http://archive.org/details/perpetualmotionc00verarich

...but that copy seems to freeze my .pdf viewers.

I guess that's why I didn't realize I already had this (e)book. I couldn't read it.

There are some other file types on the archive.org site that I probably should have tried. The text version likely would have worked fine, but I didn't think it had the drawings, so I didn't download it.

...and I've not yet experimented with any of those formats for e-readers. There's probably some downloadable software that would display them, I guess.

Anyway, the newer version of this book that I posted works fine in my pdf viewers, so I look forward to reading all of it. I've only skimmed through it a bit thus far.

John,

I looked through my computer and found a .pdf copy of Henry Dircks' second perpetual motion book - "Perpetuum Mobile, or a History of the Search for Self- Motive Power from the Thirteenth, to the Nineteenth Century" - that I had already gotten from Google.

I've checked online, but I haven't been able to find a downloadable copy of the first version.

It must be nice having both - and on paper!

Oh, and when I was skimming through the first of this Percy Verance book, I noticed that what Percy had to say about Henry seemed a bit odd for them being the same person.

I then realized that this book was first published/copyrighted 43 years after Henry Dircks died!

My guess is that they are two different people, but both are given credit and listed together since Percy used Dircks' work.

Did you have more info on this or did you perhaps (like me) just see the two names together and (initially) assume they were the same person?

Well, hang in there everybody.

Dwayne

[Furcurequs]

Okay, I found both of the Dircks books downloadable for free on Google:

"Perpetuum Mobile; or, search for self-motive power during the 17th, 18th and 19 Centuries
, Volume 1 (Google eBook)"

http://books.google.com/books?id=W5A5AAAAcAAJ

"Perpetuum Mobile:
Or, A History of the Search for Self-motive Power from the 13th to the 19th Century (Google eBook)"

http://books.google.com/books?id=lEWF9o2Ba4kC

There's probably a chance that I already have them both. I'm just not a very organized person.

Dwayne