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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 barometr

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.

glenstein 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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.
    - dr_dshiv 1y ago
      They scrubbed him on the grounds that he was an alchemist and charlatan. He wasn’t the only one to claim he had created a perpetual motion device in those centuries before thermodynamics was discovered. The French patent office banned perpetual motion submissions in 1789. I just don’t know if any other perpetual motion devices that worked — back when people didn’t know the difference between what you call (1) & (2) — (1) a modern definition of perpetual motion framed against thermodynamics and (2) a common notion of perpetual motion. Drebbel’s patent: > “We have received the petition of Cornelis Jacobsz. Drebbel, citizen of Alkmaar, declaring that, after long and manifold investigations, he has at last discovered and practiced two useful and serviceable new inventions. The first: a means or instrument to conduct fresh water in great quantity, in the manner of a fountain, from low ground up to a height of thirty, forty, fifty or more feet, through lead pipes, and to raise it upward by various means and in whatever place desired, continually to flow and spring without ceasing. The second: a clock or timekeeper able to measure time for fifty, sixty, even a hundred or more years in succession, without winding or any other operation, so long as the wheels or other moving works are not worn out.” I mean, I don’t blame people for being skeptical! Neither do I blame people that discount claims like “perpetual motion” or “theories of everything”— after all, they are associated with cranks and charlatans. But I do blame those that dismiss them entirely, out of hand. This was the case for Drebbel, when several 19th century reviewers lumped him with all the Alchemists and called them all frauds. Now, Drebbel had the opportunity to demonstrate that his inventions worked — without stage trickery. Furthermore, his ideas and mechanical theories also bore other fruit. To the OP, I don’t understand UM or the critique. If the theory is good, it will lead to some interesting output. (Aside: GPT5 seems to have become much better at sourced humanities research, though it still has limitations. See how it pulled material for me: https://chatgpt.com/share/68a79d89-d194-8007-a8fa-c367cbf3fda8 https://chatgpt.com/share/68a79d89-d194-8007-a8fa-c367cbf3fd... )
- DoctorOetker 1y ago
  In 1598, physics had not yet developed to the point of articulating modern thermodynamics.
  - glenstein 1y ago
    All the more reason not to treat his invention as if it belongs to that modern category.
    - dr_dshiv 1y ago
      But there wasn’t a difference in categories at the time — yet, at the time, perpetual motion was still treated as impossible.
      - glenstein 1y ago
        If the category didn't exist at the time, the example shouldn't have been volunteered as an example that fits our present day understanding of perpetual motion as understood by the U.S. patent office in the 20th century.
        DoctorOetker 1y ago
        The patent office doesn't serve the patenting of physical theories (which would be a horrible thing), but if it did, its easy to imagine Einsteins theories regarding relativity to have been summarily rejected: surely charged particles at rest in a gravitational field don't radiate energy, yet by the Equivalence principle it seems that radiation is nonetheless predicted by relativity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_radiation_of_charged_particles_in_a_gravitational_field https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_radiation_of_charge... I believe that which is often referred to as the stagnation of physics is in a large part due to this instant-rejection in the modern physics community. There's plenty of "single point mutation" theories (think hypothesize particles with negative masses, hypothesize underlying elements below the standard model so that reactions once again obey the chemical conservation numbers,...) which individually are easy to lampoon, and are henceforth ignored (i.e. for negative masses simulations show they can pair up and accelerate indefinitely, or for a beyond-the-standard-model atomistic theory one can easily refer to the spectrum of hydrogen or positronium, and highlight that a single photon can excite it to a higher state, and then emit 2 lower energy photons). What if our current interpretations form a very successful local optimum? I.e. suppose we can provably rule out each crooked idea if its the only modification in a theory, then we might be collectively conclude to rule them out in general, as they fail so embarassingly, but perhaps simultaneous consideration of 2 crooked ideas can make the inconsistencies disappear. Imagine voting as a group of physicists on the most interesting crooked ideas, gathering the top 10, and then exhaustively going through the 2^10=1024 combinations, where bit K decides if crooked idea K is "enabled" a specific one of the 1024 candidates.
- carlosjobim 1y 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.
  - hermitcrab 1y 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.
    - glenstein 1y ago
      Right. And also efficiency is about its interaction as part of a system, which is the difference between perpetual motion, and perpetual motion machine.
  - glenstein 1y 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.
    - carlosjobim 1y ago
      If you're not allowing the machines to be tested in space (no environmental factors) nor on earth (environmental factors), then there's nowhere allowed to test or make such a machine. So a perpetual motion machine becomes impossible because there is nowhere in the universe where they are accepted. Is it possible for a man to run 100m in less than 10 seconds? If he's not allowed to run on any kind of surface. So now we've proven that it's impossible to run 100m in less than 10 seconds?
PaulHoule 1y ago
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_harvesting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_harvesting For a while YOShInOn was showing me a lot of papers in MDPI journals where somebody made wearable device that had peizeoelectric crystals that harvest energy from the wearer's motion or remote sensor stations that are powered by raindrops https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/996074 https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/996074 or sensor dust that captures power from WiFi emissions https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9460457/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9460457/
owenversteeg 1y ago
Years ago I took many exams in a building bearing his name, so I would not personally say he was "erased", but yes, certainly under-appreciated relative to his contemporaries. For a nice little English language piece on him and his "air conditioning": https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/shachtman-zero.html?scp=55&sq=robert%20boyle&st=Search https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/sh...

glenstein 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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.
  - dr_dshiv 1y ago
    They scrubbed him on the grounds that he was an alchemist and charlatan. He wasn’t the only one to claim he had created a perpetual motion device in those centuries before thermodynamics was discovered. The French patent office banned perpetual motion submissions in 1789. I just don’t know if any other perpetual motion devices that worked — back when people didn’t know the difference between what you call (1) & (2) — (1) a modern definition of perpetual motion framed against thermodynamics and (2) a common notion of perpetual motion. Drebbel’s patent: > “We have received the petition of Cornelis Jacobsz. Drebbel, citizen of Alkmaar, declaring that, after long and manifold investigations, he has at last discovered and practiced two useful and serviceable new inventions. The first: a means or instrument to conduct fresh water in great quantity, in the manner of a fountain, from low ground up to a height of thirty, forty, fifty or more feet, through lead pipes, and to raise it upward by various means and in whatever place desired, continually to flow and spring without ceasing. The second: a clock or timekeeper able to measure time for fifty, sixty, even a hundred or more years in succession, without winding or any other operation, so long as the wheels or other moving works are not worn out.” I mean, I don’t blame people for being skeptical! Neither do I blame people that discount claims like “perpetual motion” or “theories of everything”— after all, they are associated with cranks and charlatans. But I do blame those that dismiss them entirely, out of hand. This was the case for Drebbel, when several 19th century reviewers lumped him with all the Alchemists and called them all frauds. Now, Drebbel had the opportunity to demonstrate that his inventions worked — without stage trickery. Furthermore, his ideas and mechanical theories also bore other fruit. To the OP, I don’t understand UM or the critique. If the theory is good, it will lead to some interesting output. (Aside: GPT5 seems to have become much better at sourced humanities research, though it still has limitations. See how it pulled material for me: https://chatgpt.com/share/68a79d89-d194-8007-a8fa-c367cbf3fda8 https://chatgpt.com/share/68a79d89-d194-8007-a8fa-c367cbf3fd... )
DoctorOetker 1y ago
In 1598, physics had not yet developed to the point of articulating modern thermodynamics.
- glenstein 1y ago
  All the more reason not to treat his invention as if it belongs to that modern category.
  - dr_dshiv 1y ago
    But there wasn’t a difference in categories at the time — yet, at the time, perpetual motion was still treated as impossible.
    - glenstein 1y ago
      If the category didn't exist at the time, the example shouldn't have been volunteered as an example that fits our present day understanding of perpetual motion as understood by the U.S. patent office in the 20th century.
      - DoctorOetker 1y ago
        The patent office doesn't serve the patenting of physical theories (which would be a horrible thing), but if it did, its easy to imagine Einsteins theories regarding relativity to have been summarily rejected: surely charged particles at rest in a gravitational field don't radiate energy, yet by the Equivalence principle it seems that radiation is nonetheless predicted by relativity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_radiation_of_charged_particles_in_a_gravitational_field https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_radiation_of_charge... I believe that which is often referred to as the stagnation of physics is in a large part due to this instant-rejection in the modern physics community. There's plenty of "single point mutation" theories (think hypothesize particles with negative masses, hypothesize underlying elements below the standard model so that reactions once again obey the chemical conservation numbers,...) which individually are easy to lampoon, and are henceforth ignored (i.e. for negative masses simulations show they can pair up and accelerate indefinitely, or for a beyond-the-standard-model atomistic theory one can easily refer to the spectrum of hydrogen or positronium, and highlight that a single photon can excite it to a higher state, and then emit 2 lower energy photons). What if our current interpretations form a very successful local optimum? I.e. suppose we can provably rule out each crooked idea if its the only modification in a theory, then we might be collectively conclude to rule them out in general, as they fail so embarassingly, but perhaps simultaneous consideration of 2 crooked ideas can make the inconsistencies disappear. Imagine voting as a group of physicists on the most interesting crooked ideas, gathering the top 10, and then exhaustively going through the 2^10=1024 combinations, where bit K decides if crooked idea K is "enabled" a specific one of the 1024 candidates.
carlosjobim 1y 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.
- hermitcrab 1y 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.
  - glenstein 1y ago
    Right. And also efficiency is about its interaction as part of a system, which is the difference between perpetual motion, and perpetual motion machine.
- glenstein 1y 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.
  - carlosjobim 1y ago
    If you're not allowing the machines to be tested in space (no environmental factors) nor on earth (environmental factors), then there's nowhere allowed to test or make such a machine. So a perpetual motion machine becomes impossible because there is nowhere in the universe where they are accepted. Is it possible for a man to run 100m in less than 10 seconds? If he's not allowed to run on any kind of surface. So now we've proven that it's impossible to run 100m in less than 10 seconds?

PaulHoule 1y ago

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_harvesting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_harvesting For a while YOShInOn was showing me a lot of papers in MDPI journals where somebody made wearable device that had peizeoelectric crystals that harvest energy from the wearer's motion or remote sensor stations that are powered by raindrops https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/996074 https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/996074 or sensor dust that captures power from WiFi emissions https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9460457/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9460457/

owenversteeg 1y ago

Years ago I took many exams in a building bearing his name, so I would not personally say he was "erased", but yes, certainly under-appreciated relative to his contemporaries. For a nice little English language piece on him and his "air conditioning": https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/shachtman-zero.html?scp=55&sq=robert%20boyle&st=Search https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/sh...