John Collins wrote:
Many years ago I researched all available magazines published world wide but I did not get around to investigating the newspapers, so as far as I'm concerned it's an untapped resource.
Question for JC: You said you researched PM in magazines published worldwide. Have you shared on this forum any interesting PM articles you have found? If yes, remember the topic? If no, are you saving them for a new book? The forum members have written that they like reading here about the articles I have found and have asked me to post more. Can you post the articles you have found? Are any of the articles I have found new to you?
I have just discovered a gold mine for PM research. In my nation’s capitol, Washington, D.C., we have the Library of Congress. I just found out they have a free digital online library of all major newspapers published in this country covering hundreds of years. They also have a good search engine where you can look for an exact phrase; I use “perpetual motion�. The search engine on this forum database will not do a phrase which makes it very difficult to research past topics.
Are there any forum members that can tell me does your country have a national library with digital archives and public access like my Library of Congress does? I can not find any links online to such.
Since the forum members wrote they would like to see more PM articles, I’ll post the American newspaper articles in groups as I find them. Here is the first group:
The St. Louis Republic. (St. Louis, Mo.), Aug. 11, 1901, Magazine Section, pg. 36
ST. LOUIS MAN THINKS HE HAS FOUND THE SECRET OF PERPETUAL MOTION -
Has Made a Machine Which Has Been Running for Thirty Days Without a New Supply of Power – He Calls His Secret “Force Momentum�.
A St. Louis man, Harry Burness Dean of 3701 Kossuth Avenue, thinks he has discovered the secret of perpetual motion. Dean is a machinist. His grandfather was a watchmaker, and he spent his life looking for the secret that would set aside the natural laws of gravity and friction. His father, a bookkeeper, did the same. They worked away with always the same result – failure. Harry followed in their lead.
He came upon his discovery about the first of June. He says: “I got my idea while working for a clock company which manufactures electric self-winding clocks. I was working on a clock which had been sent back. In readjusting the winding part, I accidently left a little side screw loose in the pin the regulates the winding, making over half an inch play. There should not have been any play at all. When I connected it to the dry battery for testing I found that with the half-inch play or travel, the clock was rewound sufficiently to run twenty minutes instead of the normal six. That is as much of the discovery as I can tell you. The rest is my idea based upon it. I do not use electricity. My machine manufactures its own power to run itself with a little surplus power. I call my secret power the ‘force momentum.’ I place a certain amount of power in the machine in the first place. This is never lost. No fuel is needed to keep this power alive. Every five minutes the machine winds itself. It will do this until the machine wears out. With hardened brass and the best steel its life should be long. I have not overcome friction, and my machine does not run contrary to gravity, but I consider it perpetual motion as it will run until the metal wears out.�
The model, which Dean keeps locked away in a trunk at his home, is a simple clock, with perhaps a little less mechanism than that of the ordinary one. His model is made from the works of an ordinary alarm clock, with the little secret mechanism added. The speed is regulated the same as any clock or watch. There are no weights. Our reporter visited him. “Here, I will show it to you,� he said. Lifting a ticking bundle from his trunk, he threw it into the air and shook it, turned it over and over, holding it in all position, but there was still the same steady tick, marking off the seconds. But he could not be prevailed upon to show his secret.
“Will your machine be practical for use in running heavy machinery?� he was asked. “It will.� he declared. “My secret can be worked in running the biggest mills. In propelling sea vessels and in transporting from one end of the country to the other. There is no limit to its use. I can do anything with it. It will do away with coal, wood and all kinds of fuel. It will replace electricity and steam. I have discovered something better than any other person has discovered. I have distanced them all – Franklin, Morse, Fulton, Edison, Marconi, all of them. A man in the automobile trade is interested in my machine. My machine in automobiles would mean a wonderful improvement. The weight and noise would be done away with. The vehicle could move along with the stealth of a cat.�
Bisbee Daily Review (Bisbee, Ariz.) Aug. 15, 1902, pg. 1
PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE RUNNING
Kansas City Mechanic Exhibits a Simple Contrivance Which He and Others Believe Solves the Vexatious Problem.
Kansas City, Aug. 14 – J. S. Grimes, a mechanic who was born in Yell county, Arkansas, and can barely read and write, exhibited a perpetual motion machine in the office of the Kansas City Journal tonight that runs for hours with no other power than that furnished by the machine itself. The Invention is simple, but it is the result of twenty years work. Grime first took a circular piece of cut from a thick board and trimmed down the edge to resemble a circular switchback railway. In the centre of this board he fastened a second circular board on a steel post that fit into a ball-bearing bicycle axle.
To the top board was fastened, by means of a rod, a small wheel, which was so fixed that it would strike at each revolution of the upper board at a point near the top of the incline plane of the lower board, the lower board being slightly inclined. Grimes than placed a weight on top of the upper disc, placed the wheel at the top of the inclined plane, released it and the machine began to move and continued in motion until stopped by its inventor.
The machine is started by the wheel running down the incline on one side. This takes the weight on the opposite side away from the center of gravity and carries the machine around until the wheel strikes the top of the incline again when new force is imparted to the revolving upper disk.
Grimes says he worked for six years before he discovered a way to force the carrier wheel over the highest point of the circular track, although the distance to overcome was less than an inch. A company is being organized to exploit the invention.
Arizona Silver Belt (Globe City, Pinal County, Ariz.) Oct. 5, 1905, pg. 6 [ Did you know about this Doc? Ever see it? ]
DOINGS IN PHOENIX AND THE SALT RIVER VALLEY
The Gila Valley Bank is the possessor of a new clock, of which the entire force is very proud. Cashier Smith claims that the clock is constructed on the principal of perpetual motion, and it is said to be the only clock of the kind in existence. As soon as the clock was completed the inventor died, and the great secret died with him, hence the bank possesses the only perpetual motion clock in the world. This new time piece is attracting much attention.
[ Gila Valley Bank was in Solomon, Arizona. It became the Valley National Bank Of Arizona. ]
Hoplinsville Kentuckian (Hopkinsville, Ky.) Jun. 24, 1909, pg. 1
Perpetual Motion – Brooklyn Carpenter Says He Has Solved the Riddle
New York, June 22. – Another man registered a claim today as a discoverer of perpetual motion. He is Frank McMahon, a white-haired carpenter of Brooklyn who has invented a wheel with twelve spokes. On the end of each spoke is a sliding weight which is connected with a piston on the spoke behind. These sliding weights, Mr. McMahon says, make one side of the wheel heavier than the other. Thus gravity makes the wheel revolve. Fearing that someone might steal his invention, McMahon would not show it until he hears from the patent office.
The San Francisco Call (San Francisco, Calif.), Mar. 29, 1896, pg. 25
Perpetual Motion – A James County Tennessee boy is said to have discovered the long sought-for “perpetual motion.�
The latest claimant for this honor is Bert Howell, aged 20 years, who lives on his father’s farm in James County, about twenty miles from Chattanooga. He has, by a combination of cogs, wheels, springs, etc., produced a machine which of its own volition, without assistance, has been running for several weeks. When Howell returns from his plow at the end of each day he finds his little machine running as though for dear life. When he arises from his bed in the morning that little mystery is found to be still at its incessant work, and it keeps up its movements from day to day as thought it were trying to annihilate time.
Young Howell thinks he has produced perpetual motion and is so jealous of his secret that he has his machined nailed up securely in a box, and the only part visible is a shaft, to which a flywheel is attached. The wheel never stops in its endless whirl. Attachments have been made to several grinding-mills of neighboring farmers, and the work of grinding goes rapidly on. Howell is a poor boy, having no money with which to have his device patented, but a neighbor has furnished the funds for the purpose. A duplicate machine is now at Washington in the Patent Office. – Chattanooga News.
Fort Worth Daily Gazette (Fort Worth, Tex.) Apr. 27, 1888, pg. 2
LATEST IN PERPETUAL MOTION
A man in Oneida Has Discovered the Secret – His Machine
For the last twenty years David Jennings of Oneida, NY, has been trying to solve perpetual motion. He has had his machine in operation for several days in the Evans house. The workings of the machine have been witnessed by at least a thousand people, as far distant as Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Chicago. At the time, the Herald’s reporter and artist visited Mr. Jennings at his model-room and workshop. In the center of the room stands the 97th model that Mr. Jennings has experimented upon. The inventor allowed an examination of the machine, and he proceeded to set his motor in motion.
The machine is suspended in a wooded frame about 6 ft. long, 2 ft. wide, and 7 ft. high. It is in the form of an endless chain which runs in the figure of a triangle over three pulleys, leaving three spaces or grades to pass over: one going down, another up, and a third about on a level. The line traversed is nearly like the framework of a harp standing upright. The down line of the chain is nearly as long as the other two. The links are about 2 inches in length, and are almost in the shape of a triangle. At the top of the frame is located the main pulley, over which the chain runs. It is attached to a small shaft, which is geared to a fly wheel about 3 ft. in circumference, and which, Mr. Jennings said, could be made to make about 1,000 revolutions a minute.
The links of the chain are so made with automatic working hooks that as they move over the wheel at the top and begin to descend, the hooks catch up every other link and make a double chain of it. The links are held in place until each one begins to turn to go up, when the hook drops out and the chain moves by single links. Mr. Jennings says that the weight going up is only about half that when coming down. The increased weight downward serves to pull the single link chain up and around the two sides of the triangle, the inventor says.
The main pulley-wheel on top is composed of two disks, upon the outer edge of which rest the axles which run through the links of the chain, and which it supports as the chain runs over the wheel. The chain must be properly hooked by hand before it can be started on its first perpetual motion tour. To start the motor, Mr. Jennings removed a small pin located on an upper corner of the frame, and apparently the chain started off on its triangular tour without any power, and gradually gained momentum. Mr. Jennings stepped to the opposite side of the frame and regulated the motion with a small brake.
“It has been 21 years since I built my first model to try and solve the perpetual motion problem,� said Mr. Jennings. “I have built 97 models, and experimented on more than 60 different principles.� In reference to securing a patent on his invention, Mr. Jennings said: “The papers are in Washington, and my Syracuse attorneys are hastening matters as much as possible.� - Syracuse Herald
-Rocky