Das Perpetuum Mobile: Die Geschichte einer Erfindung - Was man heute nicht gefunden, kann man doch wohl morgen noch finden

by Paul Scheerbart

"Was man heute nicht gefunden, kann man doch wohl morgen noch finden. Au�er dem: jedes M�hlrad in eisfreiem Flu�, der niemals austrocknet, ist einPerpetuum Mobile. Bei diesem arrangirt allerdings die Verdunstung des Wassers das Wiederhin-aufheben der Last. Aber dieses Wiederhin-aufheben wird von der Sonne perpetuirlich besorgt. Ich glaube, die Herren Physiker k�nnen sich noch nicht bei ihren kosmi schen Betrachtungen mit ihrer Phantasie au�erhalb der Erdathmosph�re hinstellen und von dort aus die sehr merkw�rdige perpetuirliche Anziehungarbeit der Erde beobachten. Diese Anziehungarbeit in per petuirliche Bewegung umzusetzen, mag ja nicht so ganz leicht sein: f�r unm�glich d�rfen wirs aber nicht halten. Die Physik mag eine sehr schwierige Sache sein. Das berechtigt aber keinen, dummes Zeug auf dem Gebiete dieser herrlichen Wissenschaft zu behaup ten und zu glauben." Ein Perpetuum mobile ist ein hypothetisches Ger�t, das - einmal in Gang gesetzt - ohne weitere Energiezufuhr ewig in Bewegung bleibt und dabei - je nach zugrundegelegter Definition - m�glicherweise auch noch Arbeit verrichtet. Perpetua mobilia werden nach dem thermodynamischen Hauptsatz kategorisiert, den sie verletzen w�rden. Die Klassifikation gibt keinen Hinweis auf das beabsichtigte Funktionsprinzip des Perpetuum mobile. Paul Scheerbart (1863-1915), auch unter seinen Pseudonymen Kuno K�fer und Bruno K�fer bekannt, war ein deutscher Schriftsteller phantastischer Literatur und Zeichner.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Germany, German Literature, Philosophy

48 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1910

About the author

Paul Karl Wilhelm Scheerbart (8 January 1863 in Danzig – 15 October 1915 in Berlin) was a German author of fantastic literature and drawings. He was also published under the pseudonym Kuno Küfer and is best known for the book Glasarchitektur (1914).

Reviews

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wakefield Press is publishing some of the most exciting new work today. Although when I say 'new' I really mean old, very old, mostly ignored word-experiments from other countries. Small beautifully designed books of strange unclassifiable curiosities.

This book in particular was highly entertaining, though I never knew how much of it was meant as a joke and how much was meant in all seriousness. Most likely, Scheerbart didn't worry about those kinds of distinctions, just as he didn't worry about the distinction between reality and fantasy.

Ignoring what scientists had agreed upon after the discovery of the conservation of energy, Scheerbart (a German novelist and exponent of 'glass architecture') dedicates more than a year of his life trying to come up with a perpetual motion machine. His writing, interspersed with many illustrations of his machines, is a combination of explanation, wit, philosophy, and speculation. A lot of speculation.

From day one, before he had even built any models, he speculates on the far reaching effects of his machine. People will be able to move mountains with perpets, nations will dissolve, scientists can concentrate on astral affairs, he will become obscenely rich and famous, and ...

Ultimately, we'll have no more need of the Sun.......

But not only did he madly speculate in the positive direction, he also speculated in the negative...

But if, after the discovery of the perpet, things become stupider than before--then one must in fact take care not to perfect the invention.

So I'm actually quite happy that, as of today, the contraption still won't work.

And tomorrow, too, it will remain inoperative--I'd be willing to bet on it.

The thought consoles me a little.

I won't go on quoting from the book because it is so short and it is full of good quotable bits so you should read it for yourself. However, I do want to say one word about the actual machines he invents. One look at them and it is pretty obvious that they will not work. It's quite shocking to me that he even thought they would work.

I think he has a fantastical understanding on the working of the wheel. He criticizes other scientists because "they always insisted that once a weight neared the center of the Earth, it would have to be raised up again. And so it seemed axiomatic to all of them that a perpetual motion machine would be impossible. But once the weight did not approach the center of the Earth--as in Figure 21--one would have to throw this beautiful "scientific" discourse on the scrap heap."

Figure 21 shows a contraption where the weight is elevated, but the problem is that it will never move the wheels he has in place because it is in a state of equilibrium. Only if/when the weight is allowed to drop or move in some way can it create motion. I think Scheerbart believes that potential energy alone can be transferred into the motion of wheels turning without the weight moving or dropping in any way. Even a kid can tell you this is not how things work in the real world. The fact that he could think this is a good indication of how out of touch with reality he really was.

However, this criticism is aimed at Scheerbart's science only, and is in no way a criticism of the book that came out of it... as Scheerbart's failings only make the book better.

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was not at all what I had expected. I opened it thinking it would be an entertaining ‘pataphysical* joke, and I closed it considering it an entertaining ‘pataphysical joke (with a difference). The difference being that Scheerbart was a natural ‘pataphysician whose “joke” is suffused with a wacky idealistic earnestness that is quite touching. These pages are purportedly an actual record in the form of a diary or logbook of his efforts to create a perpetual motion machine. The quick realization that he might actually succeed causes such nervous excitement that it sets into motion a series of emotional and intellectual upheavals – that his invention will lead to unheard of destruction of the planet if the military applies his technology, for instance – and so becomes in part a record of his intellectual bi-polarity. He is driven to achieve the dream of his machine, but he can’t help but envision the radical downside, and so on back and forth, like, yes, a perpetual motion machine of the mind, fueled in large part by his extremely tenuous objective (and slightly humorous) remove from the process. What I found touching was his representation (as embodied by the text itself) of the perfectly fluid melding of the scientific and artistic states of mind, which is necessarily fraught with dangers as its perilous equilibrium is dependent upon perpetual motion, and so will necessarily lead one moment by moment into previously unknown realms of thought and feeling.


* 'Pataphysics, as defined by its inventor Alfred Jarry: "The science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments." (I don't really understand what he's saying either.)

[Tosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul Scheerbart is a total mystery to me, but yes, what a wonderful mystery. German writer of the early 20th Century who focused on poetry and plays as well as being a fan of glass architecture. This small and quite eccentric book is Scheerbart's focus on his scientific invention "The Perpetual Motion Machine."

After reading this book I haven't the foggiest idea what the Perpetual Motion Machine does or what it's supposed to do - but nevertheless I am sure it is a remarkable invention. For the sole reason that this book is a remarkable invention. With his diagrams in trying to locate the right wheel in the right direction, this is something Scheerbart thought long and hard on. And the beauty is not the result, but the process in getting there - if he even he got there.

Wakefield Press is surely one of my favorite presses. Besides this jewell of a book they also published the mind-liked "An Attempt at Exhausting aPlace in Paris" by Georges Perec. All part of the Imaging Science series.

[cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

what a weirdo! i love him. the tension between the unfaltering optimism of 'if you try hard enough you can do anything (and it is science that is wrong!)' vs 'success in this endeavor may be worse than failure, i actually hope i fail' is so .... the epic highs and lows of the perpet am i right

will reread in the future for character inspo

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

It would be an exaggeration to call Scheerbart the Ed Wood of invention--he only tried inventing one machine, after all. But the enthusiasm and positive spirit with which he approached his project is on par with Wood's guileless cheer, as is his certainty in the inherit wonderfulness of his project. Scheerbart took his machine through 26 iterations over two-and-a-half years, yet most of this slim account is devoted to, not the work involved in making the machine and the tests undertaken to prove its worthiness, but the various and wonderful way in which his machine will improve the world. Although Scheerbart never seems entirely serious about his project--he boldly declares his ignorance of physics as a factor in his favor--he nonetheless states repeatedly that the idea and the plans he drew up for it bordered on a single-minded mania.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a very odd book. Scheerbart seems to be quite the eccentric person, but it was interesting to read his ideas, even though I had to scoff at them, being an engineering student and all. However, he did have some lovely ideas about humanity and the earth and how we should treat it.

[Moon Captain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! What an invigorating thing! I got this from the library but I think I need my own copy. Going to look for more from this guy. What an oddball!

"What's remarkable is that, in fact, everything on the Earthstar always comes down to something very funny. Anyway we should never forget this comical aspect at every turn--then we won't so easily lose sight of the humor....."

[Dylan Rock · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book so optimistic and hopeful I almost wish the fools errand of creating a perpetual motion machine was possible. A funny, bizarre and charming book

[Peter Schutz · Rating 5 out of 5]

The astral direction, like so many others, is already “very superfluous.”

[Jose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una de esas joyas que me entero que existen a base de dar con ellas en el repositorio de saldos Bibliostock, leer su sinopsis y optar por pagar los 2 euros que cuestan aun a riesgo de desperdiciar semejante fortunón.

Esto es una sátira divertidísima sobre el espíritu científico de principios del siglo XX, una parodia excelsa de la excentricidad obsesiva que siempre se le supone a todo inventor y, curiosamente, un ensayo encubierto de ese espíritu quijotesco que permea a los humanos llevándoles a no ceder jamás en tareas que saben de antemano son imposibles y de todo punto irrealizables.

La carcajada que he soltado en un tren Madrid - Pamplona cuando el protagonista primero pasa de la obsesión por los sistemas perpetuos basados en ruedas a una nueva obsesión igual de febril por las estructuras en forma de jardín colgante como única vía para que los humanos prosperen casi me deja sordo a mí mismo. Y llega un poco después Scheerbart y reanuda la obsesión por las ruedas metiendo un neologismo que usaba para esos sistemas (otra de las muchas y muy divertidas parodias al mundo científico) en un lugar tan preciso, tan bien seleccionado, que es que esto es una joya del humor sutil y parece mentira que venga de alguien lo más alejado posible del ámbito de provocar carcajadas de forma voluntaria en su público: un alemán.

Obra maestra.

[Jay(neel) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Want to read about an artist trying to defy the laws of thermodynamics and have his imagination run away from him? Then this is the book for you.

Fun, short read that will piss off every engineer and physicist.

‘I knew quite well that this assertion would be denied by every Physicist. But this is what incited me more than anything else. I had always detested Physicists.’

[Lance Grabmiller · Rating 2 out of 5]

Inside the fever dream of a mad (anti)scientist.

[Ugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this story - account, actually, if its introduction is to be believed - of an obsessive attempt to design a perpetual motion machine, written by a man who apparently starved himself to death, was going to be an insight into a mind's gradual unraveling. But actually the madness here is not so much one of debilitation, more a sort of visionary if deluded genius. There are uncannily accurate musings on the future (the book was first published in 1910), such as of a "dissolution of homelands" and a "United States of Europe" (ok, we're not quite there yet, but almost); fantastic/terrible flights of fancy, such as of rearranging all of Earth's mountains for best aesthetic effect, insightful comments on literature (albeit briefly, don't buy it on that account alone); an amusingly glum view of humanity; and some top-notch aphorisms, like "Only in misery do great hopes and great plans for the future take shape."

It's also a lovely volume; Wakefield Press, based in Massachusetts, has done the world a service.

[Robbie Bruens]

I thought this was a novel as I was reading it because it's very silly and I had avoided reading the translator's introduction or any of the other related paratexts. Turns out it's more like a diary of a madman or a genius, or not quite a mad genius exactly, but a clown, a clown with a lust for knowledge but a skepticism for all established truths. Your mileage may vary on how to define Scheerbart and his multiyear experiments in amateur engineering. I find this book to be equal parts erudite japery and sincere wondering. Each time I read something by Scheerbart, I find myself laughing, scratching my head, my face, my arms and legs, and gazing upward, dreaming of clouds and nebulae.

[Matthew Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1907, German fantasy novelist Paul Scheerbart set his sights on the invention of the century: a machine of perpetual motion and energy. Unfortunately for Paul, who had little scientific training and used his laundry room as a laboratory, success was not in the stars. Thankfully for us, however, he documented every misstep of his two year endeavor - from baffling diagrams and digressive explanations, to bizarre fantasies of a world gone mad for his invention-to-be. Translator Andrew Jaron calls Story of an Invention “a two-and-a-half-year-long tantrum of the imagination.” And yes, this is a train wreck in slow motion. It is also an ode to Scheerbart’s unflinching creative spirit, a celebration of one man’s perpetual ingenuity in the face of certain failure.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A knowingly ridiculous document of Paul Scheerbart's doomed (and possibly self-sabotaged) attempts to create a perpetual motion machine. The journal is a jumping off point to riff and dream on the idea itself, on what would no doubt have amazing and, in some ways, disastrous consequences for the human race. He plays it straight throughout and I have to agree with the blurb on the back cover, comparing him to a sci-fi version of Robert Walser - there's a kind of knowing naivite that is half joke and half serious mediation on life. For such a small book, there are a ton of great quotes, many of them hilarious, and many others quite clever and thought provoking - including an early version of Gaia theory. Absolutely worth checking out.

[Will E · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting cross between novella, essay, memoir, and how-to manual, The Perpetual Motion Machine is ostensibly Scheerbart's attempts to create, against all scientific reasoning and evidence, a perpetual motion machine. What's the most interesting is when he goes into speculative fiction mode, wondering about the implications of his great, "sure to be made" invention.

[Mark Fallon · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best aspects of being married to a fellow bibliophile? Great books you didn't even know existed show up in your house.

"The Perpetual Motion Machine" is best described as whimsical philosophy. What would happen if someone created a perpetual motion machine and we no longer needed fuels? What bounties could these machines provide? How would those bounties destroy civilization?

[Toran · Rating 2 out of 5]

The insane ramblings of a mad man who dares to dream of utopia. He disgraces physicists and engineers alike with equal disdain. Rebuking the day they had the audacity to proclaim a *universal* law of conservation of energy. A great reference for the turn of the century's inventor mindset.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short and amusing tale of obsession.

[Moohk Hibou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is the Perpet a Prisoner's Invention of the Earth Star?

[Jake Leech · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anybody in grad school for a Ph.D. should read this. Anybody.