A crankshaft is a rotating shaft which converts reciprocating motion of the pistons into rotational motion. Crankshafts are commonly used in internal combustion engines and consist of a series of cranks and crankpins to which the connecting rods are attached.
George Westinghouse Jr. was an American entrepreneur and engineer based in Pennsylvania who invented the railway air brake and was a pioneer of the electrical industry, gaining his first patent at the age of 19. Westinghouse saw the potential in alternating current as an electricity distribution system in the early 1880s and put all his resources into developing and marketing it, a move that put his business in direct competition with the Edison direct current system. In 1911 Westinghouse received the AIEE's Edison Medal "For meritorious achievement in connection with the development of the alternating current system."
Perpetual motion is the motion of bodies that continues forever. A perpetual motion machine is a hypothetical machine that can do work indefinitely without an energy source. This kind of machine is impossible, as it would violate the first or second law of thermodynamics.
Samuel Morey was an American inventor, who worked on early internal combustion engines and was a pioneer in steamships who accumulated a total of 20 patents.
A crank is an arm attached at a right angle to a rotating shaft by which reciprocating motion is imparted to or received from the shaft. It is used to convert circular motion into reciprocating motion, or vice versa. The arm may be a bent portion of the shaft, or a separate arm or disk attached to it. Attached to the end of the crank by a pivot is a rod, usually called a connecting rod (conrod).
Oliver Evans was an American inventor, engineer and businessman born in rural Delaware and later rooted commercially in Philadelphia. He was one of the first Americans building steam engines and an advocate of high pressure steam. A pioneer in the fields of automation, materials handling and steam power, Evans was one of the most prolific and influential inventors in the early years of the United States. He left behind a long series of accomplishments, most notably designing and building the first fully automated industrial process, the first high-pressure steam engine, and the first amphibious vehicle and American automobile.
The history of perpetual motion machines dates at least back to the Middle Ages. For millennia, it was not clear whether perpetual motion devices were possible or not, but modern theories of thermodynamics have shown that they are impossible. Despite this, many attempts have been made to construct such machines, continuing into modern times. Modern designers and proponents sometimes use other terms, such as "overunity", to describe their inventions.
Johann Ernst Elias Bessler, known as Orffyreus or Orffyré, was a German entrepreneur who claimed to have built several perpetual motion machines. Those claims generated considerable interest and controversy among some of the leading natural philosophers of the day, including Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Johann Bernoulli, John Theophilus Desaguliers, and Willem 's Gravesande. The modern scientific consensus is that Bessler perpetrated a deliberate fraud, although the details of this have not been satisfactorily explained.
The water fuel cell is a technical design of a "perpetual motion machine" created by American Stanley Allen Meyer. Meyer claimed that an automobile retrofitted with the device could use water as fuel instead of gasoline. Meyer's claims about his "Water Fuel Cell" and the car that it powered were found to be fraudulent by an Ohio court in 1996.
Eugène Augustin Lauste was a French inventor instrumental in the technological development of the history of cinema.
Newman's Energy Machine was a DC motor which the inventor, Joseph Newman, claimed to produce mechanical power exceeding the electrical power being supplied to it. In 1979, Newman attempted to patent the device, but was rejected by the United States Patent Office as being a perpetual motion machine. When the rejection was later appealed, the United States district court requested that Newman's machine be tested by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS). The NBS concluded in June 1986 that output power was not greater than the input. Thus, the patent was again denied. The scientific community has rejected Newman's ideas about electricity and magnetism as pseudoscientific and his claims as false.
Josef Papp was an engineer who was awarded U.S. patents related to the development of an engine, and also claimed to have invented a jet submarine.
Cox's timepiece is a clock developed in the 1760s by James Cox. It was developed in collaboration with John Joseph Merlin. Cox claimed that his design was a true perpetual motion machine, but as the device is powered from changes in atmospheric pressure via a mercury barometer, this is not the case. The clock still exists, but was deactivated at the time of its relocation to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
A reactionless drive is a hypothetical device producing motion without the exhaust of a propellant. A propellantless drive is not necessarily reactionless when it constitutes an open system interacting with external fields; but a reactionless drive is a particular case of a propellantless drive that is a closed system, presumably in contradiction with the law of conservation of momentum. Reactionless drives are often considered similar to a perpetual motion machine. The name comes from Newton's third law, often expressed as, "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."
Steorn Ltd was a small, private technology development company based in Dublin, Ireland. In August 2006, it announced that it had developed a technology to provide "free, clean, and constant energy" via an apparent perpetual motion machine, something which is contrary to the law of conservation of energy, a fundamental principle of physics.
Daniel French (1770–1853), a "Yankee" inventor, was born in Berlin, Connecticut. From an early age French strove to become a "mechanician," an artisan trained in the theory of mechanics and skilled in the working of metals at increasing levels of precision. His friend Oliver Evans, an accomplished engineer, described French as an "original and ingenious inventor." French's most significant invention was the horizontally mounted, high-pressure, non-condensing, directly connected steam engine for mills, boats, etc. French was awarded a patent for his steam engine in 1809. This type of engine became standard on the western steamboat.
Renaissance technology was the set of European artifacts and inventions which spread through the Renaissance period, roughly the 14th century through the 16th century. The era is marked by profound technical advancements such as the printing press, linear perspective in drawing, patent law, double shell domes and bastion fortresses. Sketchbooks from artisans of the period give a deep insight into the mechanical technology then known and applied.
Perepiteia is claimed to be a new generator developed by the Canadian inventor Thane Heins. The device is named after the Greek word for peripety, a dramatic reversal of circumstances or turning point in a story. The device was quickly attributed the term "perpetual motion machine" by several media outlets. Due to the long history of hoaxes and failures of perpetual motion machines and the incompatibility of such a device with accepted principles of physics, Heins' claims about Perepiteia have been treated with considerable skepticism.
Various scientists and engineers contributed to the development of internal combustion engines. In 1791, John Barber developed a turbine. In 1794 Thomas Mead patented a gas engine. Also in 1794 Robert Street patented an internal combustion engine, which was also the first to use the liquid fuel (petroleum) and built an engine around that time. In 1798, John Stevens designed the first American internal combustion engine. In 1807, French engineers Nicéphore and Claude Niépce ran a prototype internal combustion engine, using controlled dust explosions, the Pyréolophore. This engine powered a boat on the Saône river, France. The same year, the Swiss engineer François Isaac de Rivaz built an internal combustion engine ignited by electric spark. In 1823, Samuel Brown patented the first internal combustion engine to be applied industrially, one of his engines pumped water on the Croydon Canal from 1830 to 1836. He also demonstrated a boat using his engine on the Thames in 1827, and an engine driven carriage in 1828.
Coleman Sellers II was a prominent American engineer, chief engineer of William Sellers & Co., professor of mechanics at the Franklin Institute, professor of engineering practice at Stevens Institute of Technology and inventor. He obtained more than thirty letters-patent for inventions of his own, and served as president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers from 1886 to 1887.
