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Comment by dr_dshiv

3 days ago

Dutch alchemist Cornelis Drebbel got a patent in 1598 for the design of a perpetual motion machine. It was a clock that was powered by daily changes in barometric pressure. In the early 1900s, he was largely scrubbed from the history books because everyone knows that perpetual motion is impossible.

The clock worked, of course. There are still paintings of it — based on those, rolex made a functional replica.

But if you've never heard about Drebbel, perpetual motion is the reason. That wasn't his only invention, of course. He also invented:

* The first cybernetic system (a thermostat; a self-governing oven for incubating eggs)

* The first air conditioning system

* The first functional submarine

* Magic lanterns, telescopes (including the one used by Galileo), microscopes, camera obscuras, and pump drainage systems (credited for draining cambridge and oxford)

He was also a beautiful artist — he made engravings of topless women teaching men science and math (the seven liberal arts). Actually, maybe that's why he was erased? IDK. But he was definitely a free thinker and 100% legit. Look him up.

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dr_dshiv

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glenstein  3 days ago

>It was a clock that was powered by daily changes in barometric pressure.

That sounds awesome, but it also sounds like it's conflating two things: (1) the physically impossible perpetual motion of popular understanding, e.g. machine that operates at 100% energy efficiency in perpetuity from an initial one-time energy input and (2) a machine with automatic passive energy draw from ambient sources, but with the usual inefficiencies familiar to physics and engineering.

Sounds like Drebbel did (2). Which, don't get me wrong, absolutely rocks. But I certainly wouldn't want to use (2) to advertise a moral that even laws of thermodynamics were just yet another fiction from untrustworthy institutions, which seems like the upshot you were landing on.

  • dr_dshiv  3 days ago

    Drebbel patented his device as a "perpetuum mobile." However, the definition of a perpetual motion device as a "machine that operates at 100% energy efficiency in perpetuity from an initial one-time energy input" — well, that idea came hundreds of years later.

    Obviously, Drebbel was on the scene long before the laws of thermodynamics... so my upshot is definitely not that we should reconsider entropy because of his patent!

    I suppose my upshot is that scientific establishments absolutely can expel excellent people for the wrong reasons. "Everyone knows" that perpetual motion is impossible... I'm actually a little surprised that you didn't understand my point — but you instead concluded I was a crank trying to attack entropy? Oh well, it happens, it's the internet, I don't blame you.

    Another historical tidbit: the Royal Society of Hooke, Newton, etc all loved Drebbel's works. No wonder: Drebbel had a staring role in Francis Bacon's New Atlantis which was the model for the Royal Society.

    • glenstein  3 days ago

      The history books you're talking about were presumably written hundreds of years later (e.g. the 19th century), which would mean thermodynamics had been established. So I don't think they would have scrubbed him on the grounds that his perpetual motion machine was a threat to their orthodoxy.

      So I'm not sure what the the upshot was of suggesting he was "scrubbed from the history books because everyone knows perpetual motion is impossible" if it wasn't implying some kind of institutional conspiracy that wrongly dismissed "perpetual motion", which only works if you treat (1) and (2) the same.

      Moreover we're discussing this in 2025 and in this context we normally mean (1), and it was in response to a comment about (1) that you entered Drebbel's invention as if it belonged to that category.

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  • carlosjobim  3 days ago

    > (1) the physically impossible perpetual motion of popular understanding, e.g. machine that operates at 100% energy efficiency in perpetuity from an initial one-time energy input

    That's easy to make. If you spin up a wheel in the vacuum of space, it's going to keep spinning forever.

    If doing it in space is not allowed, then you have to allow machines that take advantage of terrestrial conditions such as drawing energy from ambient sources.

    • glenstein  2 days ago

      >If doing it in space is not allowed, then you have to allow machines that take advantage of terrestrial conditions such as drawing energy from ambient sources.

      Well yeah, that's (2), not (1), so no one's disallowing those.

      Edit: And although it's kind of moot, I'm not sure what the relationship is between space and ambient draw such that disallowing one would necessitate allowing the other.

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    • hermitcrab  3 days ago

      >If you spin up a wheel in the vacuum of space, it's going to keep spinning forever.

      Even interstellar space is not 100% vaccuum. So it will slow from the occasional contact with matter. No doubt it would take a very long time, though.

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