Sunday's Experience with Perpetual Motion
Perhaps foolishly, I try to keep an open mind about “inventions” that are tantamount to perpetual motion machines. Having said that, when I run across people who claim to have invented one — and who want to show it to me — (which happens every few weeks), I tell them in advance that they need to show me a working model, and solid proof that what I’m seeing is real.
Yesterday’s encounter was a classic example of how these turn out. I set up a meeting (which wasn’t inconvenient, as it was on my way to the beach with the kids) on the basis that I could be shown clearly that the device (which I can’t describe because I signed a non-disclosure agreement) generates more power than it consumes. Instead, I saw a device consuming power, and generating some — the comparison between the two quantities entirely lacking.
“This doesn’t demonstrate what you claimed,” I told the guy.
“Oh don’t worry about that,” he replied, “That will be clear in what we’re working on now. All we need is a couple of million dollars from our investors, and we’ll have it within a few weeks.”
“Sorry. I won’t be participating. Best of luck.”
I think we need to be open to ideas that lie outside of our paradigms. I also think that we need to the hold the bar quite high re: credibility.
Some of the Perpetual power guys are very entertaining. There have been a lot of technology invented and developed but nothing as big as fire 5,000 years ago, metal, 3,000 years ago, Electricity 350 years ago, Electronic (telegraph) communication 150 years ago, Automobiles 130 years ago, Airplanes 110 years ago, Vacuum tubes 90 years ago, Nuclear fission and fusion 70 years ago, Transistors and Integrated circuits 50 years ago, Programmable Computers 40 years ago, But since then we have just been refining existing technologies, no “Fundamental” developments so that guy who quit the Patent Office in 1860 because “Every thing has been invented” was a few years early.